Online star faces crypto coin criticism

Haliey Welch, known mostly as the star of the viral “Hawk Tuah” meme, is facing criticism after her newly launched cryptocurrency nosedived in value.

Her “Hawk” digital coin hit a $490m market cap shortly after it launched on Wednesday, before suddenly losing more than 95% of its value within hours.

This has led some, including YouTube cryptocurrency investigator Coffeezilla, to accuse Ms Welch of scamming investors with a “pump and dump” – where the people behind a coin hype up its price before launch, then sell it for profit.

She has denied allegations that her team sold any of the tokens they owned.

The BBC has approached Ms Welch’s representatives for comment.

“Team hasn’t sold one token,” she wrote in a copy and pasted post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.

She added that no “KOL” (key opinion leaders) were gifted a free token.

Ms Welch had previously distributed free Hawk tokens to some fans ahead of the launch across social media.

Hawk launched on the Solana blockchain at around 22:00 GMT on Wednesday, and its market capitalisation soared to highs of $490m shortly after.

However it fell sharply from this high to around $60m just 20 minutes later.

Fans and investors have accused Ms Welch and her team of “misleading” and “betraying” them and suggested the launch had been a “rug pull” – where promoters of a cryptocurrency draw in buyers, only to stop trading activity and make off with money raised from sales.

A community note on Ms Welch’s X post contests her explanation, saying her team had been selling their Hawk coins since launch.

Coffeezilla, real name Stephen Findeisen, also claimed that Hawk gave “insiders” an advantage.

“Unfortunately with situations like this, they’re not targeting crypto bros, they’re mostly targeting actual fans who have never been involved in the crypto space before,” he said in a video viewed more than 1.4 million times.

He accused Ms Welch’s team of “profiting from a rug pull”.

“These people were unwilling to take any accountability” of the “Hawk Tuah scam”, he claimed, after sharing a clip of him speaking to some of the people behind the cryptocurrency.

Ms Welch’s post on X claimed that her team attempted to prevent so-called “snipers”, who buy and sell cryptocurrencies quickly at moments when they are likely to make the most money from a gap in buy and sell price – sometimes using automated trading tools – by imposing higher fees on one exchange.

The team behind the cryptocurrency, OverHere, has dismissed other claims about the launch in an X post.

It stressed that “Haliey’s Team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever”.

Meme coins such as this have been booming in popularity due to their jokey, cheap appeal for investors.

They are often viewed as being less risky than more high profile crypto assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but carry the same dangers – with often no protection for those who lose money on them.

Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex University, told the BBC on Thursday that while more young people are investing in meme coins, many of them are losing money.

Several celebrities or influencers who have ventured into the crypto market have faced similar backlashes.

In 2021, Kim Kardashian was fined $1.26m by US regulators after she failed to disclose that she had been paid to post an advert for a cryptocurrency scheme called EthereumMax.

More recently, YouTuber Logan Paul was accused of misleading fans by promoting crypto coins or investments without divulging his own financial interest in them.

Known online as the “Hawk Tuah girl”, Ms Welch went viral after speaking the onomatopoeia “hawk tuah” – imitating the sound of someone spitting – during an interview in June.

It made the 22-year-old, from Belfast, Tennessee, an overnight internet sensation.

She amassed hundreds of thousands of followers across various social platforms and launched her own merchandise and a podcast called “Talk Tuah”.

Her manager told the Hollywood Reporter in July that she was unique in not having sought out internet fame, having been off social media for mental health reasons for several months before appearing in the now-viral “Hawk Tuah” video.

Rolling Stone has likened her funny, small-town personality to a “Gen Z Dolly Parton”.

Ms Welch told outlet TMZ ahead of Hawk’s launch on Wednesday that she launched it to tackle “a bunch of imposters” pretending to be her and selling their own coins.

“It’s a really good way to get all my fans and community to interact and come together,” she said.