--- title: "We Are Shocked to Hear That the Hawk Tuah Girl’s Foray Into Crypto Was Allegedly a Pump and Dump Scheme" description: "Influencer Haliey Welch, better known as the \"Hawk Tuah\" girl, launched an eponymous memecoin. It spiked and crashed almost immediately." date: "2024-12-05" modified: "2024-12-05" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/hawk-tuah-crypto" categories: - "Blockchain" - "Cryptocurrency" - "Future Society" tags: - "cryptocurrencies" - "memes" - "online scams" --- # We Are Shocked to Hear That the Hawk Tuah Girl’s Foray Into Crypto Was Allegedly a Pump and Dump Scheme ![Influencer Haliey Welch, better known as the "Hawk Tuah" girl, launched an eponymous memecoin. It spiked and crashed almost immediately.]() *\Image: Michael Tullberg/Getty Images\* Another [memecoin pump and dump]()? Shocking! Influencer Haliey Welch, who [rose to fame]() as the "Hawk Tuah" girl from a viral TikTok video earlier this year, [launched an eponymous memecoin]() (HAWK) on Wednesday. Why? We're still not entirely sure. But given what went down almost immediately, we'd be willing to hazard a guess that she was involved in a classic get-rich-quick scheme that has become all too common in a still largely unregulated industry. At first, the market responded with glee, sending the dubious cryptocurrency soaring to a peak market cap of $490 million, as [*Cointelegraph* reports](). But the writing was already on the wall. The price plummeted almost immediately, hovering at a cap of [just $24.6 million]() at the time of writing, a more than 90 percent drop in just hours. In other words, the launch bears all the [hallmarks of a crypto rug pull](), which has already sparked plenty of outrage on social media. Most of them, however, took the unsurprising news as an opportunity to make jokes. "I am a huge fan of Hawk Tuah but you took my life savings," *Media Matters* deputy director Madeline Peltz [wrote]() in a sarcastic post on Bluesky. "The hawk tuah girl turning into a crypto scammer is peak 2024 story arc that I didn’t have on my bingo card," media journalist David Leavitt [quipped](). https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1864697453179462097 Meanwhile, Welch denied any wrongdoing, [tweeting]() that the "team hasn't sold one token." "We tried to stop snipers as best we could through high fees in the start of launch on Meteora," she wrote, referring to a decentralized crypto exchange. Despite those efforts, one crypto wallet managed to snap up 17.5 percent of the supply, roughly worth just under $1 million at the time, as *Cointelegraph* reports. The account then made a profit of $1.3 million by selling a whopping 135.8 million tokens in an hour and a half. Users on X were quick to point in a community note appended to Welch's tweet that "Hailey \[sic\] is lying and will likely have to 'talk tuah' judge about this." "The 'team' and insiders have actually been selling their token since launch," the note reads. "A majority have never purchased anything and have only sold the tokens they were given." A [screenshot]() circulating on the platform shows a number of accounts selling millions of tokens, worth immense sums of money at the time. Since then, the official platform of the HAWK token, called overHere, defended Welch, arguing that "Haliey's Team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever," in a [tweet](). "Haliey's Team has ten percent allocation which is locked for 1 year and vested over 3 years." "Bro, we can all see the blockchain," another account [replied](), echoing the general sentiment that the platform was covering up the truth. "'Team didn't sell' but all the insiders that got multiple millions of coins without ever buying them did," another user [chimed in](). Meanwhile, users on social media lamented that their extremely questionable investment fell through. "I really lost $43k apeing in 'hawk tuah' coin," one user [tweeted](). "Oh, thanks," another user [wrote](). "That explains how I lost $70k of my Christmas money." Other users claimed to have already reached out to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to file a complaint. "Just filed my report against Haliey Welch and the $HAWK team for rugging investors," one X user [wrote](). Whether the regulator will decide to investigate the matter remains unclear. But if there's one certainty, it's that Hawk Tuah's rise and fall in the crypto world left a foul taste in people's mouths. **More on memecoins:** *[Donald Trump Seems Completely Baffled by His Own Crypto Project]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()