Tech Brew Ride Home - GDPR To Be Defanged?

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Is the EU about to pull back on tech regulation because they are feeling FOMO about AI? Is the whole initial COIN offering craze about to come back? Is Apple Music falling behind because they don’t have a free tier? And it turns out AI might not be that good at trading crypto. Brussels knifes privacy to feed the AI boom (Politico) Coinbase Launches Platform for Digital Token Offerings (WSJ) TSMC Posts Slowest Growth in 18 Months Amid AI Bubble Debate (Bloomberg) Apple Music Risks Losing the Next Generation of Listeners (Bloomberg) AI models given $10K to compete in first-of-its-kind crypto-trading competition — and most crashed and burned (NYPost) Clem Delangue IHP Episode Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the TechBrew right home for Monday, November 10th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today is the EU about to pull back on tech regulation because they are feeling phomo about AI? Is the whole initial coin offering craze about to come back? Is Apple Music falling behind because they don't have a free tier? And it turns out AI might not be that good at trading crypto. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. When your business evolves, so does the risk of data loss. But with VIM, your data is always on the map. partner with VIM for coverage that keeps you moving and get protection for workloads of all shapes and sizes, even the ones you haven't created yet, so you can stay resilient as you scale. With VIM, it's all good. Get workload coverage that works for your business at VIM.com. That's VEEAM.com. The EU might be tapping the brakes a bit on tech regulation. There are draft documents out there suggesting the European Commission plans to simplify some of its privacy rules,

including GDPR to boost AI growth and slash red tape for businesses in Europe. Quoting Politico, the European Commission will unveil a digital omnibus package later this month to simplify many of its tech laws. The executive has insisted that it is only trimming excess fat through targeted amendments, but draft documents obtained by Politico show that officials are planning far-reaching changes to the general data protection regulation, GDPR, to the benefit of artificial intelligence developers. The proposed overhaul will come as a boon to businesses working with AI as Europe scrambles to stay economically competitive on the world stage. But touching the flagship privacy law, seen as the third rail of EU tech policy, is expected to trigger a massive political and lobbying storm in Brussels.

Is this the end of data protection and privacy as we have signed it into the EU Treaty and Fundamental Rights Charter? said German politician Jan Philip Albrecht, who as a former European Parliament member, was one of the chief archivist. of the GDPR. The Commission should be fully aware that this is undermining European standards dramatically, end quote. Brussels shift on privacy comes as it frets over Europe's waning economic power. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi named-checked the General Data Protection Regulation as holding back European innovation on artificial intelligence in his landmark competitiveness report last year. European privacy regulators have already been spoiling big tech's AI party in recent years. MetaX and LinkedIn have all delayed rollouts of artificial intelligence applications in Europe after

interventions by the Irish Data Protection Commission. Google is facing an inquiry by the same regulator and was previously forced to pause the release of its barred chatbot. Italy's regulator has previously imposed temporary blocks on opening eyes chat GPT and Chinese deep seek over privacy concerns. Those same tech giants are racing ahead in the U.S. without an equivalent blanket privacy law barring them from feeding AI with citizens' data. The General Data Protection Regulations initial drafting in 2012 through 2016 triggered one of the biggest lobbying efforts Brussels has ever seen.

Since taking effect in 2018, the EU has steered clear of amending it, fearing it would reignite the vicious lobbying war. In past months, commission officials have sought to preempt worries that it was overhauling the privacy rulebook. It insisted that its simplification proposals wouldn't touch the underlying principles of the GDPR. Now that draft plans are out, civil society campaigners have begun sounding the old. alarm. The commission is, quote, secretly trying to overrun everyone else in Brussels, said Max Schrems, founder of Austrian Privacy Group, Noeb, and Europe's infamous privacy campaigner who was behind court cases that brought down major data transfer deals with the United States in the past. This disregards every rule on good lawmaking with terrible results, he said.

One line of attack from privacy groups is to poke holes in what they say is a rushed omnibus process. While the GDPR took years to negotiate public consultation on the. the digital omnibus only ended in October. The Commission has not prepared impact assessments to accompany its proposals, as it says the changes are only targeted and technical. The Commission's tunnel vision on the AI race has resulted in a, quote, poorly drafted quick shot in a highly complex and sensitive area, said Shrems. The draft proposal obtained by Politico shows how far the European Commission is willing to go to placate industry on AI. Draft changes would create new exceptions for AI companies that would allow them to legally process special

categories of data like a person's religious or political beliefs, ethnicity or health data to train and operate their tech. The commission is also planning to reframe the definition of such special category data, which are afforded extra protections under the privacy rules. Officials also want to redefine what constitutes as personal data, saying that synonymized data where personal details have been obscured so a person can't be identified might not always be subject to the GDPR's protections, a change that reflects a recent ruling from the EU's top court. Finally, it wants to reform Europe's pesky cookie banner rules by inserting a provision into the GDPR

