Bitcoin has certain core qualities: limited supply, fast transfer, pseudonymity, decentralized governance, self-managed credentials. (It also has some fringe/potential qualities: ability to represent software contracts, ability to represent fractional ownership/voting interests, support for micropayments.)
It's too early to determine what its primary function(s) will be, arising from these qualities. People are doing interesting, potentially valuable things with it, including a bunch of things that are also done with 'currency'.
If Bitcoin turns out to win a fraction of the market for international money transfer, or online purchases, or gray/black market purchases, the existing units could be worth a lot more than now.
If the combination of constitutional counterfeit/inflation resistance, plus consensus adoption for a few other things, makes it attractive as a rare store of value (like gold), it will also become much more valuable.
These are big ifs, but they're not impossibilities, and the way that Bitcoin is like equity is that it has aligned the interests of all its holders to try to create the systems/world where Bitcoin continues to be more valuable, as with founders' shares in any other startup. They start as mere paper, sold at negligible 'par value' under the idea that someday, others will want them too, because they will represent valuable claims on future capabilities. With the incentive-aligned work of the team, that future may come to pass, creating a lot of value. Or not.
So yes, in a sense, one of its purposes is: get all the people who hold Bitcoin working together towards increasing its value (and related things). Like equity shares.
It's too early to determine what its primary function(s) will be, arising from these qualities. People are doing interesting, potentially valuable things with it, including a bunch of things that are also done with 'currency'.
If Bitcoin turns out to win a fraction of the market for international money transfer, or online purchases, or gray/black market purchases, the existing units could be worth a lot more than now.
If the combination of constitutional counterfeit/inflation resistance, plus consensus adoption for a few other things, makes it attractive as a rare store of value (like gold), it will also become much more valuable.
These are big ifs, but they're not impossibilities, and the way that Bitcoin is like equity is that it has aligned the interests of all its holders to try to create the systems/world where Bitcoin continues to be more valuable, as with founders' shares in any other startup. They start as mere paper, sold at negligible 'par value' under the idea that someday, others will want them too, because they will represent valuable claims on future capabilities. With the incentive-aligned work of the team, that future may come to pass, creating a lot of value. Or not.
So yes, in a sense, one of its purposes is: get all the people who hold Bitcoin working together towards increasing its value (and related things). Like equity shares.