Cryptocurrency is an ambiguous term because 1) the word 'currency' means a medium of exchange within a country or other normative context (from Middle English: curraunt, 'in circulation'), and 2) you can use cryptography for anything you like, including credit 'money' that is nothing like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not a currency because it exists in the lawlessness of the internet, nor does cryptography alone provide its monetary qualities (as I explained in the excerpt above).
So, we are left with the word
money, which can refer to commodities and collectibles that are not associated with any authority (e.g. precious metals, cigarettes, wampum), or, again, to currency or credit. Clearly, if we want to understand these things, the meaning of the words must be sorted. The article proposes that we reserve the word
money for commodities and collectibles (Bitcoin is a digital collectible); and it does so on the basis of the biological study of sociality and exchanges.
I really recommend you read the article. You will learn about modern debates in biology, the history and psychology of money, the nature of human societies, etc.
What this is missing out is the fact that there are now digital currencies of nations as well, for example petro which is still digital currency but at the same time based on a nations resources so it can always be combined.
Bitcoin was never the first digital currency, it was only the first one that seen this much adoption, there was e-money type of deals before that never got too big because they never had blockchain behind it, what made bitcoin original and unique was the blockchain, otherwise digital currency has been as old as internet itself, even data was seen as money at one point and exchanged for fiat currency to be used. Hence there are other smaller details that should be invested some research into before this theory could be 100% done with.
I guess Cryptocurrency is digital currency. Fiat currency exist in digital form too, so it definitely qualifies as digital currency...maybe it should be considered partly digital.
Some websites tend to define digital currency as currency that exist purely in digital form. I wonder why this is so.