Viral influencer Haliey Welch has recently launched her own meme-inspired cryptocurrency called Hawk Tuah ($HAWK) on the Solana network, but the launch was mired in controversy as it saw a quick pump before insiders seemingly dumped their holdings, leading to a correction of over 90%.
According to market data, the rice of Welch’s meme-inspired cryptocurrency surged to a high of 0.049 SOL per token, before quickly plunged to around 0.0035 SOL per token at the time of writing. At its peak, the cryptocurrency’s market capitalization hit $490 million, before it plunged to little over $35 million according to data from Dexscreener.
🚨INFLUENCER RUG PULL🚨Haliey Welch, also known as "Hawk Tuah" girl, launched a token earlier todayMinutes later, it got rugged with a 93% dropdown90% of the supply was held in one cluster + insiders earned millions by snipping the token launch and dumping it on retail pic.twitter.com/hd9khELT4e
— De.Fi Antivirus Web3 🛡️ (@De_FiSecurity) December 5, 2024
Data from Bubblemaps suggests that insiders held around 97.5% of the cryptocurrency’s supply and quickly sold them on the market as soon as its market capitalization started rising, leading to the massive price plunge.
Responding to the controversy and rug pull allegations, Welch said on social media that the team behind the project didn’t sell any tokens, and that key opinion leaders (KOLs) hadn’t received a single free token. Welch’s team suggested that the team had a 10% allocation locked for one year and vested for three years, while the rest of the tokens “are distributed into the different wallets as according to the tokenomics.”
Copy and pasting:Hawkanomics:Team hasn’t sold one token and not 1 KOL was given 1 free tokenWe tried to stop snipers as best we could through high fee’s in the start of launch on @MeteoraAG Fee’s have now been dropped pic.twitter.com/E7xN9VmCrx
— Haliey Welch (@HalieyWelchX) December 4, 2024
The team added that it seeded 0.3% of the tokens to a liquidity pool on Solana’s leading decentralized exchange Radium for liquidity, while 3% were seeded into a Meteora liquidity pool and burned.
The team justified it added high fees at launch in a bid to prevent token snipers, but data shows that some wallets did manage to snipe HAWK seconds after it was launched, acquiring large portions of its supply before selling it.
Several users on the microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter) reported significant losses from investments in the meme-inspired cryptocurrency, with one user sharing a screenshot of their wallet revealing they lost $43,000 in the token.
Various users reported filing reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Hailey Welch and the team behind the project “for rigging investors.”
Featured image via Unsplash.
