That's because money is an imaginary belief. If you don't have a common Church to feed this religion, it makes no fucking sense at all. It's just arbitrary numbers that govern our lives, so it's sensible that you need trusted intermediaries to interpret these sacred numbers.
Money without trust makes no sense because money by very definition is trust. Trust that you'll find someone else that will barter your imaginary number against something of actual use/value. Same applies to gold btw: it's just a stupid metal... unless you can trust that someone will exchange it for something else.
> finding practical scalable tools for that?
I think you may be interested in GNU Taler. As much as i hate money and banks, taxable private payments that interop with existing banks sounds like what we're missing today, although it does not solve the problem of the many poorer people (even in global north countries) who don't have a bank account.