The ban, which Meta has previously warned could lead it to pull Facebook and Instagram out of the European Union, will take effect in mid-October.

As a result, Meta will have to significantly change how it runs its businessunless the EU and U.S. can seal the deal on a controversial new data-sharing agreement that would give it a legal basis for its transfers.

The Irish Data Protection Commission originally didnt want to levy any fine against Metauntil the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which comprises all the EUs privacy regulators, overruled it.

The EDPB found that [Metas] infringement is very serious since it concerns transfers that are systematic, repetitive and continuous, said EDPB Chair Andrea Jelinek. Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the volume of personal data transferred is massive. The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organizations that serious infringements have far-reaching consequences.

We are appealing these decisions and will immediately seek a stay with the courts who can pause the implementation deadlines, given the harm that these orders would cause, including to the millions of people who use Facebook every day, wrote Nick Clegg and Jennifer Newstead, Metas global affairs president and chief legal officer respectively, in a blog post.

Everybodys problem

As what Meta was doing was business as usual for U.S. Big Techserving European users and transferring their data into Stateside data centersthe Irish Data Protection Commissioners heavily-anticipated decision will also send chills down the spines of many other U.S. corporations that have the same fundamental problem: U.S. intelligence agencies have largely free rein to collect the personal data of non-Americans from U.S. servers, and theres nothing those foreigners can do about it.

This is the issue at the heart of an extraordinary chain of events set in motion a decade ago by Max Schrems, a then-student lawyer from Austria who saw the 2013 revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden about U.S. surveillance programs, and challenged Facebooks data transfers to the U.S. on the grounds that the company couldnt guarantee the privacy rights of users from the European Union.

Irelands privacy watchdog initially repelled his complaint, pointing out that the EU had a data-sharing agreement with the U.S., called Safe Harbour, that supposedly made the transfers legal. But Schrems pushed back, and in 2015 the EUs highest courtthe Court of Justicestruck down that agreement because it didnt protect EU users privacy rights. The European Commission then agreed a replacement deal with the U.S., called Privacy Shield, but the Court struck that one down too, in 2020.

The 2020 ruling also fatally undermined Facebooks backup plan for keeping its trans-Atlantic transfers legal: a mechanism called standard contractual clauses, which ultimately had the same problem of failing to protect Europeans data in the U.S. So Meta, as the company renamed itself in 2021, was left without any legal basis for its transferswhich is what led to the decision published Monday.

We are happy to see this decision after ten years of litigation, said Schrems. The fine could have been much higher, given that the maximum fine [under the EUs General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR] is more than 4 billion and Meta has knowingly broken the law to make a profit for 10 years. Unless U.S. surveillance laws get fixed, Meta will have to fundamentally restructure its systems.

Whats the deal

Everything now comes down to that new data-sharing deal between the U.S. and EU, which is called the Data Privacy Framework.

The White House and the European Commission came to a political agreement on the DPF last year, highlighting amendments to U.S. surveillance practices that were outlined in an October executive order by U.S. President Joe Biden. However, while the European Commission has every political motivation to approve the DPF itself, it first asked the European Parliament and the EDPB for their opinionsand the results were not promising.

The Parliaments civil liberties committee said the agreement was too vague and would still allow U.S. agencies to conduct mass surveillance on Europeans personal data. It also said the new Data Protection Review Court, which the U.S. would establish under the deal to give Europeans a way to complain about the surveillance of their data, wouldnt be independent from the White House. The EDPB welcomed the DPFs principles, but also warned that the deal lacked clarity about safeguards.

Its now up to the EUs national governments to approve the deal.

Todays legal uncertainty will continue to persist as long as this new data transfer mechanism has not been formally approved by EU Member States. We call on the 27 EU national governments to approve the Commissions adequacy decision without delay, said Alexandre Roure, public policy director at the tech industry lobbying organization CCIA Europe.

Meta plans to rely on the new deal for transfers going forward, but this is likely not a permanent fix, said Schrems. In my view, the new deal has maybe a 10% chance of not being killed by the [Court of Justice]. Unless U.S. surveillance laws gets fixed, Meta will likely have to keep EU data in the EU.

Case in point: After falling for seven straight months, U.S. home prices as tracked by Case-Shiller rose in February. The March reading, which publishes at the end of May, is expected to notch another increase.

