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Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nHaliey Welch, known mostly as the star of the viral “Hawk Tuah” meme, is facing criticism after her newly launched cryptocurrency nosedived in value.<\/p>\n
Her “Hawk” digital coin hit a $490m market cap shortly after it launched on Wednesday, before suddenly losing more than 95% of its value within hours.<\/p>\n
This has led some, including YouTube cryptocurrency investigator Coffeezilla, to accuse Ms Welch of scamming investors with a “pump and dump” – where the people behind a coin hype up its price before launch, then sell it for profit.<\/p>\n
She has denied allegations that her team sold any of the tokens they owned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The BBC has approached Ms Welch’s representatives for comment.<\/p>\n
“Team hasn’t sold one token,” she wrote in a copy and pasted post on X <\/a>(formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n She added that no “KOL” (key opinion leaders) were gifted a free token.<\/p>\n Ms Welch had previously distributed free Hawk tokens to some fans ahead of the launch across social media.<\/p>\n Hawk launched on the Solana blockchain at around 22:00 GMT on Wednesday, and its market capitalisation soared to highs of $490m shortly after.<\/p>\n However it fell sharply from this high to around $60m just 20 minutes later.<\/p>\n Fans and investors have accused Ms Welch and her team of “misleading” and “betraying” them and suggested the launch had been a “rug pull” – where promoters of a cryptocurrency draw in buyers, only to stop trading activity and make off with money raised from sales.<\/p>\n A community note on Ms Welch’s X post contests her explanation, saying her team had been selling their Hawk coins since launch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Coffeezilla, real name Stephen Findeisen, also claimed that Hawk gave “insiders” an advantage.<\/p>\n “Unfortunately with situations like this, they’re not targeting crypto bros, they’re mostly targeting actual fans who have never been involved in the crypto space before,” he said in a video viewed more than 1.4 million times.<\/p>\n He accused Ms Welch’s team of “profiting from a rug pull”.<\/p>\n “These people were unwilling to take any accountability” of the “Hawk Tuah scam”, he claimed, after sharing a clip of him speaking to some of the people behind the cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n Ms Welch’s post on X claimed that her team attempted to prevent so-called “snipers”, who buy and sell cryptocurrencies quickly at moments when they are likely to make the most money from a gap in buy and sell price – sometimes using automated trading tools – by imposing higher fees on one exchange.<\/p>\n The team behind the cryptocurrency, OverHere, has dismissed other claims about the launch in an X post<\/a>. <\/p>\n It stressed that “Haliey’s Team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever”.<\/p>\n Meme coins such as this have been booming in popularity due to their jokey, cheap appeal for investors.<\/p>\n They are often viewed as being less risky than more high profile crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but carry the same dangers – with often no protection for those who lose money on them.<\/p>\n Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex University, told the BBC on Thursday<\/a> that while more young people are investing in meme coins, many of them are losing money.<\/p>\n Several celebrities or influencers who have ventured into the crypto market have faced similar backlashes.<\/p>\n In 2021, Kim Kardashian was fined $1.26m by US regulators<\/a> after she failed to disclose that she had been paid to post an advert for a cryptocurrency scheme called EthereumMax.<\/p>\n More recently, YouTuber Logan Paul was accused of misleading fans by promoting crypto coins or investments without divulging his own financial interest in them<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Known online as the “Hawk Tuah girl”, Ms Welch went viral after speaking the onomatopoeia “hawk tuah” – imitating the sound of someone spitting – during an interview in June.<\/p>\n It made the 22-year-old, from Belfast, Tennessee, an overnight internet sensation. <\/p>\n She amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across various social platforms and launched her own merchandise and a podcast called “Talk Tuah”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nScam allegations<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Who is ‘Hawk Tuah Girl’ Haliey Welch?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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