David Birch – The Currency Cold War.

In episode 35 Dexter Cousins chats Fintech with David Birch, Author of ‘The Currency Cold War’ and renowned commentator on digital payments and ID.

David is an author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. He leads 15Mb Ltd, is Technology Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (the London-based think tank), a Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey Business School and holds a number of board-level advistory roles.

His recent book ” The currency cold war”  is a fascinating read on the future of digital currency and the power battle for global economic power between the US and China.

As the world enters an unprecedented period of global economic uncertainty we talk digital currencies, digital ID, Bitcoin and central banks. Will Libra win, or will China’s own digital currency be the move that makes China the world’s dominant financial power?

Get set for a fascinating chat.

You can find David on Twitter @dgwbirch and his website http://www.dgwbirch.com/

What happened next.

This episode was published in August 2020, when David’s book The Currency Cold War was new and the talk was of Libra and China’s digital currency.

In August 2023 David came back on the show during a trip to Australia. He described a paper he had written with Victoria Richardson for the Journal of Payments Strategy and Systems, and the book they were writing together on the metaverse and digital identity. He told Dexter the classical fintech era had finished, that we were now in the open data, open finance era, and that tokenised infrastructure would come next, with US dollar stablecoins the most likely money in the metaverse in the short term.

• David Birch defines metaverse (2023), with the full transcript
• All Fintech Chatter episodes