Hawk Tuah Girl’s highly anticipated crypto debut encounters significant backlash following the dramatic collapse of her meme coin project.
Hawk Tuah Girl ventures into cryptocurrency
Haliey Welch, widely known as “Hawk Tuah Girl,” gained fame this summer after a viral street interview.
Her bold and graphic response to a question about sex quickly made her a sensation. Since then, Welch has built an online presence, including a podcast and an animal charity.
Her fame has opened doors, but it also brought controversial endorsements.
Recently, Welch entered the cryptocurrency space with her own meme coin, $HAWK, but things quickly took a disastrous turn.
Hawk Tuah’s launch of $HAWK and its rapid decline
Welch’s venture into crypto started with the launch of $HAWK, a meme coin on the Solana blockchain.
The coin initially saw a massive surge, increasing its market cap by 900% on launch day, reaching nearly $490 million.
However, the excitement quickly turned into disappointment. Within hours, the coin’s value plummeted by 95%, leaving investors with substantial losses.
This sharp decline led to accusations of a rug pull.
A rug pull is a scam where creators sell off their tokens, causing the price to collapse, leaving investors with worthless coins.
Many in the crypto community began to question whether Welch’s team had deliberately orchestrated the collapse.
Social media reaction to HAWK coin
Many criticized Hawk Tuah and even called for her to be jailed, with fans losing their life savings after buying her cryptocurrency.
Additionally, others criticized the people who invested in HAWK coin, suggesting that they had a lesson to learn from the final outcome
One person said: anyone dumb enough to fall for a influencer crypto pump and dump scam, deservers to lose their money.
A second wrote: I suggested to a friend we create rugpull coin. They looked it up, its already been made and the rug has already been pulled.
While a third commented: She’s the biggest scammer. All in one day.
Another added: And there’s nothing criminal about it… Just unbelievably stupid people.
Hawk Tuah faced accusations of a pump-and-dump scheme.
As the value of $HAWK tanked, suspicions about insider trading grew.
Crypto observers pointed out that some individuals, referred to as “snipers,” bought large portions of the coin early and sold them for quick profit.
One crypto wallet reportedly acquired 17.5% of the total supply and flipped it for $1.3 million in just 90 minutes.
Blockchain analysts also discovered that 96% of $HAWK was concentrated in a few wallets, suggesting coordinated selling.
This raised further concerns that the token was part of a pump-and-dump scheme.
Welch’s response and defending the team
Haliey Welch and her team quickly denied the accusations. In a live stream on Twitter, Welch defended the actions of her team, claiming they had not sold any tokens.
She stated that they had tried to prevent “snipers” by imposing high fees during the initial launch.
“Hawkanomics: Team hasn’t sold one token and not 1 KOL was given 1 free token,” she tweeted in a copy and pasted message.
“We tried to stop snipers as best we could through high fee’s in the start of launch on @MeteoraAG. Fee’s have now been dropped.”
However, many readers and crypto enthusiasts were skeptical of her claims. Some suggested that Welch’s team had sold their tokens since the launch, and accused her of dishonesty. One tweet read, “The ‘team’ and insiders have actually been selling their tokens since launch.”
Whether this was a case of mismanagement or a deliberate scam is still up for debate. Regardless, Welch’s cryptocurrency experiment has added another controversial chapter to her rapidly growing online career.