Bitcoin is different things for different people based on where they live and what they use it for.
It is a speculative investment for people who have access to decent monetary, payment, banking and financial systems. They don’t necessarily need bitcoin for anything more than buying it and maybe selling it at a higher price.
It is a reliable currency for those living in broken monetary regimes that do not let them reliably store their wealth over a period of time. Long term capital accumulation via savings is nearly impossible for those living in these countries because their currency loses its value by double digit percentages every single year because of supply inflation. There are about 1.8 billion people who face this situation around the world.
It is a non-censorable, neutral payment system for those having to deal with financial censorship and deplatforming. It is a peer-to-peer censorship-resistant network that does not need the identity of the sender and receiver in order for them to transact. Doesn't matter what their race, gender, caste, creed, nation or religion is.
It is a banking system for those who are unbanked. There are places in the world where people have to walk for miles in order to reach the nearest bank. Places like El Salvador whose interent infrastructure is decent but banking infrastructure is sub-par can benefit from Bitcoin’s feature of enabling people to digitally take custody of their money without relying on an institution's servers to do it for them.
It is a path toward energy abundance for places that have an energy source that hasn’t been tapped into because of its distance from the grid. Transporting electricity over long distances is not at all efficient. There are a lot of renewable sources of energy like this located at considerable distances from the grid. Bitcoin miners can be buyers of energy at these places.
There is no singular, correct answer for what bitcoin is. It can be different things to different people based on how they want to use it.
To quote Beautyon, 'Bitcoin is. And that is enough.'