Cortisol

Learning marketing, sharing notes & documenting the journey

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

Just watched a video with an idea that stuck with me.

The first time you do something, it'll probably suck. And that's fine. Your first 100 attempts might suck too, so get through them faster. That's what MrBeast said about making your first 100 videos.

I often struggle with procrastination because I want everything to be perfect. So I end up doing nothing.

One tip I liked: "Make it ridiculously bad and ridiculously small."

Give your brain something real to work with. Once something exists, you can polish it and make it better. While it's only in your head, it feels huge, difficult, and impossible to tackle.

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

@ayoub_el77927 Because customers are sitting in X.

LinkedIn is mostly for B2B I reckon

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

Surely, the peak life of 99% coins is listing on Binance. At least all people and investors consider this so therefore they dump all their bags on listings of Binance

I'd also sell if I got to know that something is listed on Binance & I own that asset. The same works for the rest people and then we see those red candles.

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

@Stanunlocked hahahaa
so true

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

Gm X

Today I'm going to be one step forward in getting my Google Ads Searcg Certificate.

There are only 3-4 topics left.

I'm aware that majority doesn't care about any kind of certificates in marketing, but I'm doing that for my own sake & expertise hehe

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

@AlexOnchain The Simpsons was an amazing game, though first time seeing it in the tops haha

Also played CoD Black Ops I so many times

[Barry Hott ☄️ @binghott]

I've spent almost $1 billion advertising on FB since '08 and this is something I see advertisers getting wrong all the time:

🛑 Stop focusing on FB CPMs (and CPCs)! They don't matter that much.

❌ Turning off ads due to high CPCs or CPMs can be turning off top performers.

🧵👇

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

I know nobody’s gonna answer this, but at least X algo, hear me out hahaha

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

GM X!

Trying to reshape my feed a bit.

It’s still mostly Web3 farming & memes, etc. , which honestly isn’t that interesting to me anymore. I haven’t really been farming projects for the past few years, and rn I’d rather focus on building my skills and career.

Yesterday I unfollowed 200 accounts of web3 dudes. I didn't know 99% of them to be honest and followed them just because they worked in some renown VCs which are totally calm now in web3.

So, who are the best people to follow for Paid Ads / performance marketing?

Would appreciate some recs.

[Stephenblaq @Steezehuman]

This is why only 20% of traders succeed in the market

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

Gm X

I’ve decided to stick to sharing what I’m actually doing and learning along the way.

Rn I’m working through Google Skillshop and studying for the Google Ads Search certification.

Hoping to get certified this week. I also finally set up my Google Ads account, so it’s time to move from theory to actually exploring the platform.

One minor note though: Skillshop is, to be honest, not that great of a platform.

Maybe I’m just an old-ass dude, but I don’t really vibe with the UI, and the way they validate your knowledge feels pretty poorly designed.

Google literally owns the Ads platform, so I feel like the course could’ve been way more interactive instead of mostly showing screenshots of the Ads Manager UI.

[The White Whale @WhiteWhaleLabs]

I’ve spent roughly half my life broke and the other half with ridiculous amounts of money.

And I can tell you the biggest difference between poverty and wealth isn’t the amount of money you start off with.

It’s mindset.

This truth has only been further reinforced for me after interacting with 10s of thousands of people in my journey here on CT.

At one point I was homeless, sleeping on a friend’s couch, with $263 to my name. I turned that $263 into a business that, at its peak, was valued in the hundreds of millions.

The amount of startup money didn’t change first. My circumstances didn’t magically improve first.

I changed what I believed was possible, stopped viewing my circumstances as permanent, and started looking at every problem as something that could be solved.

Money is an outcome.

Mindset is the solution.

🫡 From the depths —
The White Whale 🐋

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

@benjamincowen Welcome ₿ack.

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

@Mantle_Official

[dethective @dethective]

I got a leaked document from a Botify investor.

• ~$1.5M spent on KOL marketing, listings, fake metrics and even a UEFA partnership.
• Supply gifted to friends and family

The token pumped to $67M and now it's completely abandoned.
I checked all the transactions on-chain and everything matches.

I am here to tell the full story 🧵

[ElonTrades @ElonTrades]

The Oct 11 Crypto Crash — What Really Happened

TL;DR:

Roughly $60–90M of $USDe was dumped on Binance, along with $wBETH and $BNSOL, exploiting a pricing flaw that valued collateral using Binance’s own order-book data instead of external oracles.

That localized depeg triggered $500M–$1B in forced liquidations, cascaded into $19B+ globally, and earned the attackers about $192M via $1.1B in BTC/ETH shorts opened on Hyperliquid hours earlier, but minutes before Trump tariff announcement.

It wasn’t a USDe failure!! It was Binance’s design flaw, timed with macro panic (Trump’s tariffs) for cover.

What looked like chaos was actually a coordinated exploitation of Binance’s internal pricing system, amplified by a macro shock and systemic leverage.

1️⃣ The Setup

Binance’s Unified Account let traders use assets like USDe, wBETH, and BNSOL as collateral.

Instead of oracle or redemption prices, Binance valued these using its own spot market - a major vulnerability.

On Oct 6, Binance announced a fix to move to oracle-based pricing, but rollout wasn’t until Oct 14, leaving an 8-day window.

2️⃣ The Exploit

During that window, sophisticated actors manipulated Binance’s order books, dumping ~$60–90M of USDe, driving it to $0.65 on Binance only (still ~$1 elsewhere).

Because the Unified Account marked collateral to internal prices, this instantly wiped margin value and triggered $500M–$1B in forced liquidations.

