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In January, Facebook became the first social media company to ban ads for cryptocurrencies and ICOs.

The company created a new policy “that prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency.”

Facebook lists the follow four examples of ads that will no longer be allowed:

Shortly after, every other social media company or ad-carrying entity signaled their virtue by following Facebook’s lead. However, at the time we questioned why… wondering aloud if Zuckerberg had in mind his own Facebook-coin…

Earlier in the week, Facebook announced a major shakeup in management, creating a new area of responsibility focused on blockchain. As CoinTelegraph reported,  David Marcus, the head of Facebook’s messaging app Messenger, announced that the social media site is exploring possible applications for blockchain technology, CNBC reported May 8.

“I’m setting up a small group to explore how to best leverage blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch,” Marcus shared in a post Tuesday afternoon on his personal page.

Marcus has been leading Messenger for almost four years. In December, he joinedcryptocurrency exchange Coinbase as a board member. Facebook, however, hasn’t revealed how interested it is in applying blockchain.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

Which brings us to today, and a report from Alex Heath at Cheddar  that Facebook is exploring the creation of its own cryptocurrency, a virtual token that would allow its billions of users around the world to make electronic payments, people familiar with Facebook’s plans told Cheddar.

“They are very serious about it,” said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing unannounced plans.

Facebook started studying blockchain almost a year ago, when a member of its corporate development team, Morgan Beller, began looking at how the social platform could use the emerging technology.

During an interview at a conference in February, Marcus said Facebook didn’t have plans to integrate cryptocurrency into its apps anytime soon.

“Payments using crypto right now is just very expensive, super slow, so the various communities running the different blockchains and the different assets need to fix all the issues, and then when we get there someday, maybe we’ll do something,” Marcus said.

All of which would explain why Zuckerberg wanted the rest of the cryptocurrencies off his site. It’s perhaps going to be a little tricky to explain why his cryptocurrency is not the terrible financial weapon of mass deception that led to the ad ban.

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It appers that 1275bps of rate-hikes, hopes for an IMF bailout, and promises-promises from government are not enough to halt the capital flight from Argentina as the Peso just crashed back to a new record low over 23 per USD.

With 7-day repo-rtates at 40.00%, still the currency is collapsing…

Ironically, BNP Paribas says the Peso is too risky to even short, even taking into account the carry return…

“…we prudently decided to close our tactical short 1m NDF USDARS at 23.75,” strategists led by Gabriel Gersztein write in a report,

“If anything, this is not the time to be structurally positioned in ARS assets, in our view”

But JPMorgan is even more concerned, warning that the peso may face “disorder” next week if the nation’s central bank struggles to roll over about $30 billion of short-term notes set to expire.

As Bloomberg reports, the central bank is scheduled to auction notes known as Lebacs on Tuesday, in order to roll over about 674 billion pesos ($30 billion) of securities that mature on Wednesday. The yield on Lebacs due June jumped to 43.6 percent in the secondary market today, forcing the central bank to intervene in secondary markets.

“A failure in rolling over the maturing Lebac stock would lead to a disorder bid on the dollar and renovated capital outflow,” JPMorgan analysts Diego Pereira and Lucila Barbeito wrote in a note.

“The recent measures by the central bank, together with Lebac rates above 40 percent suggest the authority would be able to roll a significant share of the stock.”

Yields on ARGENT bonds are spiking with the century bond prices tumbling.

“Funds are liquidating their positions to cover withdrawals and pressuring the rate,” said CMF Bank Chief Financial Officer Juan Jose Ciro.

“The local situation is still ugly: the spot exchange rate won’t budge and the rate is firm. We are seeing the tail-end of the crisis, when it starts to hit retail investor.”

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Twitter is banning conservatives and others who don’t subscribe to the leftist mentality plaguing social media.  Using the excuse that people are posting “hate facts,” the social media outlet is just shutting down accounts that post any truth that doesn’t fare well for the liberal agenda.

By now, it should be well understood that the terms “hate facts” and “hate speech” are nothing more than buzzwords used by the left as an excuse to suppress the speech of those with which they disagree.  This is becoming more and more apparent as we devolve quickly toward a fully totalitarian system too.

Breitbart reported that the most high-profile individual to be banned on this basis was Islam critic Tommy Robinson, who received a permanent ban from Twitter after he posted statistics showing that Muslims are vastly overrepresented in child grooming gangs in the U.K. Robinson is now taking Twitter to court to prove that “facts are now treated as hate.”

