After graduating from Oxford University in 1992, Charles Cohen worked first as a political speechwriter in the House of Commons and then in Public Relations before setting up his first company to provide website content management solutions for large corporations.

In 1998 he developed an idea to create and manage a new digital currency, initially for use on the internet, which he called beenz (as in "been there, done that"). By 2001, beenz.com had raised $90m in venture capital, had offices in 12 countries and there were over five million beenz accounts. beenz.com was sold to Carlson INC mid-2001.

Mr. Cohen is now a non-executive Director of several companies as well as having direct involvement in a number of start-up businesses. He regularly speaks at business and economics conferences on many of the issues raised in this book. In 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London and is also an Associate of the New Economics Foundation.

Charles is married with two children and lives in London.