Cash is only a short to medium term solution for token swapping.
In the old days it was all bartering.
Then coins and shit.
Now, electronica.
Not true. Barter relies on the double coincidence of wants. It's all well and good me trying to barter beaver skins for a meal from you, but if you don't want beaver skins, the trade isn't going to happen. In a local community what would happen instead is that you give me a meal, and I owe you one, so maybe 6 months later in the autumn you come to me for a nice fur to make a hat for the winter. Debt repayed.
In the beginning there was debt. Then barter where the double coincidence of wants allows. Then coinage as a way of moving value and debt. Then just promises. Take out a tenner from your wallet. Look at it? What's it worth?
The answer is either ten pounds. Or nothing. If you look closely it says "promise to pay the bearer to the sum of ten pounds" signed chief cashier of the bank of England. It's worth ten pounds because we all accept that it's worth ten pounds, but more crucially, because you can pay the your taxes with it. The UK government can never default on a debt denominated in pounds as it can always print more of them, because they have both no actual value, and the value we decide to give them. Modern money is basically a shared delusion. Bit coin, and other cryptocurrency even more so. That's just a massive multiplayer proof of greater fool theory.
To preempt some replies like: Right, QG you're talking bollocks again give us some citations! Start with "debt, the first 5000 years" by David Graeber. Then move on to "The deficit myth" by Stephanie Kelton.
Trouble is electronica can get followed around. Which is, I guess, why good old thrash metal is better.
A cashless society, is a surveillance society.
J