Hawk Tuah Woman’s Meme Coin Faces Allegations of Rug Pull, Venture Leads Deny Wrongdoing – Decrypt

The “Hawk Tuah” woman launched a meme coin, and—anybody? Any guesses? 

Inform me if you happen to’ve heard this one earlier than: allegations are swirling on-line that the undertaking has been rug pulled, whereas the group behind the crypto token, HAWK, is adamantly denying any wrongdoing. 

On Wednesday night, Hailey Welch, Ms. Tuah herself, launched the HAWK token to a lot fanfare. Inside lower than quarter-hour, the token climbed to a market capitalization of $490 million earlier than instantly collapsing over 93% in worth. 

Apparently, an internet of interconnected wallets offered off huge sums of the token as quickly as the general public started shopping for it—and pocketed over $3 million because of the maneuver. 

Bubblemaps, the on-chain knowledge visualization firm, decided on Thursday that 285 wallets collectively acquired some 96% of HAWK’s provide throughout token presales and giftings. Inside the first minutes of HAWK’s debut, nearly all of these wallets dumped their tokens to make a fast revenue.

Outrage instantly swirled on Crypto Twitter over what seemed to be a basic meme coin rug pull. Welch’s group shortly pushed again in opposition to the allegations, claiming the noticed sell-offs had been customary components of HAWK’s tokenomics roadmap. 

“Hailey’s group has offered completely no tokens in any way,” the group maintained. Welch, in the meantime, claimed no single influencer or KOL (“Key Opinion Chief”) was gifted free tokens.

Twitter customers instantly pointed to the rampant promoting off of huge sums of HAWK by what seemed to be undertaking insiders. 

Bubblemaps instructed Decrypt that their evaluation concluded that whereas the HAWK group itself has not but offered off any tokens, KOLs and “strategic advisors” related to the undertaking have dumped a rare quantity of its provide—resulting in the collapse of its worth instantly following launch. 

Decrypt reached out to Welch’s group concerning these conclusions, however didn’t instantly obtain a response.

Whereas little consensus has but been reached on Welch’s complicity within the saga, Crypto Twitter seems to have firmly made up its thoughts. The undertaking’s rationalization of irregularities throughout HAWK’s launch was swiftly tagged with a Group Be aware that lambasted the put up as deliberately misleading. 

“Hailey is mendacity and can doubtless need to “speak tuah” choose about this,” the word reads.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair. Extra reporting by Ryan Gladwin.