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Haliey Welch, better known as the viral ‘Hawk Tuah Girl’, faced backlash following the failed launch of her memecoin $HAWK, which crashed by over 90% just hours after its arrival on the market. Now the 22-year-old internet personality is accused of fraud investors.
This week, Welch attempted to cash in on his viral fame by launching his own memecoin – cryptocurrencies based on viral memes or pop culture references, such as Dogecoin and Pepecoin.
Talk to Fortune Before the launch, Welch insisted that his memecoin, named HAWK, was “not just a money grab.” However, less than 24 hours later, at least one investor has already filed a complaint with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
When HAWK launched on the Solana blockchain on Wednesday evening (December 4) at a price of $0.005492, it quickly surged over 900% and accumulated a market capitalization of $490 million. The token price peaked at $0.00004028, the Crypto Times reported, before its market cap plummeted to $60 million, a whopping 91% drop in value.
This rapid drop has been attributed by some to insider wallets and sharpshooters – entities that quickly purchase huge quantities of tokens at launch – who are believed to have controlled between 80 and 90 percent of the supply. HAWK. According to Cointelegraphone wallet managed to buy 17.5% of memecoin’s supply, worth $993,000 at the time, and sold it less than two hours later for a profit of $1.3 million dollars.
Many online commenters have accused Welch and his team of using a “pump and dump” system, whereby coins are bought cheap, heavily promoted to inflate their value, and then sold at a spike, often by insiders. of the company.
Welch denied all allegations of insider trading, saying in an X/Twitter post job that his team “did not sell a single token and not 1 KOL received 1 free token”.
“We tried to stop the snipers as best we could by paying high fees at the start of the launch on @MeteoraAG,” she wrote. “The fees have now been removed.”
The Independent has contacted Welch’s representatives for further comment.
Welch’s manager Jonnie Forster previously said Fortune that Welch will own 10 percent of HAWK’s supply but won’t be able to sell it for a year.
“I don’t really see it as a gambling thing,” Welch told the outlet. “I think it’s a fun way to get my fans to interact.”
However, this did not stop social media users from taking the situation lightly. crypto controversial.
‘She’s going to have to speak to Judge Tuah soon,’ one person said wrote on X, while someone else replied: “She just hawked $1 million out of our pockets.”
Welch rose to fame in June as “The Hawk Tuah Girl,” thanks to a NSFW street interview posted by YouTubers Tim Dickerson and DeArius Marlow. Welch has since signed with an agent and launched his own podcast, Speak Tuah.