The censorship of British accounts, including those of the Britain First team, is tied to increasing pressure from European governments for social media platforms to censor their users. Robinson claims that 10,000 Twitter accounts have been closed at the request of the U.K. government over alleged “hate.”

Facebook has banned the conservative political group Britain First for breaking its rules that prohibit “hate speech” on the social media platform.  Facebook said they had “repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups.”

Britain First described itself as “a patriotic resistance and ‘frontline’ for our long-suffering people” that will “restore Christianity as the bedrock” of national life and put British workers first. –SHTFPlan

There are now concerns that the accounts of American users are also being shut down at the request of European governments. Nick Monroe, an independent journalist based in America, says he was banned from the platform after he began an investigation of Tell MAMA, an “anti-Islamophobia” organization based in the United Kingdom. Monroe’s account was eventually restored without explanation only after he publicized his story, and Breitbart contacted Twitter for comments. 

Even when European politics aren’t involved, Twitter still punishes conservatives for making factual claims. Conservative twitter user Mark Samenfink had his account locked after claiming that black-on-black homicide was more common than other types of homicide and implying that Islamic terror attacks were more common than non-Islamic terror attacks.  But these facts fly in the fact of the globalist and liberal agenda of complete government control over everyone, so Twitter is doing it’s part to suppress factual information, just like Google, and Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

Twitter also refuses to address attempts by left-wingers to scam its reporting system. Pro-Israel account Ozraeli Dave was hit with a temporary suspension over a tweet in which he called out an anti-semitic tweet from another user. Facebook has used this tactic as well, suspending a conservative comedian for posting violent hate messages he’s received from liberals.

Williams stated that despite multiple reports drawing Facebook’s attention to the screenshots and the abuse he keeps receiving, Facebook failed to act. “Facebook said that they reviewed the screenshots and said that none of the threats violated Facebook’s guidelines,” said Williams. –SHTFPlan

In January, Twitter employees were caught on camera boasting about discriminating against pro-Trump, conservative accounts. One employee discussed shadowbanning political accounts, a practice that Twitter has continually denied using, while another claimed that accounts that expressed an interest in “god, guns, and America” were likely to be flagged as “bots.” Another employee, Mo Norai, explained that Twitter moderators regularly discriminated against accounts deemed to be pro-Trump.

“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.” –Potter Stewart

“The things that are going to be blocked are not going to be fake stories. The things that are going to be blocked and censored, the things they are going to keep from people is going to be stuff they just don’t want you to focus on or know about.” – Melissa Dykes

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Following the overnight report that AT&T had paid Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen $600,000 for “insight” on the company’s Time Warner merger, moments ago AT&T’s top Washington executive and policy chief, and the man who authorized the Cohen payment Robert Quinn, was forced out of the company, and is “retiring” after what AT&T called a reputation-damaging and mistaken hiring of Mike Cohen.

The company told employees in an internal memo Friday that Bob Quinn was retiring, but as the WSJ reported, a person familiar with the matter said Mr. Quinn was being forced to leave.

“Our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged,” CEO Randall Stephenson said in a memo to employees. “There is no other way to say it – AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.”

It was not immediately clear why the hiring of Cohen was a big mistake, although the logical answer is that despite the attempt to “bribe” its way into a done deal with Time Warner, all AT&T got for its $600,000 was several close encounters with Robert Mueller and a lawsuit with the DOJ which has pushed the AT&T-Time Warner deal on the verge of collapse.

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After slipping in April, May’s preliminary University of Michigan sentiment survey was flat at 98.8 (as hope rose and current conditions slipped).

• Current Conditions dropped from 114.9 to 113.3

• Expectations ‘hope’ rose from 88.4 to 89.5.

The headline index was unchanged…

What is likely to capture attention, however, are the small uptick in near term inflation expectations, the downward slippage in income expectations, and the expected stabilization of the national unemployment rate at decade lows.

Confidence in a rising stock market dropped to its lowest since April 2017…

The data will “provide some additional points for both sides in the debate about the timing and number of future interest-rate hikes,” Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan consumer survey, said in a statement.

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Symantec collapsed 36% at the open this morning in its biggest single-day drop ever.

