Haliey Welch appears at SiriusXM Studios on July 31, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. – Credit: Michael Tullberg/Getty Images
Since becoming a viral star this summer thanks to a street interview in which she charmingly imparted graphic sex advice, Haliey Welch, a.k.a. “Hawk Tuah Girl,” has launched a podcast and an animal charity, carving out a pleasant niche for herself as an influencer. Being more online, of course, has allowed her to sustain and profit from her fame, though it has also led to some curious endorsements — Welch regularly touts the greatness of X (formerly Twitter), its owner Elon Musk, and Tesla‘s troubled Cybertruck, to take a handful of interrelated examples.
Along the way, Welch has also found herself enmeshed in the world of cryptocurrency and boosting bitcoin, which she has invested in. Unsurprisingly for a woman who bills herself as “Queen of Memes,” she also owns some Dogecoin, a so-called “meme coin” based on the iconic “doge” meme of a Shiba Inu. (She bought it because of Musk’s enthusiasm for the meme and asset, which have now lent their name to his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a commission he is set to run for President-elect Donald Trump.) Being a meme herself, it was perhaps inevitable that crypto entrepreneurs would see the opportunity to leverage Welch’s brand for a new coin in a similar vein. And so, on Wednesday, she and a team of advisors launched $HAWK, on the blockchain platform Solana, while promising that it was compliant with securities laws and certainly not a cash grab.
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One day later, there is virtually nobody in the crypto industry who believes that. With anticipation high, the value of the coin exploded by 900 percent in initial trading on Tuesday, bringing the market capitalization of $HAWK to nearly half a billion dollars. Then, just as quickly, the price collapsed by approximately 95 percent, wiping out retail investors in hours. (The market cap has since slightly recovered, reaching $28 million.) Accusations started flying, with many crypto observers alleging that $HAWK was a pump-and-dump scheme, or a rug pull — when developers build hype for a crypto project to raise money only to liquidate their position and walk away, with others left holding worthless tokens.
Of particular interest as the meme coin crashed was alleged evidence of $HAWK insiders offloading their stakes for huge sums, and some buyers known as “snipers” quickly amassing a vast majority of available coins that they soon unloaded for instant profit. One crypto wallet, as the publication Cointelegraph found, was able to grab 17.5 percent of the supply and then flip it for $1.3 million within just 90 minutes. According to the blockchain data analyst Bubblemaps, 96 percent of $HAWK was concentrated in one cluster of related wallets as of Tuesday afternoon, indicating a high degree of coordination in these transactions.
Welch and her team attempted some damage control on Wednesday evening in an audio event on X Spaces, but they did not manage to allay suspicions of a scam as investors began filing complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission and at least one law firm advertised its services to those affected. Welch was mostly silent during the hour-long conversation, allowing her crypto partners at the platform overHere, which had launched $HAWK, and an individual known as “Doc Hollywood” to answer questions. Pressed on what had gone wrong, the men were talked in evasive circles, insisting that the team of 18 people behind $HAWK had not sold their tokens.
The discussion turned contentious when Stephen Findeisen, a YouTuber who goes by Coffeezilla and is known for his hard-nosed investigations of crypto fraud, was allowed to speak. “This is one of the most miserable, horrible launches I’ve ever seen in my life,” Findeisen said, prompting Welch to interject, seemingly unaware of his work, “Okay, then why the fuck are you on?” Findeisen went on to grill Hollywood about who had received nearly $2 million from the unusually high transaction fees for $HAWK trades; Hollywood said it went to the foundation in the Cayman Islands that had developed the project but would not give any more details on the organization. He and an overHere representative vowed to produce evidence to counter allegations of improper financial activity, though, as of the following afternoon, have not. Findeisen concluded his time on the call by labeling $HAWK a “scam” outright.
At another point in the call, Richard Bengston, a YouTuber known as FaZe Banks, agreed with Findeisen’s harsh appraisal. He advised Welch to immediately fire whoever had convinced her to be the face of the “mismanaged” cryptocurrency, saying the $HAWK disaster was another example of influencers entering the crypto space without an understanding of how to perform due diligence and protect their audiences. She did not acknowledge the advice, but 20 minutes later, Welch abruptly cut in over a technical question and said, “Anywho, I’m gonna go to bed, and I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” bringing the interrogation to an end.
A representative for Welch did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone, but the Spaces discussion was evidently damning enough that she removed the recording from her X account. (It remains available through a YouTube upload.) Findeisen hosted a Spaces debriefing on his own account afterward, continuing to hammer the $HAWK developers for dodging his questions, adding that they had muted him at times. He also lamented that it was likely not experienced crypto investors harmed by the crash but newcomers to the scene. “The most insidious part of what they said was, we’re targeting regular people, regular fans,” he said of the $HAWK team. “We want to onboard [Welch’s] fans to crypto. And unfortunately, that’s where you get some really sad stories of people actually putting their money into these things and not knowing better.”
On Thursday evening, Findeisen released a video covering the entire situation. It included screenshots of text messages from Welch’s entertainment lawyer revealing that she had received $125,000 advance for marketing the token from a unspecified company, and was to receive 50 percent of net proceeds from that company after third-party expenses and costs for the development and launch had been covered. In a follow-up message, Welch’s attorney added, “She truly didn’t intend to fleece fans.”
“I think there were lots of signs this was not going to work,” Findeisen tells Rolling Stone. “They sold 17 percent of the tokens to insiders who had no lock-up for their tokens, while they only released 3 percent to the public for trading. I get the sense that Welch was misinformed, but also that Welch saw dollar signs and didn’t ask enough questions. Additionally, she didn’t seem to take it too seriously when she was confronted. I hope that she acknowledges the harm of what she did, intentional or not, and takes accountability to help her fans who lost money.”
A couple of defensive X posts from Welch and overHere on Wednesday were contradicted by Community Notes that claimed — in a mocking reference to the name of her podcast — that Welch would soon “have to ‘talk tuah’ judge.” She didn’t post anything else on Thursday as jokes about an eventual jail sentence continued to spread. And while it remains to be seen what legal or reputational consequences she’ll face for her foray into crypto, she’s already had the dubious honor of inspiring a “revenge coin,” $TUAH, as in “straight tuah prison.” Fueled by memes of Welch behind bars, investors are attempting to punch the value of $TUAH high enough that it exceeds $HAWK’s market cap, and they just might pull it off.
As with every hot new crypto fad, however, there will probably be some poor saps left holding the bag.
