The “Hawk Tuah” girl launched a meme coin, and—anyone? Any guesses?
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: allegations are swirling online that the project has been rug pulled, while the team behind the crypto token, HAWK, is adamantly denying any wrongdoing.
On Wednesday evening, Hailey Welch, Ms. Tuah herself, launched the HAWK token to much fanfare. Within less than 15 minutes, the token climbed to a market capitalization of $490 million before immediately collapsing over 93% in value.
Apparently, a web of interconnected wallets sold off vast sums of the token as soon as the public began buying it—and pocketed over $3 million thanks to the maneuver.
Bubblemaps, the on-chain data visualization company, determined on Thursday that 285 wallets collectively acquired some 96% of HAWK’s supply during token presales and giftings. Within the first minutes of HAWK’s debut, the majority of those wallets dumped their tokens to make a quick profit.
Outrage immediately swirled on Crypto Twitter over what appeared to be a classic meme coin rug pull. Welch’s team quickly pushed back against the allegations, claiming the observed sell-offs were standard elements of HAWK’s tokenomics roadmap.
“Hailey’s team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever,” the team maintained. Welch, meanwhile, claimed no single influencer or KOL (“Key Opinion Leader”) was gifted free tokens.
Twitter users immediately pointed to the rampant selling off of vast sums of HAWK by what appeared to be project insiders.
Bubblemaps told Decrypt that their analysis concluded that while the HAWK team itself has not yet sold off any tokens, KOLs and “strategic advisors” connected to the project have dumped an extraordinary amount of its supply—leading to the collapse of its value immediately following launch.
Decrypt reached out to Welch’s team regarding those conclusions but did not immediately receive a response.
While little consensus has yet been reached on Welch’s complicity in the saga, Crypto Twitter appears to have firmly made up its mind. The project’s explanation of irregularities during HAWK’s launch was swiftly tagged with a Community Note that lambasted the post as intentionally deceptive.
“Hailey is lying and will likely have to “talk tuah” judge about this,” the note reads.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair. Additional reporting by Ryan Gladwin.
