Hawk Tuah Girl Under Fire For Disastrous Meme Coin Launch
So many cultural references in the title, I feel like I need to explain.
“Hawk Tuah Girl” refers to a young lady named Hailey Welch.
A few months ago she became an overnight sensation for describing how to… uh… keep a man happy.
Since that infamous interview, Ms. Welch has used her newfound fame to donate to charities (she loves animals), meet other famous people, and even start a podcast (Talk Tuah got as high as #5 on the top U.S. podcasts list.)
It’s perhaps the most famous someone has ever gotten from a viral video that’s barely worth a laugh – and she’s been milking it for all it’s worth. And you can hardly blame her – if people are still going to give her attention, why wouldn’t she? It’s doubtful that even she thought her fifteen minutes of fame would extend for months.
Her most recent endeavor, however, has landed her in some hot water.
This week Welch launched a Hawk Tuah meme coin. So, what is a meme coin?
Without getting too deep into the weeds, meme coins are a form of cryptocurrency similar to the most famous crypto, Bitcoin. Meme coins come in many varieties, but most are very small in actual value and more of a novelty than a true investment vehicle. They’re generally used as a form of gambling, and some have gone as far as to call them “voluntary pyramid schemes,” as the coins are based on greater fool theory (only having value because a “greater fool” will but it).
Crytptocurrency can be traded, similar to stocks and bonds. After her crypto $HAWK went public on Wednesday, it exploded more than 900% in initial trading, reaching a market capitalization of almost $500,000,000. This doesn’t mean that $500 million was invested in the coin, it’s the coin’s implied total value calculated from multiplying the supply of the coin to it’s current price.
Regardless, over $1 million was invested, as evidenced by Welch netting $1.3 million by selling her coins to new “investors.”
Just as quickly, $HAWK lost 95% of it’s value, losing investors millions of dollars, as Welch immediately dumped her coins on the market. This is also known as “rugpulling” (as in, pulling the rug out from investors).
The coin has fallen even further, and as of writing, has a market cap of a mere $161k.
A Community Note on Welch’s tweet announcing the coin even warned investors that the coin’s ownership was extremely concentrated.
Did Ms. Welch scam millions from her fans, or was this just another case of “caveat emptor”, buyer beware?
According to an article from Yahoo Finance, “96 percent of $HAWK was concentrated in one cluster of related wallets as of Wednesday afternoon, indicating a high degree of coordination in these transactions.”
Her “crypto team” has had few answers about what exactly took place, leading to even more speculation.
While there is earning potential in cryptocurrency (Bitcoin crossed the $100,000 mark recently), investing large sums of money in meme coins then complaining about it has drawn the ire of many online commenters.
If a crypto I owned or created increased in value significantly, I would sell out immediately too. As far as I am concerned, crypto is worth NOTHING until you cash out for legal tender.
The good news: Hailey Welch is a new addition to the “Most Useless People in the US” club.
The bad news: Amazingly, she’s even lower on the list than Jojo Siwa.