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On Yap Island, a large millstone-like stones were used as a medium of exchange. The stones were quarried almost 280miles away on the Island of Palau and brought to Yap by small boat. New stone  money units could be brought into the system by every inhabitant. Labour effort, equipments were the creation costs that protected the economy from inflation. The ownership rights of the stones were transferred virtually instead of having to laboriously move them from the seller's front yard to the buyer's front yard because the stones were up to 13feet in diameter. A stone remained in its original location and the unit of value could be detached from it and circulated irrespective of the stone's whereabouts. It is sufficient that all the inhabitants knew who the owner of every stone was.

This system was based on a distributed ledger in which every inhabitant would keep track of the stone's ownership. When a buyer made a purchase, the neighbors are informed of the transaction and then begin to spread the news until all the Island's inhabitants have been informed about the change in ownership. This communication allow every Islander to have a precise idea of which unit of value belonged to which person at any point in time.
In its essential features, the Yap payment system is very similar to cryptocurrency system but a major difference is that false reports could not be immediately identified in Yap system, the group would have to argue and settle conflicts regarding the current state of the implicit ledger. Yap payment system was also based on trust by a manageable size of people with close relationship but cryptocurrency system was designed to function in a network where the participant can trust any other participant and the membership strength is not restricted.

Cryptocurrency transaction works in a similar way to Yap payment system because the buyer broadcasts to the network that a certain cryptocurrency address is the new owner of a specific cryptocurrency unit, this information is distributed on the network until all the nodes are informed about the ownership transfer. In small communities  like Yap Island, everyone knows everyone else, the participants care about their reputation but in contrast to the cryptocurrency system, the number of participant is substantially larger and network participants  remain anonymous, consequently, reputation effects cannot be expected to have a significant positive impact and coordination become complex with the attention of experts. Instead there is a consensus mechanism that ensures that all the participants agree about the ownership rights to the virtual currency units. This consensus mechanism is the core innovation of the cryptocurrency system and since the Yap payment system was more of a model where stones were used as quasi-virtual currency, Cryptocurrency system has improved greatly on the defects seen from the Yap payment system.

If you want to read more, you can check this link. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322456542_A_Short_Introduction_to_the_World_of_Cryptocurrencies

The Yap payment can be likened to the transfer of land ownership in this modern day, where the buyer(the  new owner to be) having fulfilled all the obligations required to possess the land is deemed fit as the new owner regardless of where the land is located.

The same applies to cryptocurrency because, cryptocurrency hodlers cannot see or feel their investments physically, they make their investments on existing crypto projects blockchains they have trust in, and by the possession of access to particular blockchain address assigned to them on completion of the requirements needed to purchase a spot in that particular
project blockchain, they  can lay claim to their crypto assets anytime/anywhere regardless of their location in any part of the world.