Haliey Welch, the star of the viral “hawk tuah” video, is facing backlash from supporters after launching a “memecoin” cryptocurrency that pumped and crashed heavily within just a few hours.
Welch, who debuted $HAWK on the Solana blockchain on Wednesday, is most known for appearing in a street interview TikTok where she popularized the phrase “hawk tuah” to refer to a sexual act.
Ahead of its launch, Welch told Fortune that her memecoin — a term describing cryptocurrencies that are based on viral memes like her video — “is not a cash grab.”
Despite this, some buyers of the coin are now saying they will report Welch’s venture to the authorities after $HAWK quickly plummeted from its peak of $490 million to $29.1 million by Thursday morning, Quartz reported of DexScreener data.
With a sharp value decline of about 94 percent and blockchain data revealing that insiders initially controlled 96 percent of the coin, the Crypto Times reported that critics are now accusing Welch and her team of “insider trading” and pulling the rug out from under investors.
X users were quick to notice that one investor dumped $1.4 million worth of another memecoin, $MOODENG, for $HAWK and made it out with just $46,000:
Coffeezilla, an anti-scam YouTuber with nearly four million subscribers, told his followers not to buy the coin and said it would only benefit “insiders” and “trading bots”:
The investigative journalist then joined an X Space that Welch and her team hosted, where he accused them of shady business.
In the recording of the Space, which Welch has since deleted from her page, 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,” he said, according to the Crypto Times.
He later implied that Welch’s memecoin will send insiders “straight tuah jail” in his own X Space recapping the drop.
Another popular crypto enthusiast, who goes by @imperooterxbt on X, said he filed a report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and encouraged others to do the same:
How can someone who bought nothing profit $300,000$ and not just one person, but many?… @HalieyWelchX You have some explaining to do … Especially to the court and to the people you stole money from,” another X user said:
Other people said Welch would have to “talk tuah” judge:
In her interview with Fortune, Welch said that she used to believe crypto was “just a scam” and an “easy way for you to lose money,” but has since changed her mind.
When asked about what made her launch a coin, the viral influencer said it was a “really good thing” and a “good way to interact with my fans.”
Jonnie Forster, Welch’s manager, told the outlet, “We don’t want to break securities laws. We would say that we’re almost, like, tokenizing, in a sense, Haliey’s fan base.”
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