These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

This week, tech.eu tracked 9 technology M&A transactions and 54 tech funding deals totalling about €393 million in Europe, Turkey and Israel.

Like every week, we listed every single one of them in our free weekly newsletter, along with interesting news regarding fledgling European startups, tech investors old and new, a number of good reads published elsewhere, government and policy news, as well as an overview of interesting lists, facts and figures from a wide variety of sources.

You can subscribe to our newsletter below to receive all this information in your inbox every Friday afternoon for free, but here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:

1) Spotify has cleared what ought to be the last major hurdle before it goes public: It has renewed a licensing deal with Warner Music Group. That means that Spotify now has deals in place with all three of the major music labels.

2) Estonia could offer ‘estcoins’ to e-residents; the proposal to issue crypto tokens would make the Republic of Estonia the first country with an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

3) Prodigy Finance, a UK fintech company that provides loans to students, has raised $240 million in debt and equity funding.

4) Hate crimes committed on social media will be treated as seriously as similar street-based offences, according to new guidelines issued by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service as they launch a crackdown on hate speech online.

5) Swedish computer game developer THQ Nordic has bought the German game studio Black Forest Games, in a deal worth up to €1.36 million.

6) The UK government is seeking to negotiate a deal over data sharing with Europe in which there are no substantial regulatory changes as a result of Brexit.

7) Irish IoT connectivity platform Cubic Telecom has just closed a $47 million Series C round. The new funding comes from existing investors Qualcomm and Audi Electronics Venture, and new investors Valid Soluciones Tecnologicas and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF). The startup has raised $88 million to date.

8) Two founders of The Pirate Bay have been ordered by a court in Finland to pay record labels more than $477,000 in compensation.

9) Finnish startup ICEYE, which develops synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) sensors and microsatellites to collect earth observation data, has raised $13 million. The funding round was led by Draper Nexus, with participation from True Ventures, Draper Associates, Lifeline Ventures, Space Angels and Finnish Funding Agency for Innovations, Tekes.

10) The​ ​Berlin-based mobile bank N26​ ​has just​ ​reached​ ​the​ ​500.000​ ​customers​ ​mark.​ ​In​ ​the​ ​last​ ​5 months​ ​alone,​ ​200.000​ ​customers​ ​have​ ​chosen​ ​to​ ​make​ ​N26​ ​their​ ​bank.​

Bonus link: In our latest report, On the Rise: An Analysis of 1000+ European Scale-Ups, we’re focusing on major funding trends among European companies that are poised for rapid growth. In the report – which you can download below free of charge – we take an in-depth look at funding and exit trends for Europe, Israel and Turkey from Q1 2016 to Q2 2017.