Miners are the commercial infrastructure of Bitcoin. Without them, transactions couldn’t happen and new bitcoin couldn’t be issued. However, miners aren’t the ones facilitating the order books that give it a price in dollars, ether, dogecoin or whatever. That’s the job of exchanges, traders and market makers. Some may see miners as analogous to the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department, minting currency for circulation into the economy. However, miners are also likened to Visa because they enable transaction settlement. But also, not really. The point is, Bitcoin doesn’t perfectly fit into any box we have right now.