Barry James

For three decades Barry has been a leading, independent, tech innovator, architect and entrepreneur. Leading innovation first in the UK National Health Service and later in Fintech, Blockchain and Frontier technologies – including Fintech regulation. Winning major UK, US and European patents along the way.

From this (and an earlier systems design career in the banking and telecoms sectors) he’s long been an independent voice as a writer, ecological and systems thinker and analyst,

Recently mostly focussed on Web 3.0/Metaverse, Decentralisation and DeFi, the global societal implications of the design and advent of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and the impact of financialised framing and biases on society and planetary ecology via the Humane Economics project.

An early champion of Crowdfunding he envisioned and was first to propose and then advocate a Fintech ‘Innovation Unit’ (and innovations remit) within the UK financial regulator (FSA/FCA from August 2012) and successfully campaigned for its subsequent creation.

For this he co-creating the Crowdfunding:Deep Impact conference, The Westminster Crowdfunding Forum and the All-Party-Parliamentary group which it spawned. The resulting FCA Fintech Innovation Unit has since been copied around the world.

He is Founder & Chair of the British Blockchain & Frontier Tech Assoc Founder The Humane Economics Network and a Visiting Fellow at Portsmouth University Business School.