I think something I disagree with in trying to split the hairs between "token" and "currency" is that it can be a distinction without a sharp difference.
The US penny is a copper (plus specific additives) ingot. It's value as a currency has directly shifted with the cost of copper, to the point of a desire to end the production simply based on copper prices. Copper is still a commodity with commodity markets (and futures markets) and its fungibility to trading is sometimes currency-like.
(Plus we can get into deep weeds discussing things like the Gold Standard where the commodities in the not-so-distant past have been directly tied to currencies. Arguably that is a bad idea, but just because it is a bad idea doesn't mean that it isn't a common or recurring idea because the distinctions are so close to few differences. You can cross-reference the South American experiments with a "Bitcoin Standard" currency even.)
When I say "the currency mechanisms", I certainly mean "the token mechanisms". They are the same, from my perspective. The difference between "currency" and "token" in a cryptocurrency sense doesn't seem to mean anything to me (unless you are explicitly narrowing to "non-fungible token", but that's a different discussion and as far as I can tell you are not), it is a distinction without a difference. Especially in the context of how much cryptocurrencies are and are not isomorphic to scams. In my view Artificial Scarcity (inc., but esp. Premining tactics), Proof of Work, and Proof of Stake all have aspects that are isomorphic to scams, that can be indistinguishable from scams. With present technology/math I do not see a way to build tokens that have any value without those systems. Whether you call those "currency mechanisms" or "token mechanisms" isn't a meaningful distinction when talking about the parts of blockchain tech that are most problematically isomorphic to scams.