A team member for the “Hawk Tuah Girl” has confirmed the ‘truth’ about the “crypto scam” that lost investors millions.
Hailey Welch gained fame for a viral video clip that then became a meme, shared by millions online. During a street interview in 2024, Welch used the catchphrase “hawk tuah” when miming spitting – which for whatever reason, sent the internet into a frenzy.
Since her internet fame began, Welch has been on podcasts, interviews and even made her own merchandise.
She also decided to enter the world of cryptocurrency by creating her own, called HAWK.
Initially peaking at $490 million market cap, the coin dropped by 91% within the first three hours, causing huge losses for investors. One fan accused Welch of a “rug-pull” method, alleging that she sold a huge portion of the coin’s supply for profit, immediately after launching.
Fans have taken to social media to call for legal action to be taken against the internet star. One wrote: “She deserves to be in jail right now.”
Taking to Twitter, the influencer shared: “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. Fee’s have now been dropped.”
Her followers added their own context to the post, however, claiming that her team had sold:
“A majority have never purchased anything and have only sold the tokens they were given.
“Haliey is lying and will likely have to “talk tuah” judge about this.”
During the stream, investigator Stephen ‘Coffeezilla’ said: “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. There were snipers, but there was also insider trading directly linked to y’all’s creator accounts.”
One fan shared that they had purchased $35k worth of the coin and after ten minutes, their investment was worth just $2k: “I am a huge fan of Hawk Tuah but you took my life savings,”. “I purchased your coin $Hawk that you were so excited about with my life savings and children’s college education fund as well.
“You didn’t mention that you were going to buy 97% of the supply and sell it almost immediately to make a large profit.”
Another investor shared: “So… it turns out the Hawk Tauh crypto meme coin was not a good investment.”
Her team, overHere, the platform for $HAWK token, has now shared the alleged ‘truth’ on X. They said:
“We Only Built Airdrop Tech for Web2 Fans, for Free,”
“We saw $HAWK as the perfect use case for our startup’s idea: to bring airdrops to web2.
“Hailey Welch—a literal meme—launching a meme coin felt like synchronicity.
“Our goal was simple: bring Web2 fans into Web3 seamlessly. A way to bring Web2 into crypto through culture, not just speculation.
“First of its kind. That’s it. For free.”
“We believed in that vision so much that pushed harder and harder, perhaps through rose-tinted glasses and naivety about others’ intentions, even as the project began to unravel.”
“As desperation kicked in, participation conditions were progressively watered down,” the team said.
“What started with plans for a lock-up eventually ended with none.”
This has caused a huge debate online about influencer cryptocurrencies and their lack of experience in the industry.
