David Birch

About the Author

David G.W. Birch is an author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. He is Global Ambassador for Consult Hyperion (the secure electronic transactions consultancy that he helped to found), Technology Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (the London-based think tank) and a Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey Business School. An internationally-recognised thought leader in digital identity and digital money he was named one of the global top 15 favourite sources of business information by Wired magazine and one of the top ten most influential voices in banking by Financial Brand; created one of the top 25 “must read” financial IT blogs; was found by PR Daily to be one of the top ten Twitter accounts followed by innovators (along with Bill Gates and Richard Branson), was rated Europe’s most influential commentator on emerging payments by Total Payments and was awarded “Contributor of the Year” by the Emerging Payments Association.

“The Currency Cold War” (see thecurrencycoldwar.com for more details) was published in May 2020. Jeffrey Robinson, expert on international financial crime and author of the worldwide bestseller “The Laundrymen”, said of it: “No one knows more about digital money than Dave Birch, and his insights into where the world of digital currency sovereignty is going, will shock you. Our lives are about to change, radically”.

His previous book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From money we understand to money that understands us”, which the LSE Review of Books said should be “widely read by graduate students of finance, financial law and related topics as well as policymakers involved in financial regulation” was published in a revised paperback edition in 2019.

Dave graduated from the University of Southampton with a B.Sc (Hons) in Physics. He was described at the Oxford Internet Institute as “one of Britain’s most acute observers of the internet and social networks”, in The Daily Telegraph as “one of the world’s leading experts on digital money”, in The Independent as a “grade-A geek”, by the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation as “one of the most user-friendly of the UK’s uber-techies” and in Financial World as “mad”.

He is a media commentator on electronic business issues and has appeared on BBC television and radio, Sky and other channels around the world.