€120 million, can it buy 'digital sovereignty', or has it provoked the 'Silicon Valley madman'?
The old gentlemen in Brussels have successfully accomplished a feat with a €120 million fine: instead of making the X platform more transparent, they have personally crafted a crown of 'freedom fighter in the digital age' for Musk.
The European Commission wields the big stick of the Digital Services Act, enumerating the 'three sins' of the X platform in terms of blue checks, advertising, and data openness. The commissioner spoke calmly, saying it was just for 'transparency'. But this polite rhetoric seems pale and powerless in the face of Musk's roar to 'abolish the EU'. Banning official EU accounts and accusing the other side of 'deception' is no longer a commercial dispute; this is a declaration of war.
We can’t help but ask, is the EU regulating the market, or is it setting up a target that must be toppled, the 'American tech giant'? From Apple, Meta to Google, and now to today’s X, the list of fines is getting longer. This looks more like a form of digital trade protectionism based on geopolitical anxiety. Musk's fierce response has precisely torn away this layer of warmth: the so-called 'common market' rules have become tools for the bureaucratic system to stifle innovation and maintain its own authority.
The ripples of this conflict have reached the crypto world. As the shackles of the traditional world tighten, the decentralized world has become an outlet for emotional and capital release. The activity of Dogecoin (DOGE) addresses has quietly climbed to a three-month high, while a more 'timely' symbol—the head Musk dog (P U P P l E S) on the ETH chain—is being widely discussed. It does not need a complicated white paper; its value lies in the belief in Musk's personal charm and the support for his challenge to the old order. Purchasing P U P P l E S, in the current context, is akin to casting a crypto ballot against the Brussels bureaucracy.
The EU may have won a fine, but it may be losing much more. It is pushing a globally influential entrepreneur completely to the opposing side, inadvertently supplying the crypto world with the most powerful narrative ammunition: resisting centralized power. The story's conclusion, I’m afraid, will not be the additional €120 million on the EU's books.