that would give website and app owners more legal grounds to justify tracking users beyond simply obtaining their consent. The draft proposal could still change before the Commission officially unveils its plans on November 19th. Once presented, the Omnibus package has to pass muster with the EU countries and lawmakers who are already sharply divided on whether to touch privacy protections, end quote. Heads up that the initial coin offering craze might be coming back. Remember the ICO craze of 2017-2018? Yeah, might be coming back because Coinbase plans to launch a platform to let individual investors buy digital tokens before they are listed on its exchange. Quoting the journal, Coinbase will host about one token sale a month on its new platform, which will

use an algorithm to determine how tokens are allocated to investors. Investors will be able to submit purchase requests during a one-week window. Following this period, an algorithm will distribute the tokens aiming for broad and equitable allocation, Coinbase said. Investors must be in good standing, fully registered and compliant with Coinbase to use their platform. Their token purchases will be paid in USD coin, a dollar-pegged stable coin issued by Circle Internet Group. Meanwhile, blockchain projects seeking to offer tokens through the platform will be evaluated based on a set of criteria, including user interest, the founding team's record, as well as token economics and vesting schedules, the company said.

The token sales platform will be accessible to individuals. investors in most global regions at launch with further expansion plan for the future. Blockchain startup Monad will be the first project to offer its token through the platform next week. Coinbase said it intends to list any project that launches a token through its platform. The platform launched marks the first time since 2018 that U.S. retail traders will be able to participate in public token sales, then known as initial coin offerings or ICOs. The ICO craze reached a peak in 2017 and 2018. Startups with no more than a white paper and no established product.

managed to draw in billions of dollars in ICO fundraising. The subsequent collapse in crypto prices, along with the rampant fraud, led to regulatory scrutiny and a drastic decline in token offerings in the following years. Scott Shapiro, head of trading at Coinbase, said the exchange's new platform would provide users with a more professional safer way to buy new tokens. It will feature investor protection mechanisms that discourage quick profit-taking and prevent immediate token dumping by project founders, he said. For example, users who immediately sell tokens will have reduced allocations in subsequent sales, and issuers and their affiliates will be limited from selling any tokens, either privately or on exchanges for six months after the public sale on

Coinbase. In 2017, the market was so young that no one really had a deep crypto resume before launching a token, said Shapiro. Now projects and their teams have more to show than just a white paper, end quote. From the AI bubble concern trolling file, TSM reported October sales up 16.9 percent, but that was the slowest pace of growth since February 2024, highlighting uncertainty over the AI boom's sustainability, quoting Bloomberg. Industry executives remain buoyant about AI-driven growth as major tech firms are accelerating investments in data centers. The TSM revenue gain covers just a single month of business, offering investors less insight. Still, the market is on edge. Investors were jolted last week by a sudden slump in Asia's

technology shares, which raise concerns that the world-beating rally in artificial intelligence and semiconductor stocks may be faltering. Wall Street chief executives have warned of an overdue market correction and Michael Burry's Sion asset management disclosed bearish wagers on Nvidia. That's in spite of massive spending plans from leading AI players, end quote. Studies and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both. World's. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need,

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U-N. must be 21 to enter. When you look at the numbers one way, Apple Music is competitive with Spotify, right? 263 million paying subscribers for Spotify, and 94 million paid subscribers for Apple Music. But on other metrics, Apple Music is way behind. 615 million monthly active users for Spotify versus 110 million mouths for Apple Music. And on a weekly level, 43% of consumers use Spotify, and only 16% turn to Apple. If you look closely at that, basically nobody uses Apple Music that isn't already paying for it. Basically, Apple Music's

growth may be stymied by the lack of a free tier as a sales funnel. Quoting Bloomberg, Apple's narrow focus, while a boon for the music industry may also be dimming its prospects with the next generation of music consumers, namely people who can't afford a pricey streaming subscription, particularly in developing markets. Medea Research pointed this out in a March report assessing 2024 subscriber growth across the industry. While Apple maintained its position as the third most popular streaming service by subscriber market share, Medea classified the platform's performance over the past year as underwhelming during the period Apple and Amazon on music had combined only added 6 million subscribers. By comparison, Spotify had added 27 million

paying subscribers, a figure that didn't even account for people using the Swedish company's free tier, which Medea didn't incorporate into the report. Overall, Medea estimated that by the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, Apple Music had 94.9 million subscribers compared to Spotify's 263 million. Tatiana Cristiano, VP of Music Strategy at Medea, primarily attributes this wide gap to Apple's lack of a free tier. While eschewing free music might yield Apple a public relations win with songwriters and the like, she told me in an interview, the flip side is you lack this funnel to adoption, and it's also a lot harder to grow in markets outside North America and the UK, where Apple music is the strongest. Because of the services close association with Apple hardware,

she added potential customers who own other brands of devices might never be enticed to sign up. Meanwhile, a post on LinkedIn about this trend recently caught my attention. Not long ago, Apple was positioned as Spotify's main challenger. Lior Tibone, chief executive officer at Duetti, a music catalog acquisition company wrote in September. Today, Apple remains powerful in the U.S. and among certain demographics, but YouTube is scaling faster in the markets and formats that drive growth this decade. That's true for streams and crucially for revenues flowing back to artists and rights holders. One executive I spoke with who asked not to be named, criticizing a key partner, doubted that Apple's particular product focuses are connecting with general consumers.

