But it does describe what it is. Right at the beginning, the title: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
It doesn't say distributed data ledger for any kind of data, it's quite specific.
The whitepaper title is marketing copy, not consensus rules. The actual protocol spec is in the code, and it doesn't mention 'cash' once. It defines valid transactions as outputs that satisfy signature checks, not outputs that match Satoshi's preferred use case. If the title was legally binding, OP_RETURN wouldn't exist. Neither would Lightning. The whitepaper described one application. The protocol enabled a platform.
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