Bitcoin is a digital currency which is the king in the cryptocurrency world and all other coins are ministers.
If you look around you will notice that people are reluctant to give details on shitcoins, or give examples that are highly controversial. Bitcoin is undoubtedly the king of the crypto market because when Bitcoin falls all cryptos fall to a higher or lower degree, but when Bitcoin rises, altcoins do not rise to the same degree. You can make good investments in altcoins and shitcoins, if you know exactly when to get in and out, but not for long. As a point of empirical observation almost any currency other than bitcoin will look like shitcoin at some point. We observed that many people lost hundreds to thousands of dollars of their money to Shitcoins.
So I think we should focus on Bitcoin instead of other coins, because investing in Bitcoin will make you a good trader.
When you say cryptocurrency you are kind of referring Bitcoin to be part of an ecosystem that is centralized and full of pump-and-dump actions. It's best if you refer Bitcoin to Bitcoin and you can tag all other shitcoins to be cryptocurrency. Whenever people hear about cryptocurrency their perspectives are different. They feel it is a digital asset that could be regulated and doesn't have a protocol. Bitcoin is a protocol, so it cant be replaced easily. If Bitcoin could be regulated, it would have vanished from existence a long time ago. This is the difference between Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.