David G.W. Birch is an author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. An internationally-recognised thought leader in digital identity and digital money, he holds a number of board and advisory roles across these fields. He is a Forbes contributor and a columnist for Financial World and has just been voted one of the UK’s Payments “Power 10” and ranked one of the top 100 global fintech influencers for 2021. Previously named one of the global top 15 favourite sources of business information by Wired magazine and identified as 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.

The LSE Review of Books called his book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From money we understand to money that understands us” a work that should be “widely read by graduate students of finance, financial law and related topics as well as policymakers involved in financial regulation”. His most recent book “The Currency Cold War”, published in May 2020, examines the implications of the introduction of digital currency and was rated one of the top ten best cryptography books by BookAuthority. Dave graduated from the University of Southampton with a B.Sc (Hons) in Physics.