Bitcoin or BTC/XBT is a crypto-currency, however it's in a league of its own & should not be confused with the rest of the "crypto" space. It is a decentralized (meaning no central server) digital internet currency which can be transacted without a third party verification (i.e Bank/Institution) to another user on the Bitcoin network into their digital wallet. Every transaction is performed peer-to-peer and cannot be manipulated or controlled - More energy than the sun would be required to do so.
*This statement above is far less true of other *crypto-currencies* as Bitcoin currently has far more hashing power & network security to prevent fraudulence - such as double spending or reversed transactions. It's founder is still unknown and developers are multi-national, there's no weak central point, which in turn makes an attack vector near impossible*
I like to think of Bitcoin as the world's largest super computer that is made up of miners & nodes. Roughly every 10 mins Bitcoin miners compete to mathematically solve blocks which in turn process network transactions. In return for solving and processing these blocks the miner who solves each one first is rewarded with Bitcoin (12.5 BTC now, 6.75 soon - Halving every 4 years). The highest paid fees (in Bitcoin value) per transaction are processed into the next block to be mined. Transactions processed into blocks are then cryptographically tied, signed & secured into a string of historic transactions (a public ledger) called the Bitcoin Blockchain (essentially it is a global distributed database). Each new block added strengthens and secures previous transactions (Think of building blocks in a house). Every bank uses a ledger to record transactions, however the data is centrally controlled on a central server - causing it be a weak point to theft and corruption.
The brilliance of Bitcoin is in it's censorship resistance - meaning transactions/supply/network rules cannot be corrupted or altered for financial gain or political power. The Bitcoin Blockchain is globally distributed and continuously duplicated & verified by every node on the network. Anyone can run a wallet that is a node - HTC phones are coming default with a Bitcoin node. In order to kill Bitcoin, you would have to blow up the world, however copies of the Blockchain are now stored and continuously verified in satellites (Probably soon on the moon - no pun intended). As well as securing & verifying transactions, miners & nodes hold the rules on the network in place so no one can cheat. The most important rule being only 21 million coins will ever exist in circulation.
How does Bitcoin compare to other assets - in my opinion:
It is like having something physical but in digital form as it cannot be replicated.
It behaves like cash, but can be traded digitally. It isn't subject to Quantitative Easing or Stimulus (The artificial printing of money), hyper-inflation, nor is it tied to any political movement.
It possesses the scarcity of gold, however is better as there's a true finite amount that cannot be altered - An asteroid can't come crashing down to earth with more Bitcoin. It's also divisible to 1/100 million parts (Lightning Network allows even smaller units)
It's not like a stock, where you are given an IOU for a share in a company, you actually hold and own the asset.
It's probably more like digital internet real estate that can divided and used in global commerce.
Lastly it's market is not correlated to any other asset, Bitcoin thrives because of the internet. It is completely neutral and doesn't care about wars, recessions or epidemics - If anything it will only continue to thrive.
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