Speakers

David G.W Birch is an author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. Principal at 15Mb, his advisory company, he is Global Ambassador for the secure electronic transactions consultancy, Consult Hyperion, Fintech Ambassador for Digital Jersey and Non-Executive Chair at Digiseq Ltd. He holds a number of board-level advisory roles including at Au10tix, Qiwi, Biid and PaymentWorks.

He is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital identity and digital money. Ranked one of the top 100 fintech influencers for 2021, he was previously 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. He created one of the top 25 “must read” financial IT blogs and was found by PR Daily to be one of the top ten Twitter accounts followed by innovators (along with Bill Gates and Richard Branson). Rated Europe’s most influential commentator on emerging payments by Total Payments, he was awarded “Contributor of the Year” by the Emerging Payments Association for 2018/19.

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 has lectured to MBA level on the impact of new information and communications technologies. A regular contributor for both Forbes and Financial World, he has contributed to publications ranging from the Parliamentary IT Review to The Financial Times and wrote a column in The Guardian for many years. A media commentator on digital issues, he has appeared on BBC television and radio, Sky and other channels around the world.

His latest book “The Currency Cold War—Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony” was published in May 2020. His previous book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From money we understand to money that understands us” was published in June 2017 with a foreword by Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. The LSE Review of Books said the book should be “widely read by graduate students of finance, financial law and related topics as well as policy makers involved in financial regulation”. The London Review of Books called his earlier book “Identity is the New Money” fresh, original, wide-ranging and “the best book on general issues around new forms of money”.

Dave graduated from the University of Southampton with a B.Sc (Hons) in Physics. After graduating he spent several years working as a consultant in Europe, the Far East and North America.