One property cash has is that you can transfer it freely -- Visa can't decide they don't like your business and shut you down overnight if all your customers ar

One property cash has is that you can transfer it freely -- Visa can't decide they don't like your business and shut you down overnight if all your customers are paying in cash. Cryptocurrencies afford a similar guarantee for long-distance payments, without the fraud potential in, e.g., wire transfers. Classical solutions running out of a database almost certainly could work better, but historically the middlemen involved have been unwilling to relinquish that level of control and just serve as dumb infrastructure.