I want to describe society in the 80s, Western Europe.

Everything is cash-based. My dad got paid in cash. He spent in cash, in stores as well as freely transacting with friends and family. There were (hardly) any CCTV cameras anywhere and of course no smartphones.

The personal freedom and lack of surveillance might be hard to imagine for young people.

The government knows close to nothing about you. They know you exist and would know that you have a job. Nobody really knows how much money you have, what you spent it on, your whereabouts and the mentality very much was that this is nobody's business. The distributed nature of cash makes arbitrary seizure impractical.

Now the burden of proof is reversed. "Money as software" makes possible an unlimited number of disturbing scenarios.