David Birch

Principal at 15Mb

Speaker

David is Principal at his advisory practice 15Mb Ltd. and Global Ambassador for Consult Hyperion, the consulting arm of Fime. A Senior Research Fellow at King’s College Business School in London, he is Non-Executive Chairman of Digiseq Ltd and holds a number of other board-level advisory roles with companies in Europe and the USA including OneID, PaymentWorks, Au10tix and KYP – Know Your Partner. His most recent journal papers cover agentic finance, payment system resilience and non-human customers.

Once named one of the global top 15 favourite sources of business information (Wired magazine) and one of the top ten most influential voices in banking (Financial Brand), he created one of the top 25 “must read’ financial IT blogs and was found to be one of the top ten Twitter accounts followed by innovators, along with Bill Gates and Richard Branson (PR Daily). Ranked one of 2022’s global top 30 fintech influencers, he is one of the top three most influential people in London’s FinTech community (City A.M.) and rated Europe’s most influential commentator on emerging payments (Total Payments).

David is a Senior Research Fellow in the Qatar Centre for Digital Finance at King’s Business School in London, a Forbes contributor and a columnist for Financial World magazine. He has also written for publications ranging from the Parliamentary IT Review to The Financial Times. He also wrote a column in The Guardian for many years. A media commentator on electronic business issues, he has appeared on BBC television and radio, Sky and other channels around the world.

Launched in April 2024 at Money 20/20 Asia, his latest book, “Money in the Metaverse”, co-authored with Victoria Richardson focuses on bridging the gap between the creators of metaverses and financial services strategists looking to create value from virtual worlds, digital assets and digital identity. The goal is to facilitate more efficient interactions between the stakeholders and more effective development of smart strategies for business today.

His last book “The Currency Cold War”, looked at the significant economic and political ramifications of the move towards digital money and examines both private and central bank digital currency basics to conclude that business and government strategies for digital currency should be a priority.

His previous book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From money we understand to money that understands us” was published in 2017 with a foreword by Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. In the London School of Economics (LSE) Review of Books it was described as a timely and illuminating contribution which 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 first book “Identity is the New Money” (2014) fresh, original, wide-ranging and the best book on general issues around new forms of money.

David graduated from the University of Southampton with a B.Sc (Hons.) in Physics. Before helping to found Consult Hyperion in 1986, he spent several years working as a consultant in Europe, the Far East and North America.