The first sentence of the bitcoin whitepaper is literally "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
It doesn't matter what it was marketed as. It matters what it is.
But they made it deflationary and a good currency needs to be inflationary otherwise you just hold onto it instead of spending it. Which had made it more like a digital gold.
It has totally failed as a system for payments for this and other reasons. It is also too slow and too expensive per transaction.
