By Lori Jo Underhill
The collective narrative about blockchain, digital ledger, and digital asset technologies has adopted the term "utility token" in common usage terminology to describe software offering function and usefulness outside of any economic value.
However, the term "utility token" is not an appropriate usage of the two individual words within that term to properly define the descriptive intent behind the common usage of the term. The words token and asset are associated with economic value and not all digital ledger components have inherent, intrinsic, or associative economic value.
The term "utility" as defined by Merriam-Webster implies value and economic value. (See below for complete definition)
The term "token" as defined by Merriam-Webster implies value or economic value. (See below for complete definition)
Digital Unit
Definition: A piece of software that is functional and useful, is not an asset, has no inherent economic value, external economic value, and does not represent an asset or a store of value that has economic value. It could be fungible or non-fungible depending on its use case. The supply of the software could be finite or infinite depending on its use case. The software can be a manifestation of something, or represent something underlying that may, or may not, have utilitarian value; however, the unit itself has no economic value.
Examples: A Vote, Identity, Digital Container, Measurement, Store of Information, or Store of Data.
The term "digital" is defined as:
1) related to digits as characterized by computer technology.
The term "unit" as defined by Merriam-Webster: