Blanket, universal surveillance as well as zero-burden-of-proof government point-and-click
seizure/disablement is the cost.
You cannot have a free society without a payment system that the government or a few large banks do not have the ability to arbitrarily censor, even temporarily.
You can not communicate or organize anonymously (for example, for political organization or government corruption investigative journalism) when every payment you need to do so is logged as a matter of course. These activities are not common, but essential to a free society.
The ability to transact in things the government does not like, without their knowing about it, is a cornerstone of freedom. Many other human rights crumble if you do not preserve it.
Hyperbole. People will trade freely if they need to. Cash is not what prevents tyrants from coming to power, democratic societal structures do. Elections do. Having an educated population does. Cash didn’t save anyone from tyrannical rule.
Lack of cash usage or ability to transact with it has absolutely curtailed people's freedom, though. Privacy is a human right! There is virtually zero electronic financial privacy in the global west today. Everything is surveillance-by-default.
I keep my credit card in the back pocket of my trousers (like I would keep cash). I need to reorder the card every 3-12 months from the bank, as the chip breaks from sitting on it.
-Scandinavia