The girl behind the viral "Hawk Tuah" Meme has spoken up about her crypto coin controversy which many have considered to be a scam. It barely took any time before her "$HAWK" coin tanked in value, leaving fans out of money.
$HAWK Coin Suspiciously Tanks In Value
Hailey Welch, age 22, became famous from an NSFW TikTok meme in 2024. Now after creating the "Talk Tuah" podcast, Welch decided to try cryptocurrency.
At launch, it had a value of $490 million. Within minutes of its release, the cryptocurrency lost over 94% of its value, crashing to $29.1 million. It took one day for consumers to file complaints to security regulators.
Now fans and critics have accused Welch of pulling what some call the "pump and dump" method, which is a form of fraud. This scam involves inflating the price of a crypto coin through false information. Then, the people who created the cryptocurrency sell their overvalued stocks which make the price tank.
Welch took to X and denied any wrongdoing and claimed she and her team hadn't sold any of their shares. In a post, Welch wrote "Hawkanomics: Team hasn't sold one token and not 1 KOL was given 1 free token. We tried to stop snipers as best we could through high fee's in the start of launch on @MeteoraAG."
People hit back using X's Community Notes feature which allows users to correct misinformation in posts. "The 'team' and insiders have actually been selling their token since launch," wrote the Community Note. "A majority have never purchased anything and have only sold the tokens they were given."
The note then ended with a humorous statement saying "Haliey is lying and will likely have to 'talk tuah' judge about this."
Is It Too Little Too Late?
Unfortunately, Welch and her team have already done too much damage. Her fans' money is gone, and there can only be so much someone can do after pulling a known "rug pull" tactic.
This incident sparked other content creators to speak up. Coffeezilla, a cryptocurrency investigator named Stephen Findeisen on YouTube, threw shade at Welch on a live stream.
"This is one of the most miserable, horrible launches I've ever seen. I've been tracing it on the chain for a while. You guys generated over a million dollars in fees, while your fans got rug pulled," he spoke to his nearly 4 million subscribers.
Findeisen also mentioned how there were snipers, but also "insider trading directly linked to y'all's creator accounts."
There's more data to back this up. According to a report from Cointelegraph, insiders and snipers own 80-90% of the "Hawk Tuah" girl's crypto coin.
Overall, the team's unwillingness to take any accountability makes the situation worse. It will take a lot of damage control for Welch to gain her fans' trust again.
