DAVID G. W. BIRCH

David is known for his dynamic, engaging, and insightful presentations that blend humor, deep expertise, and forward-thinking perspectives. He has delivered keynote speeches and participated in high-profile panels at major conferences, including Money20/20, the World Economic Forum, and the European Central Bank’s FinTech conferences.

The Future of Money: How digital currencies and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are reshaping the global economy

This talk, and David’s book – Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin, is about the future of money. More specifically, it centres on the idea that technology might be taking money back to its past, back to a more local and diverse version of money than we are used to.

It explores the interplay between the technological evolutionary tree of money and its social context, and brings in ideas from the social sciences in conjunction with technology forecasting to create an informed view of where technology is taking money. Given that this direction of travel is broadly towards decentralization, distribution and an overall lessening of state power, it is possible to bring input from disciplines including social anthropology and the study of ‘palaeo- futures’ (that is, what people used to think about the future) to make an informed and, I hope, surprising prediction about the future of money. This is that we will return to the multiple, overlapping community monies of the past but that they will be smart monies, monies with values, monies that know about us.

Metamoney: Virtual Worlds, Web3, Digital Identity and The Future Of Financial Services

This presentation suggests that the metaverse, quite simply, is virtual worlds plus digital assets plus digital identity. As customers move into metaverses, so will financial services because where there are digital assets that can be traded, there is an economy and where there is an economy there is a need for financial services. What’s more, the core functions of banking and insurance are already present in the proto-metaverses building on “web3” technologies.

Really Smart Wallets: The Next Frontier Of The Global Economy

In a relatively short time it seems that the metaverse has gone from being a topic of speculation too and a sensual component of financial services organisation strategy.

Yet there is a lot of confusion about what a metaverse actually is and how it might work. This presentation explains just why there is so much excitement about the metaverse, presents a model of the metaverse that can be used to facilitate communications between business and technology, highlights the key areas where value adding can take place and points towards the wallets as the central organising principle for consumers.

Innovation In Digital Finance: AI? Blockchain? Embedded? Where Should Strategists Focus?

The Payments Innovation Jury, which is made up of 79 payments industry experts in 30 different markets worldwide (full disclosure: David is one of them), conducts an annual members’ survey that serves as a rather useful barometer of sector sentiment around innovation. The results of the tenth survey (2022) have been published in a report entitled “Payments Innovation: Myths and Realities” and they make for some rather interesting reading.

Given that the jurors include regulators and investors as well as leaders from national payments companies, banks, fintechs and policy makers who provide anonymous input, David expected to see a wide range of issues covered and a number of potential innovation areas, but even he was surprised at the spectrum of trends. There are three areas where innovation can be accelerated that really stood out and David explores each of them in this brand new presentation.

Data, Payments, Identity: The Digital Infrastructure That Every Country Needs

It is obvious that data is becoming an important element of a modern economy, but how exactly does that data economy work and how should regulators look to develop that segment of the economy to the benefit of all stakeholders.

The starting point for these discussions is often the well known meme “data is the new oil”. This is wrong and misleading: data doesn’t get used up, the use of data creates more data and the value created depends on the movement of data. This presentation explores aspects of the data economy to develop a three point manifesto for legislators, regulators and financial services organisations to support.

Central Bank Digital Currency

Many commentators confuse crypto currency, digital assets and digital currency which means they do not have the right context to discuss the specific field of central bank digital currency. In this talk, David sets out a clear and practical model for digital assets, shows how digital currencies fit within this model and uses the model to explore the characteristics of the proposed central bank digital currency ideas.

This presentation, and his latest book – The Currency Cold War, will ask and answer a series of key questions for delegates: What is central bank digital currency, why are central banks and others looking at it right now, how could it work at population scale, where is it being used (and what can we learn from the early experiments, who wants it and when are they likely to get it.