Lionel Laurent

Surveys show French are gloomy about national prospects but satisfied with their own lot in life

Robot clicks for robot tracks are a growing problem for streaming services.

But it will take more than Macron to build a true continental alternative to the City.

Welcome to the weekend issue of Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union. With the financial industry gravitating toward Paris since Brexit took effect, this weekend we showcase top business and finance stories from France.

UK lawmakers want to lump Bitcoin in with casinos — a move that sounds good on paper but needs a lot of work.

Scanning humanity’s eyeballs in exchange for cryptocurrency and assigning the encoded results to a blockchain is the kind of dystopian idea that might have stoked a speculative boom during the pandemic, before eventually crashing to earth and leaving a trail of angry investors behind. But with interest in artificial intelligence reaching fever pitch, this risky solution to proving personhood in the digital world is gaining new impetus.

Drake’s record label makes peace with machine-made music, but the streaming wars are far from over.

What kind of music will Spotify’s suggestion algorithms serve its millions of subscribers on a rainy Sunday afternoon: A Lana del Rey ballad, or machine-generated ambient noise? Well, eventually, maybe a combination of the two.

Workspaces want a “wow” factor to stand out from the post-Covid crowd. That may not be enough.

Encoding iris scans on the blockchain shows a need to curb Silicon Valley’s savior complex.