High-fidelity audio, which Apple Music promotes and rewards, hasn't seemed to drum up much enthusiasm from consumers. Also, Amazon Music already offers it, and Spotify recently launched its own version. This executive who oversees music that appeals to a young global audience across genres tells me that YouTube has consistently outperformed Apple Music by over 20% on a revenue basis. Apple's competitive challenges will be complicated by several other significant threats currently percolating in the industry. In the months ahead, artificial intelligence stands to not only disrupt the music creation process, flooding services with AI tracks, but also potentially shifting how and where people listen to music. Last week, when the AI music generator UDio

settled its lawsuit with Universal Music Group, the two entities announced plans to launch a walled-off version of the UDio app that'll allow fans to remix music from UMG artists. While the new version has yet to debut, it's possible that this kind of model could eventually become a new more popular way to interact with music. Already, Spotify is surfacing in chat chiby-tree results, an effort by the company to be ubiquitous, even in third-party destinations at a time when people are increasingly turning to chatbots, not platform playlists, for recommendations. By contrast, a big part of Apple Music's pitch remains its continued reliance on human curation. During the first half of this year, revenue in the U.S. recorded music business grew by

less than a percent, according to the RIAA. The competition to find more people. paying subscribers and revive significant growth in the music business is heating up, particularly in the U.S. If Apple Music doesn't get more aggressive at finding and signing up people in this new area of rapidly changing music discovery, what will spur its future growth, end quote. Finally today, let me tell you about the Alpha Arena experiment. Folks gave six frontier AI models $10,000 each to trade crypto derivatives over two weeks. It did not go well. quoting the New York Post. Four of the most popular AI programs crashed and burned in a cryptocurrency investing competition

with most losing over 50% of the money they were instructed to maximize. Only two Chinese programs managed to turn even a modest profit. The experimental Alpha Arena contest from company N of One gave six AI models $10,000, identical input data and prompted each to make as much money as possible while trading crypto stocks on the open market from October 17th till November 3rd. The goal, find which bot could best make you rich. AI programs GROC from XAI, Anthropics Claw to Sonnet, Google's Gemini, OpenAIs, chat GPT, and Chinese-owned bots, Deep Seek and Quinn got the five-digit endowments

and were directed to make all other decisions, including whether to bet long or short their choice of cryptocoins. The bots were able to invest in blockchain cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Doge, B&B, and Solana, with all trades recorded and shared publicly on the competition's website, which charts the financial positions of each program second by second. The results showed a shocking ineptitude. ChatGPT, the most popular bot, according to stat counter, ended with just $3,794, down 63%. Next worst was Gemini, down 56% with only $4,485 left, despite making the most trades, 272. Elon Musk's Grock and Anthropics Claude Sonnet had middling results and were occasionally profitable

during the 17-day trial, but Grok ended down 45% with $5,226, while Claude Sonnet pocketed $6,740 down 30%. Chinese model Deepseek saw profits sink in the final days of training, but ended up in the black with $10,476 for a modest 4% return. It was at 100% around October 26th. Quinn from Chinese company, Alibaba, was the most volatile, operating at a loss from its initial investment for the first three days, and then successfully dumping in all but $90 of its remaining bankroll into a long position on Bitcoin.

It won the competition with 20% growth and $12,287. It's hard to say how much we can take away from this, researchers said. One thing that we do know is that there are patterns in the models and they're clearly biases and have preferences. For example, Claude almost always goes long and refuses to go short. It's like an eternal optimist, whereas Gemini is happy to short, the researcher said. They clearly have these inductive biases when it comes to trading. Alpha Arena plans a next round that will add more AI models and also task the programs with trading equities along with crypto, end quote. BT Dubs, the final link in the show notes today is to an internet history podcast episode with Clement DeLong, the founder and CEO of Hugging Face.

Want to hear the Hugging Face founding story, how they became central to the whole AI moment. want to hear about what they think of the possibility of an AI bubble. Give this episode a go. Click the link or subscribe to the Internet History Podcast right now in your podcast app because we have some great episodes coming for the next six months at least. Talk to you tomorrow. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building.

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