Agreed that bitusd is more than the sum of its parts (literally). Good points. The motivation for this series is to set the stage for how cryptoassets can function as money and whether a community is better served by monetized debt or monetized equity.
A question beyond the scope of this post is how a medium of exchange is implicitly backed by the innovative technology it relies on. E.g. blockchain is potentially more valuable of an innovation than ACH transfers.