Worked for thousands of years, but perhaps now it is time to rely on the people bribed by big corporations?

For most of those thousands of years, money was a precious metal (although not always the same one).

We moved away from it because of all the things that go wrong with that, and then the internet happened and we want digital money.

"Digital money" in the broadest sense is how it all works today, even with the coins and notes that are common here in Berlin. "Trust-less" money — without anyone who can undo transactions — is an illusion, as it necessitates the users trust their counterparty as court-ordered refunds can't be guaranteed. But too many entities who can undo transactions has a similar effect, and there's a benefit to scale, so you naturally end up with a small number of Visa/MasterCard/PayPal types who have motive, means, and opportunity to bribe/regulatory-capture governments.

One of the reasons I was originally curious about BTC, before it gave me "scam!" vibes, was the possible it might be a new path that might avoid some of this; but I no longer have that impression.

It's not even all that legal in a lot of places. For example, it's not legal to make a cash transaction over 1,000 euros in Spain - they locked it down to try and catch folks who tax evade by running all-cash businesses.

I fully expect buying most things with cash will be impossible or at least very cumbersome pretty soon

Cash doesn't work you heard em ;)

Participating in society requires you to use the tools that 90% of people use. In the past you could live by being paid in cash, buying things locally, etc.

You still had issues, if the local butcher decided to ban you then you were going to be vegetarian. If the church said you were awful (perhaps in retaliation to you seeing the priest doing something) then you'd basically have to move, you could no longer participate in society.

Society has reconfigured itself away from that. The problem now is you can't even move. If a couple of big corporations ban you, you're screwed. You will struggle to sell your services when 95% of people want to buy your products on amazon and pay by credit card.

The solution here is to have due process and appeals. The impact of amazon or whatsapp blocking you is far more on you than on them, just like the butcher banning you in the past. There's just less comeback, you can't even talk to a person on the phone, let alone face to face. You can't appeal to the rest of the village (well you can, people post on HN or Twitter and get bans overturned, but that's a minority workflow and is far less successful than in the past)