Hawk Tuah girl Haliey Welch defends crypto launch
The internet personality has denied wrongdoing after her new meme cryptocurrency crashed within hours of going live.
A memecoin launched by Haliey Welch – of “Hawk Tuah Girl” fame – has crashed within hours of going live, losing 95 per cent of its value.
Hawkcoin, trading under $HAWK, hit a peak total market value of US$490 million soon after launch on December 4 (US time) but a major sell off saw that drop to US$26.4 million.
Ms Welch is now having to defend allegations of insider trading as the disastrous launch of the cryptocurrency caused outrage online.
The 22-year-old rose to internet stardom in June when for her viral response to the question “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?”.
“You gotta give ‘em that ‘hawk tuah’, spit on that thang,” she replied.
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Now Ms Welch is facing backlash and scrutiny over her cryptocurrency, with some suggested it was used as a pump-and-dump scheme – or artificially inflating value before quickly selling for profit.
The Tennessean, who hosts the Talk Tuah podcast on Jake Paul’s network, took to social media to deny any wrongdoing.
“Team hasn’t sold one token and not 1 KOL was given 1 free token,” Ms Welch said in a post on X.
“We tried to stop snipers as best we could through high fee’s in the start of launch on Meteora.”
She previously told Fortune that her memecoin – so-named due to being based on pop culture – was “not just a cash grab”.
Law firm Burwick Law, which specialises in digital consumer protection, has put a call out on social media for those impacted by the crash to come forward.
“If you lost money on $HAWK, contact our firm to learn about your legal rights,” it wrote on X.
“Our firm represents thousands of nft and token investors in securities matters.”
Coin Telegraph, a news website covering crypto markets, reports that data from platforms Bubblemaps and Dexscreener a mix of insider wallets and “snipers” controlled between 80 to 90 per cent of $HAWK’s supply at launch.
Snipers are entities that buy up large amounts of a token’s supply at launch before selling at a profit.
One buyer’s wallet sniped HAWK seconds after its launch, purchasing 17.5% of the supply of the memecoin for the equivalent of US$993,000.
They proceeded to sell 135.8 million tokens for a profit of $1.3 million, Coin Telegraph reports.
An online crypto sleuth codenamed Coffeezilla went at Ms Welch and her team in an X space discussing the issue overnight.
He said on the conference, “this is worst tokenomics I have ever seen … and it’s a scam”.
“You guys generated over a million in fees while y’all’s fans got rug pulled,” he said.
A member of the Hawkcoin project responded to say it was not a scam and that they were planning for it to be a long-term offering.
“We’re really trying to do something here and not just do it for one day,” the man said.
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