The EU's technology strategy seems to have made a choice. Instead of supporting domestic technological innovation, it has focused its main efforts on fining American tech giants. Google alone has become a regular expense for EU fines—recent penalties alone amount to $10.5 billion. Behind this is a harsh reality: regulation itself has become a business model. What does this mean for the global tech ecosystem? The implications for the crypto industry are even deeper—when regulation becomes a political bargaining chip rather than a governance tool, the cost of innovation is infinitely increased.