The U.S. housing market is out of the woods, right? Well, not so fast.

See, the housing market is entering into a pivotal stretchand its happening on two fronts.

First, the U.S. housing market will soon exit the peak season for home price growth. As seasonal spring and summer demand pulls back and the market moves into the slower fall and winter months, some vulnerable housing markets might slip right back into correction mode. Other markets could simply see activity levels, along with existing inventory levels, go back into the so-called deep freeze.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate over the past 12 months

Red = 7 handle
Green = 5 handle pic.twitter.com/hXZlI9rCYX

Lance Lambert (@NewsLambert) May 20, 2023

Second, mortgage rates could once again test 7%. Over the past week, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has inched back upclosing last week at a two-month high of 6.90%. If mortgage rates were to stay there for a prolonged period, or even go higher, it could see buyers and sellers alike begin to pull back again just like they did in the second half of 2022.

The short-term outlook for mortgage rates, of course, is complicated by debt ceiling talkswhich are expected to resume on Monday. In the unlikely scenario that the U.S. Treasury were to defaultor even appear like it might defaultfinancial markets could put upward pressure on long-term rates like mortgage rates.

Another big jump in mortgage rates would be a gut punch for many buyers, who were at the brunt of last years mortgage rate shock. Already, national housing affordability (or better putthe lack of affordability) has reached levels not seen since the housing bubble era.

Any major disruption to the economy and debt markets will have major repercussions for the housing market, chilling sales and raising borrowing costs, just when the market was beginning to stabilize and recover from the major cooldown of late 2022, wrote Zillow economist Jeff Tucker in a recent report. In the very unlikely scenario that the U.S. were to default, Zillow says the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate would spike to a peak of 8.4% by September.

While its hard to imagine that a default would actually occur, its easy to see how uncertainty could cause financial markets to push up long-term rates, like mortgage rates, just as the housing market exits its seasonal strong period. 

Want to stay updated on the housing market? Follow me on Twitter at @NewsLambert.

In an exclusive interview with Fortune, founders J.J. Petersen and Alex Friedberg said they already have around 400 Bitcoinworth roughly $10 millioncommitted from investors, with a plan to raise up to 1,000 Bitcoin and launch the fund in July.

Petersen and Friedberg got their start trading the so-called kimchi premium, a strategy that exploited cost differences between the spot price of Bitcoin in South Korea and other markets and was made famous by traders such as Three Arrows Capital and Sam Bankman-Frieds Alameda Research.

There werent many people in 2017 and 2018 who were doing things at large scale, Petersen said. And it put us in a lot of rooms.

In 2019, Petersen and Friedberg launched KRWb, the first stablecoin backed by the Korean won. They also were cofounders of Binance KR, the Korean arm of the crypto exchange giant, which closed in 2020 after eight months of operation due to low trading volume.

Outside of other ventures, Petersen said BXB Capital continues to use its own capital to implement proprietary trading strategies. While many crypto hedge funds focus on arbitrage and market making, or helping facilitate liquidity on exchanges, BXB Capital focuses on pattern recognition.

The new fund represents BXBs first major foray into taking outside capitalPetersen said the limited partners, or investors, are high-profile figures in crypto, but declined to name anyas well as a new operating structure through its foregrounding of Bitcoin.

Many acolytes argue that Bitcoin is a safer asset to hold than fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar. Because Bitcoin has a set limit on how much will ever be mined21 millionit is a deflationary asset, unlike the dollar, whose monetary supply is constantly expanding.

You basically need to earn [more] dollars to outpace inflation, Petersen said. If you earn more Bitcoin, you just own your token, so you increase your total percentage of the circulating supply permanently.

The fund takes a unique approach by having its LPs invest directly with Bitcoin, with all trading strategies and returns also in Bitcoin. Petersen said that many crypto native investors do not want to hold more dollars, so the new fund allows them the opportunity to earn in Bitcoin without having to engage in lending or yield products.

BXB Capital will focus on margin futures trading, meaning it will commit collateral to open larger positions on the future price of Bitcoin. The firm is registered in the British Virgin Islands, which allows it to employ crypto-trading strategies that are restricted in the U.S.

There are very few funds that look at Bitcoin as the asset you want to make more of, Petersen said. People are starting to change their framework and are no longer trying to just acquire more wealth in USD or fiat.