Then, Trump’s 100% China tariff headline hit, magnifying panic and liquidity stress.

3️⃣ The Profit Engine

The same day, fresh wallets on Hyperliquid opened $1.1B in BTC/ETH shorts, funded by $110M USDC from Arbitrum-linked sources.

As the Binance cascade unfolded, BTC and ETH cratered, those shorts netted $192M in profit before closing out at the bottom.

Timing, precision, and funding paths all suggest coordination.

4️⃣ The Contagion

Binance liquidations dumped BTC/ETH/ALTs into thin books.

Other exchanges mirrored the collapse through cross-market bots.

Market makers hedged across venues were forced to unwind everywhere.

Result: $19B+ global liquidations, with many alts down 50–70% intraday, all triggered by <$100M of manipulated collateral.

5️⃣ Who’s at fault?

Binance: design flaw + delay in oracle rollout = root cause.

Exploiters: executed and timed the manipulation, profited via external shorts.

Ethena (USDe): not at fault - protocol stayed 1:1 collateralized, redemptions normal, peg held everywhere else.

6️⃣ Aftermath

Binance admitted “platform-related issues,” promised compensation for affected margin/futures/loan users, and rolled out minimum price floors + oracle integration.

USDe remained operational, and the incident is now a case study in how exchange-side pricing errors can trigger system-wide liquidations.

Bottom line:
A ~$90M dump on Binance and a $1.1B leveraged short elsewhere sparked a $19B bloodbath.

Not a stablecoin failure, but a masterclass in exploiting flawed collateral valuation during peak macro stress.

[Poseidon @CryptoPoseidonn]

Still below 8 figures.
No wife.
No girlfriend.
Don’t have a dog.
Can’t run more than 5km.
Can’t bench press 300 lbs.
Can’t drive a manual car.
Under 185 cm.

Yet, none of these hurts as much as holding Ethereum.

[The White Whale @WhiteWhaleLabs]

A Post-Crash Pilot Debrief from The White Whale

$62M - gone in a flash. But as was repeatedly pounded into my head in pilot training: any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

As I’ve been processing yesterday’s events, I want to share a few thoughts from a place of honesty, vulnerability, and accountability - as I always have.

Let’s start with why I faced such a large liquidation, and then I’ll share some observations from the last 18 hours.

First and foremost: I got too fixated on the goal.
At one point this year, my unrealized PnL sat at 98 out of 100 million. Counting profits from other platforms, I had actually surpassed that goal - but because some of those platforms lacked HyperLiquid’s transparency, it became a mental game of “proof, or it didn’t happen.”

Heading into late September, my thesis was that because everyone expected a dip, it wouldn’t happen - and I wanted to be positioned in case I was right. I wasn’t. But I remained calm; I’ve survived every “black swan” this year and turned each into profit before.

That 100M milestone meant more than numbers to me. Years ago, I built a real-world company with that same amount as my exit target goal. But I walked away - choosing peace over profit. Running it had made me miserable; I was a prisoner to my own creation. So being able to finish that prior goal, this time on my own terms, became a form of redemption. A personal validation that I’d found a better way.

I’ve always been stubbornly resilient. Knocked down, yes - but never out.

That same determination that helped me survive life’s earlier chapters also made me impatient to start the next one. I wanted to move beyond daily trading and begin shaping the future of this space - helping build what comes next, not just benefiting from it.

Crypto is wild, beautiful, and broken in equal measure. My background has always been consumer-first: if you do right by people, your reward eventually comes. That principle belongs here, too - and I intend to bring it here.

But I rushed. I let excitement override discipline. And that’s on me.

While the timeline was full of “crime season” posts (ironically including my own), I’ve always believed this: you can’t claim the victories if you won’t own the failures.

Yesterday, when someone asked how I was handling it, I admitted I cried in my wife’s arms. Some mocked it with “no crying in the casino.” But I shared that moment intentionally - because sometimes, it’s okay to not be okay.

Vulnerability, especially among men, needs more voices.

And for the record - I’m still up for the year. I’ll recover, rebuild, and rise again.

A few quick observations from the wreckage:

L2 failures, once again.

During peak activity, Arbitrum and Base failed me - transactions hung while I tried to move stables. Solana, meanwhile, stayed rock solid. It wouldn’t have saved the position (nothing could outrun that $3200 ETH / $138 SOL wick), but once again Solana proved it performs when it matters most and earns more of my loyalty by the day.

Leverage isn’t the villain.

Some rushed to say, “See, that’s why leverage kills you.” I reject that. Leverage is just a tool - like a knife, a car, or money itself. Tools aren’t evil. The hand that wields them determines the outcome.

The humanity in the aftermath.

Amid the trolls celebrating others’ losses - a dark side of this space I’ll never understand - I also witnessed incredible compassion. People offering comfort, solidarity…even five individuals offering to send me money to help rebuild. I refused, of course - but the gesture hit me hard. It reminded me that for all the toxicity, there’s still goodness here.

Most days I’m the one offering support, not receiving it. Yesterday reversed that dynamic - and it meant more than I can express.

This wasn’t my proudest moment. But every chapter - even the painful ones - has purpose. If this experience reminds even one person to stay humble, to manage risk, to remain human through the chaos, then it wasn’t wasted.

Losses teach what profits never can: where strength truly lives. And mine was never in the number - it’s in the will to rebuild.

🫡 From the depths —
The White Whale 🐋

[CL @CL207]

stocks is truly goated

you buy, and now the most powerful, corrupt, smart, insider, elite, educated people work their ass off everyday just to pay you dividends

[Cortisol @0xCortisol]

@nobrainflip $ETH