David Birch is the author of Identity is the New Money; Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money that We Understand to Money that Understands Us; and The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony.

We talked about:

• what the “Currency Cold War” is and how we got here;

• the wholesale, retail and machine use cases for CBDCs and the benefits for the average user;

• privacy concerns and banking the unbanked;

• how more people can be involved in the conversation and whether this is a once-in-a-generation payments shift;

• where we’re at right now developing a CBDC in the UK and the timeline compared to other countries;

• bitcoin and other cryptos – are these more than speculative assets?;

• how stablecoins can be regulated;

• the biggest challenges with digital identity; and

• payments in the Metaverse.

A transcript for this podcast is available here.