Hawk Tuah resurfaces following meme coin debacle

Hailey Welch, aka Hawk Tuah girl, is once again talking tuah her audience.

After 15 days of silence following the release and subsequent crash of her memecoin, $HAWK, Welch released a statement on Friday saying she is cooperating with legal proceedings and referring affected parties to a law firm (read it here).

What happened: The Hawk memecoin was launched December 4. It quickly reached a $500 million market cap, before plummeting by 90+% to a ~$42 million market cap.

• Critics labeled $HAWK a potential pump-and-dump scheme, an illegal tactic where a token’s value is artificially inflated before large-scale sell-offs by insiders, leaving new entrants holding a worthless, oral sex-themed bag.
• Welch, the public face of the token, claimed she and her team had not sold a single token. However, data from Bubblemaps challenged her statement, revealing that insiders controlled 96% of the token’s supply, Crypto.News reports.

Anywhoo: A lawsuit has been filed against Welch on behalf of 12 individuals, who collectively lost ~$150,000 investing in the celebrity’s meme coin, per court documents.

🪙 Zoom out: In 2023, the FBI received 69,000+ public complaints concerning financial fraud related to cryptocurrency. Estimated losses with a nexus to cryptocurrency totaled $5.6+ billion.