Overview

Hawk Tuah Girl's $HAWK Meme Coin Rug Pull Scandal, also known as $HAWK Token Rug Pull Controversy, refers to an online controversy involving an alleged rug pull (a cryptocurrency scam in which developers withdraw liquidity or suddenly abandon a project, resulting in the token’s price devaluing immensely) surrounding Hawk Tuah Girl Haliey Welch's meme coin $HAWK. The meme coin was launched on the Solana (SOL) blockchain in early December 2024, soaring to a market cap of roughly $500 million before crashing below $60 million in just 20 minutes, which sparked rumors that Welch's team reportedly held 97 percent of the token supply and immediately started selling upon launch, liquidifying the cryptocurrency. Welch tweeted about the rug pulling rumors after they spread online, stating her team had not "sold one token and not 1 KOL was given 1 free token." Investigations into the incident over the following day allegedly pointed to "snipers" (crypto investors who buy vast quantities of new meme tokens) being to blame for the crash.

Background

On December 4th, 2024, internet personality and meme celebrity Haliey Welch, known as the "Hawk Tuah Girl" online, launched her own meme coin called $HAWK on the Solana blockchain.

That day, Welch uploaded a video to her official X^[1] / Twitter account (@HalieyWelchX) about the token's launch (seen below), amassing over 6 million views and 5,000 likes in a day.

A few hours after the $HAWK token release, the cryptocurrency news X^[2] account @SolanaFloor posted a screenshot of Haliey Welch's meme coin, claiming the token launched on Solana and "soared to $500M before crashing below $60M in just 20 minutes." The post (seen below) amassed more than 1.5 million views and 7,400 likes in a day.

That day and over the following 24 hours, numerous crypto news websites also covered the alleged $HAWK rug pulling scam and the accusations against Welch and her team, such as Crypto News^[3] and Coin Telegraph.^[4]

On December 5th, 2024, the New York Post^[9] published an article covering the scandal, noting that DexScreener^[11] data (seen below) showed the meme coin hit a $490 million market cap shortly after its launch but plummeted around 91 percent within three hours, carrying a valuation of $41.7 million.

The X^[10] account @bubblemaps posted a thread on December 5th about the controversy, explaining that 96 percent of the supply for the meme coin was purportedly held by one cluster of crypto wallets and that 285 investors joined the presale for $HAWK. Of those, 155 of them sold all or a portion of their holdings, totaling $3.3 million being sold from that group following the launch, and 130 of them sold none (seen below).

This subsequently sparked a backlash among social media users, particularly on X, about "snipers" (investors that buy large quantities of newly minted meme tokens at launch) being responsible for the rapid crash.^[9]

Developments

Hawk Tuah Girl's Response

Amid the rug pulling rumors and the token plunging 90 percent since its launch, the Hawk Tuah Girl tweeted^[5] on December 4th, 2024, writing that her team hadn’t "sold any tokens," adding that they had launched the token on decentralized liquidity protocol Meteora to reduce sniping risk. The tweet (seen below) received roughly 2.8 million views and 6,100 likes in a few hours.

Haliey Welch also created an X Space audio session on December 5th to discuss the scandal with her followers, as @DramaAlert^[8] shared a clip from one of the sessions claiming the Hawk Tuah Girl was "pressed by Investigator Coffeezilla for scamming millions allegedly." The video (seen below) has amassed more than 596,000 views and 10,000 likes in a day.

Online Reactions

The $HAWK token's launch sparked outrage online, especially on X and Reddit, where netizens who had purchased the meme coin posted about their losses over the coin's liquidity.

For instance, on December 4th, 2024, X^[6] user @ashrobinqt posted a video commenting on the $HAWK rug pull scandal, writing, "I'm down around $20,000 right now on the $HAWK token." The video (seen below) received more than 406,000 plays and 1,400 likes in a day.

Also on December 4th, Redditor^[7] u/ViscountBurrito posted a screenshot from X to the /r/BrandNewSentence subreddit, writing the peculiar 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 incident. The post (seen below) accumulated over 9,200 upvotes and 1,100 comments in a day.

On December 5th, 2024, numerous YouTubers also covered the controversy surrounding the Hawk Tuah meme coin launch, including YouTuber Dolan Dark, who received over 76,000 views in six hours (shown below, left), and Upper Echelon, who garnered over 60,000 views in 10 hours (shown below, right).

Also on December 5th, YouTuber Coffeezilla uploaded a video titled "exposing the hawk tuah scam" to his second channel voidzilla discussing the scandal, which notably included a response from "HAWK TUAH LAWYER" in a pinned comment that read, "I watched the video. Just to clarify--the 50% of net proceeds mentioned was from the allocation of tokens (10%, locked for one year, with 3-year vest thereafter). And wouldn’t be realized until if/when she sold them. Out of her 50% she would have to pay her non-crypto team too, so in reality, she would likely only hold 3.5% of the …" The video received over 1.5 million views, 98,000 likes and 13,700 comments in 16 hours (seen below).

Search Interest

External References