Viral star clashes with crypto sleuth over token crash

Add viral “Hawk Tuah” star Haliey Welch to the growing list of crypto influencers’ misadventures.

The meme personality faced serious backlash after newly launched cryptocurrency Hawk dropped from a market cap of $490 million to just $60 million in a matter of hours.

The crypto community, including YouTuber “Coffeezilla” (real name Stephen Findeisen), accuses Welch of running a “pump and dump” scheme in which hype drives prices up, only for insiders to cash out and leave investors hanging.

Welch has denied any wrongdoing. In a social media post, he claimed his team was trying to stop “snipers,” bad actors creating the illusion of demand by artificially inflating prices by purchasing large quantities early.

Copy and paste:

Hawkanomic:

The team did not sell a token and 1 KOL was not given 1 free coin

At the beginning of the launch, we tried to stop snipers as much as we could with high fees. @MeteoraAG

Fees have now been reduced pic.twitter.com/E7xN9VmCrx

— Haliey Welch (@HalieyWelchX) December 4, 2024

A community note on Welch’s X post stated that the Welch team has “sold their tokens since launch.”

At last check on Saturday, the Hawk Tuah coin was down over 7%. Just a few minutes ago there was an increase of 0.45%.

Source: CoinMarketCap What’s at stake and has Hawk Tuah Girl profited?

Sniping encourages ordinary investors to buy a token at a high price, thinking they are spotting a rising trend.

After the snipers sold their holdings, the price of the token fell off a cliff, leaving late investors with nearly worthless assets.

Hawk was launched on the Solana blockchain, and while meme coins are generally viewed as a low-risk pastime, this has led to accusations of rug-pulling, a cryptocurrency scam where developers withdraw liquidity or abruptly abandon a project, causing the token price to plummet as a result .

In a YouTube video posted on December 5, Coffeezilla, who has made a name for himself in examining the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies backed by influencers (e.g. Andrew Tate), noted:

Welch, who made a name for himself by pretending to spit in a viral video, claimed the coin was meant to bring fans together and combat imitators.

Unfortunately, the only thing that seemed to unite was confusion. The recorded back-and-forth between Coffeezilla and Welch’s legal representative, which now has more than 2.7 million views on YouTube, reveals what appears to be a complex payment structure for Welch and the Hawk Tuah-inspired cryptocurrency.

Based on comments received from Coffeezilla’s representatives, it was stated that Welch was paid approximately $125,000 in advance from an unnamed company to market the Hawk Tuah token. Coffeezilla then added that it should receive 50% of the net revenue “after costs are paid to third parties.”

Details regarding third parties remain unclear. Crypto.news asked Welch for comment but did not receive a response.

“I think this whole situation sucks and she should feel bad,” Coffeezilla concludes. “[Welch] I went to bed with these people who clearly saw dollar signs. He saw the dollar signs and they did this and people got hurt.”

See the trailer for Coffeezilla before.