Haliey Welch, the girl behind the viral "Hawk Tuah" video that was everywhere over the summer, has gone from strength to strength since, growing a huge social media following before launching her own podcast. But it seems like her luck in the public sphere may have run out.
On Wednesday, Welch followed in the footsteps of celebrities like Iggy Azalea and Cardi B when she launched her own memecoin, $HAWK. Within minutes of the launch, though, things started going wrong. Here's how it all played out.
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What is Haliey Welch's $HAWK token?
In short, it's another of the many memecoins on the Solana blockchain. Welch teased the launch in late November, mentioning possibly launching a memecoin on her podcast when interviewing businessman Mark Cuban, and sharing a thread on X (formerly Twitter) from a company called overHere, who said it was launching the token on her behalf.
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"$HAWK isn’t just a Meme Coin, it’s a part of the culture," reads the token's description on overHere's site. "Haliey is using her meme to unite her entire community. From: TikTok, Talk Tuah podcast listeners, merchandise buyers, and even her charity supporters. Hundreds of thousands of non-crypto users will be onboarded by $HAWK because Haliey is making it easy, fun, and engaging. If you love Haliey, you love memes. And $HAWK is where it all comes together."
overHere's original X thread also stated that $HAWK "isn't just another token launch," arguing that it would help onboard non-crypto users while putting transparency first.
So where did it all go wrong?
What happened with the $HAWK launch?
Shortly after $HAWK launched, Welch's X post was quickly hit with a Community Note warning that 96 percent of the token's supply appeared to be owned by just 10 connected wallets. Wallets are anonymous (at least to an extent), but when such a large percentage of one token is owned by so few, the risks are obvious — if these people start selling, the token's value can plummet.
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As you can see from the chart above by blockchain data analytics visualiser Bubblemaps, $HAWK spiked to a market cap of almost $500 million just minutes after its launch, before dumping down just as quickly again. At the time of writing the coin has a market cap of $36.6 million. In short, most people who bought the coin in those opening hours have lost money on it.
What has Haliey Welch said about $HAWK?
Welch and the overHere team attempted damage control in the hours after the launch, saying that "Haliey's team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever" and trying to place the blame on snipers (people who use bots to quickly buy tokens at the cheapest price possible). They released "Hawkanomics" which appear to show that Welch's tokens (10 percent of the supply) are locked for 12 months.
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They all eventually joined an X Spaces to talk about the launch, which Welch left after an hour saying she was "gonna go to bed." The overHere team promised that they'll "come back tomorrow" and that they're not going anywhere.
For the people who may have bought the token shortly after it launched, though, only to find its value quickly melting away as others sold it, that might not be much comfort.
