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Influencer Hailey Welch, better known as “Hawk Tuah,” has launched her latest attempt to cash in on her fame: a cryptocurrency.
Wednesday, Welch spear the Hawk Tuah (HAWK) meme coin on Solana (GROUND0.00%) blockchain, that it told Fortune before its debut, “it’s not a financial drain”. Coinslike HAWK, are cryptocurrencies based on viral memes, trends and pop culture references, such as Dogecoin and Pepecoin.
“We don’t want to violate securities laws,” Welch principal Jonnie Forster told Fortune.. “We would say we almost symbolize, in a sense, Hailey’s fan base.”
However, within 24 hours of the launch, social media users claimed have filed complaints with securities authorities, at least a law firm started reaching out to gather customers, and the meme piece was called a scam by critics.
The meme coin reached a peak market cap of $490 million before falling, hitting $29.1 million at press time, according to DexScreener data. This represents a drop of approximately 94%.
As previously reported by Cointelegraphbetween 80% and 90% of the token supply was controlled by a combination of internal wallets and snipers, or entities that purchase large amounts of supply when a token is launched. One wallet purchased 17.5% of memecoin’s supply for around $993,000 at launch, then sold 135.8 million tokens for a profit of $1.3 million in two hours.
The Welch team said they didn’t sell any tokens and no key opinion leader received a free token, adding that they “tried to stop the snipers as best we could” through an upfront fee students.
Since it went viral in June thanks to a video posted on YouTube by creators Tim Dickerson and DeArius Marlow, Welch founded a company, hired an agent, and began selling merchandise and making paid appearances. In August, she launched a podcast called “Speak Tuah“, followed by an artificial intelligence-based dating advice app, it spear in November named “Pookie Tools”.