One way you could think about this is that there are (at least) two very opposed intuitions about the status of cash vs. electronic funds transfers.
One intuition is that cash is a really unfortunate technology that had to exist in the past as a compromise due to technological limitations [because strongly authenticating value transfers is hard in an offline world], but now that we have better technology, we can try to get rid of it or de-emphasize it, and make money the way it's supposed to be — like EFTs that are transparent (at least to states), traceable, seizeable, reversible.
Another intuition is that custodial/intermediated EFT payments are a really unfortunate technology that had to exist in the past due to technological limitations as a compromise due to technological limitations [because making digital bearer instruments, especially fully or partly decentralized ones, work well is technologically difficult and fraught with subtle trade-offs], but now that we have better technology, we can try to get rid of them or de-emphasize them, and make money the way it's supposed to be — like cash that's really owned outright by its bearers and provides privacy about who spent what where.
The former view is for example Kenneth Rogoff's view in The Curse of Cash or maybe the view of the Indian government in demonetizing some large-denomination notes in 2016, while the second is the traditional view of cypherpunks and some libertarians. The disagreements are pretty fundamental. :-)
>One intuition is that cash is a really unfortunate technology that had to exist in the past as a compromise due to technological limitations
I can't vouch for the accuracy of the historical perspective, but I came across an intriguing and new-to-me assertion/idea that credit is the oldest financial tech, and cash/coinage was originally a niche tech used perhaps for mercenaries and/or other people who were outsiders relative to a money-using (i.e. credit using) community.
Hence, it might be that what bitcoin aspires to be never was mainstream or primary in the widest context of all of human history.
It reminds me of the general pattern of fundamentalists looking back to an original state of something that never really existed.
One intuition is that cash is a really unfortunate technology that had to exist in the past as a compromise due to technological limitations [because strongly authenticating value transfers is hard in an offline world], but now that we have better technology, we can try to get rid of it or de-emphasize it, and make money the way it's supposed to be — like EFTs that are transparent (at least to states), traceable, seizeable, reversible.
Another intuition is that custodial/intermediated EFT payments are a really unfortunate technology that had to exist in the past due to technological limitations as a compromise due to technological limitations [because making digital bearer instruments, especially fully or partly decentralized ones, work well is technologically difficult and fraught with subtle trade-offs], but now that we have better technology, we can try to get rid of them or de-emphasize them, and make money the way it's supposed to be — like cash that's really owned outright by its bearers and provides privacy about who spent what where.
The former view is for example Kenneth Rogoff's view in The Curse of Cash or maybe the view of the Indian government in demonetizing some large-denomination notes in 2016, while the second is the traditional view of cypherpunks and some libertarians. The disagreements are pretty fundamental. :-)