It's much more than that...
The new field of cryptographic currencies and consensus ledgers (blockchains) is receiving increasing interest from various different communities. These communities are very diverse and amongst others include: technology enthusiasts, activist groups, cypherpunk libertarians, researchers from various disciplines, start-ups, large enterprises, public authorities and policy makers, banks, financial regulators, business men, investors, and also criminals who exploit anonymity measures and make use of the fact that criminal investigation and de-anonymization techniques are lagging behind.
People use the term "blockchain technology" to mean different things, and it can be confusing. Sometimes they are talking about BTC's blockchain, sometimes it’s other virtual currencies, sometimes it’s smart contracts. Most of the time though, they are talking about distributed ledgers, i.e. a list of transactions that is shared among a number of computers, rather than being stored on a central server.
Cryptocurrencies have many different aspects, and can therefore be viewed from various angles, including the financial and economic perspective, legal perspective, political and sociological perspective, as well as technical and socio-technical perspectives. These very different viewpoints can be separated even further; for example, the technical aspects can be divided into the following non-exhaustive list of fields: cryptography, network and distributed systems, game theory, data science, and software security.
The history of cryptographic currencies rests on two foundations. The first is the history of distributed systems research in general, and the second is the history of electronic cash systems. Both fields are related to research and advances in cryptography, and particularly research in the area of asymmetric cryptography, e.g., blind signature schemes. In retrospect, Bitcoin provided the missing link between those fields of research to create a decentralized cryptographic currency.
There’s a lot of excitement about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Optimists claim that Bitcoin will fundamentally alter payments, economics, and even politics around the world. Pessimists claim Bitcoin is inherently broken and will suffer an inevitable and spectacular collapse. Who knows what will happen? I know one thing for sure; crypto assets/coins/tokens/currencies, are here to stay!