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What Is The '$HAWK Rug Pull Scandal' And Why Are People Blaming Haliey Welch? The 'Hawk Tuah Girl' Meme Coin Controversy Explained
The Hawk Tuah Girl's recent attempt to join the cryptocurrency meme coin craze has been receiving a lot of backlash and criticism over the last day after netizens claimed influencer Haliey Welch and her team performed an alleged rug pulling scam on buyers amid the token's official launch yesterday.
The meme coin's initial announcement already instigated some online buzz and a few comments here and there, but few people anticipated that the token would crash dramatically shortly after its release, leading to allegations of a rug pull — a type of scam in which developers abandon a project after cashing out, leaving investors with worthless tokens.
I'm down around $20,000 right now on the $HAWK tokenI really hope that @HalieyWelchX can provide us with some roadmap updates or something I for one am completely shocked and surprised by the way this turned outplease send help asap pic.twitter.com/iUUMhWW87F
— AshRobin 🐶 (@ashrobinqt) December 4, 2024
A lot of reactions flooded social media from both the public and community members, with many expressing outrage and disbelief attempting to point the blame at who was responsible for the incident.
Let's delve into the details surrounding the $HAWK rug pull scam, the allegations surrounding the parties involved and Haliey Welch's response to the incident.
What Is The '$HAWK Rug Pull Scam' And What Exactly Happened?
The $HAWK rug pull scam accusations surfaced on December 4th, 2024, mere hours after influencer and meme celeb Haliey Welch (also known as the "Hawk Tuah Girl") shared a post on her X account about the launch of the new Solana blockchain token, which was initially announced a week prior.
Hawk is live!!!HAWKThXRcNL9ZGZKqgUXLm4W8tnRZ7U6MVdEepSutj34 pic.twitter.com/9GFgYwpeFA
— Haliey Welch (@HalieyWelchX) December 4, 2024
The cryptocurrency initially saw tremendous success, reaching a market cap of nearly $500 million shortly after its release. However, in a span of a few hours, the token's value plummeted to around a valuation of just $41.7 million, one of the biggest devalues recorded of a prominent meme coin.
To understand the magnitude of the incident, a rug pull occurs when developers abandon a project and withdraw all liquidity, leaving investors with worthless tokens. In this case, rumors began swirling that Welch's team controlled approximately 97 percent of the token supply and began selling as soon as the launch occurred.
These allegations led to widespread speculation about potential insider trading and market manipulation within the burgeoning meme coin community.
However, it was later revealed that 285 investors joined the presale for $HAWK before its launch. Of those, 155 of them sold all or a portion of their holdings, totaling $3.3 million being sold from that group, and 130 of them sold none.
This subsequently shifted the blame among some to so-called "snipers," which are investors that buy large quantities of newly minted meme tokens at launch, being responsible for the rapid crash and not Welch and her team. As of the time of writing, it's unknown who exactly is responsible for the alleged rug pull, with some pointing fingers at the investors and others at Welch's team.
How Did 'Hawk Tuah Girl' Haliey Welch Respond To The Rug Pulling Allegations?
Haliey Welch's team quickly replied to the rug pulling claims as they spread across the internet in early December 2024, tweeting that they hadn’t sold any tokens and asserting that they had launched the coin on a decentralized liquidity protocol designed to minimize the risk of sniping.
Welch went a step further by creating an audio session on X, engaging directly with her followers and discussing the concerns raised about the $HAWK token. This action arguably backfired, however, as clips from this session were shared widely, particularly by accounts like DramaAlert, highlighting her efforts to approach the situation transparently amid growing frustrations from investors.
Hawk Tuah PRESSED by Investigator Coffeezilla for scamming millions allegedly. pic.twitter.com/evWizLYgj1
— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) December 5, 2024
How Did Netizens React To Hawk Tuah Girl's Crypto Scam Rumor?
Many netizens had little mercy on Haliey Welch's scandalous $HAWK token venture, expressing their disappointment and anger as the controversy rapidly exploded online.
Earlier today, YouTuber Cr1TiKaL uploaded a 24-minute long video from a recent stream recapping the main events of the $HAWK meme coin scandal, accumulating a whopping million views in just six hours. Other commentators, including YouTuber Dolan Dark, also began discussing it as word continued to spread about the debacle.
Cr1TiKaL and fellow YouTubers weren't the only ones to comment on the alleged scam, as thousands of people who invested in the token posted memes and tweets infuriated by Haliey Welch's venture.
For example, on December 4th, 2024, Redditor u/ViscountBurrito posted a screenshot from X to the /r/BrandNewSentence subreddit highlighting the absurd phrase, "I am a huge fan of Hawk Tuah but you took my life savings," inside the X user's tweet about losing $35,000 of their life savings to the $HAWK token.
For the full history of $HAWK Rug Pull, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.