During the earnings call last night, the company projected revenue and profit in the current quarter that will fall short of analyst predictions, but most critically, as Bloomberg reports, Symantec also said the audit committee of its board is investigating “concerns raised by a former employee,” and the company’s financial results and guidance could change as a result.

Symantec said it had alerted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and that as a result of the investigation it would delay the filing of its annual report for the fiscal year ended March 30.

“While this may all amount to nothing, this is undoubtedly a serious matter, and it could be a while before transparency and investor confidence improves,” Cowen & Co analysts said in a report to clients.

The broker also noted it was “shocking” that Symantec had scrapped the question-and-answer portion of its conference call with analysts following its quarterly earnings report on Thursday.

“The internal probe … could result in a restatement of financials but worse case, there is also the risk of leadership fall-out and/or customer hesitation if there are credibility concerns,” Deutsche Bank analysts said.

This is bigger than the June 2001 collapse in Symantec’s share price…

Ironically, SYMC closed bullishly above its 200DMA yesterday before earnings.

This move has wiped over $6 billion in market from the company’s valuation.

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One of the catalysts cited for the recent breakout in the S&P was the corresponding breakdown in the VIX, which as we noted on Wednesday breached the triangle formation in which it had been trapped since February, sliding to the downside and erasing the elevated levels seen in the post Feb 5 panic.

However, while the VIX has tumbled, the realized vol in the market continues to be surprisingly high. That’s the take of Goldman’s derivatives strategist Rocky Fishman, who writes today that “the VIX closed yesterday at its lowest level since January”, a level which as he shows in the chart below, is “too low given how much the SPX is moving.“

Of course, since a lower VIX means lower S&P option prices, as Fishman further clarifies, a mismatch has emerged “between how little SPX options cost (June straddle with over five weeks to maturity costs 3%) and how much the SPX has been moving (3.5% rally over the past five trading days).”

This relationship is shown by the highlighted dot in the chart below, which also shows that the price of the 1M S&P straddle is now at a record low compared to where it should be based on historical trading patterns.

Or, said in simple English, the VIX has tumbled in the 13s, economic data are consistent with a VIX over 15, and its normal relationship with realized volatility would put it above 18.

This also means that the infamous vol sellers – the same ones who got destroyed on Feb 5 when the XIV imploded – are baaaaack. And, with the VIX again plunging – undeservedly so according to Goldman – the unpleasant outcome for the vol sellers is just a matter of time.

So, to underscore just how “highly unusual” the present level of the VIX is, especially in connection with realized vol, Goldman makes the following point:

Implied/realized vol risk premium is stretched to historical lows. Two metrics we monitor to assess the level of implied volatility are pointing toward a VIX that is far too low: its level relative to SPX realized volatility and its relationship with economic indicators. A regression between the VIX and its best-fitting exponentially-weighted SPX realized volatility (we see a 13-day half-life as the best match for the VIX) indicates that the VIX should be around 18.7, and that we have had one of the most persistently low implied/realized ratios on record.

As Fishman puts it visually, “2018’s median negative implied-realized ratio is historically highly unusual”

Some other reasons why Goldman is urging its clients to sell vol:

• Economic data are consistent with higher implied vol than we saw in 2017: weakening economic data are consistent with a baseline VIX level around 15.
• Implied/realized volatility ratios are low globally, but the US is the most stretched. Most major global equity indices have implied volatility below exponentially-weighted realized volatility.
  

So for those who agree with Goldman and believe that the vol-sellers who have fone full tilt, are in for a surprise and the VIX is set to spike, here is how to trade it and make a 6-12x return on your investment:

June VIX call spreads can provide 6-12x multiples should the VIX return to the 20’s. Given conditions supportive of higher implied vol, another SPX selloff could bring the VIX back into the 20’s. VIX call spreads provide more reasonably-priced protection against a further pickup in vol than they did in the immediate aftermath of February’s VIX spike. With risk from the VIX ETP complex much-diminished, positioning for unlimited VIX upside is less relevant.

The flipside to all of the above, of course, is that if Goldman is pitching buying Vol, then its prop traders are selling it, which all else equal, would suggest further downside, unless of course all the good Goldman traders have quit in disgust now that the once proud Goldman is actually selling subprime loans as it struggles to push up revenues and keep up with its peers. Our suggestion: wait until Gartman goes short the VIX before going all in.

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