spring of 1993, simultaneously with other applicant countries. in the finnish referendum of october 1994, the eu membership was approved with 57 percent against 43, i. e. with a large majority. on the 1st of january 1995, our membership entered into force – and you could say that we were again united with britain in the same club. britain has traditionally been a supporter of a wider europe, and also we finns enjoyed the support from the uk during our accession process. as members, we both have been strong supporters of free trade and the single market. * * * finland and the uk were first together in efta. then the uk moved on and joined the eec. our reunion in the eu took place in 1995, 22 years later, in 1995, when finland joined. now, in 2017, we have been members together for another 22 years. the general assessment of the membership in finland is overwhelmingly positive. i just quote two respected statesmen and thinkers from finland. max jakobson, the great finnish diplomat and historian told his daughter linda two years after finland had joined the european union : " listen, only during last few days i have understood that finland is, for the first time in her history, fully independent " mauno koivisto, our late president, said at his 90th birthday dinner : " i belong to the generation which fought for independence. then we worked for integration in order to gain more influence. the pessimists were wrong. " 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches from 1990 onward, i followed and participated in the events as the finnish ambassador to the ec. the autumn of 1991 was a decisive period. sweden had followed austria and applied for the ec membership. the soviet union was falling apart. in the uk, john major was the new prime minister after margaret thatcher, defending british interests in the negotiations leading to the maastricht treaty. i had great colleagues in the british foreign office. john kerr was the permanent representative then. let me mention, that as eu commissioner from 1995 i had of course the good fortune to cooperate with outstanding individuals from the uk : leon brittan, neil kinnock, and chris patten. i have very fond memories of cooperation with them. there have also been differences between our countries ’ choices and policies within the eu. most importantly, finland became an early member of the economic and monetary union in 1999, while the uk remained outside the euro. britain has of course stayed outside the schengen area

##ography have enabled the issuance of private crypto - currency. in particular, bitcoin and its underlying enabling technology, the blockchain protocol, has created the capability to exchange value on a peer - to - peer basis. in the words of thomas carper, a us senator, ‘ virtual currencies, perhaps most notably bitcoin, have captured the imagination of some, struck fear among others, and confused the heck out of the rest of us ’. according to the website coinmarketcap. com2, the total market capitalisation of more than 800 different virtual currencies is about us $ 146 billion, of which bitcoin makes up approximately 47 %, followed by etherium, ripple, and litecoin3. this is still significantly lower than the current value of all money ( approximately us $ 84 trillion ) or physical money ( approximately us $ 31 trillion ). although much lower in value, virtual currencies are emerging as a new form of money and / or a new ‘ store of value ’ that is ‘ held ’ within a network of computers. the underlying technology, such as the distributed ledger technology ( dlt ), although immature and still needing to be fully proven, could serve as a means to possibly reshaping financial services. potential applications include general banking activities, trade finance, insurance, and payments. however, virtual currency is not without controversy. according to a paper issued by the financial action task force on money laundering ( fatf ) in 20144, one of the challenges facing regulators, the private sector, government as well as law enforcement agencies is the lack of a common understanding of virtual currencies, including how virtual currencies operate, the potential risks associated with them, and the vocabulary used to talk about them. https : / / coinmarketcap. com / charts / www. coinbase. com http : / / www. fatf - gafi. org / media / fatf / documents / reports / virtual - currency - key - definitions - and - potential - aml - cftrisks. pdf page 4 of 11 payments the second set of innovations that affects financial services is the transfer of value undertaken through the effecting of payments. due to its nature, the payment environment lends itself to being a ‘ natural testing environment ’ to allow for developmental innovations such as fintech. attention has been drawn to innovations such as samsungpay or applepay, which have created the ability of