Dave sits on the board and/or advises the board for a variety of clients in the Fintech and Digital Financial Services industries including:
“Many thanks Dave for your support and wisdom”
Victoria Thompson – Orora.World, 2021
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DAVE’S BOOKS
The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony
Money is changing and this may mean a new world order. In this new book, David Birch sets out the economic and technological imperatives concerning digital money, discussing the potential impact of it and the tensions involved — between public and private and between East and West — to contribute to the debate that we must have to begin to shape the International Monetary and Financial System of the near future.
Further information – including the preface of the book in full, as well as its table of contents – can be found on a dedicated website for the book, here: thecurrencycoldwar.com
“No-one has put as much thought into understanding and explaining the exceedingly complex world that all these parallel economic, political and technological developments are creating for us than David Birch.” — Michael Casey (author of The Age of Cryptocurrency)
“A well-researched and engaging account of the story so far, of money in retrospect and money in prospect.”
Andy Haldane – Chief Economist & Executive Director of Monetary Analysis/Statistics, Bank of England
Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money That We Understand To Money That Understands Us
Technology is changing money and this book looks at where it might be taking us. Technology has transformed money from physical objects to intangible information. With the arrival of smart cards, mobile phones and Bitcoin it has become easier than ever to create new forms of money. Crucially, money is also inextricably connected with our identities. Your card or phone is a security device that can identify you – and link information about you to your money.
To see where these developments might be taking us, Dave Birch looks back over the history of money, spanning thousands of years. He sees in the past, both recent and ancient, evidence for several possible futures. Looking further back to a world before cash and central banks, there were multiple ‘currencies’ operating at the level of communities, and the use of barter for transactions. Perhaps technology will take us back to the future, a future that began back in 1971, when money became a claim backed by reputation rather than by physical commodities of any kind. Since then, money has been bits. Future money will know where it has been, who has been using it and what they have been using it for.
“Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin is a timely and illuminating contribution which should be widely read by graduate students of finance, financial law and related topics, as well as policymakers involved in financial regulation.”
— Stephen Minas, LSE Review of Books
“David Birch is one of a pretty small group of people who write sense about money and identity – and he is pretty much unique in doing so with wit and lightness of touch.”
Strategic Reading, 2019
Identity is The New Money
This book argues that identity is changing profoundly and that money is changing equally profoundly. Because of technological change the two trends are converging so that all that we need for transacting will be our identities captured in the unique record of our online social contacts. Social networks and mobile phones are the key technologies. They will enable the building of an identity infrastructure that can enhance both privacy and security – there is no trade-off. The long-term consequences of these changes are impossible to predict, partly because how they take shape will depend on how companies (probably not banks) take advantage of business opportunities to deliver transaction services. But one prediction made here is that cash will soon be redundant – and a good thing too. In its place we will see a proliferation of new digital currencies.
“Dave Birch gives one of the best accounts available today on how we’ll navigate the challenges of the emerging payments landscape, and how traditional data points on identity don’t really make sense in a digital world. An outstanding piece of work which may well define our journey moving forward.” — Brett King, Founder and CEO of Moven.com