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Social media star and podcaster Haliey Welch, who rose to viral fame in June for her raunchy “Hawk Tuah” catchphrase, has spoken out for the first time in weeks, after the multimillion-dollar collapse of a Hawk Tuah-themed cryptocurrency memecoin.
“I take this situation extremely seriously and want to address my fans, the investors who have been affected, and the broader community,” Welch wrote in a statement on X.
“I am fully cooperating with and am committed to assisting the legal team representing the individuals impacted, as well as to help uncover the truth, hold the responsible parties accountable, and resolve this matter,” she added, directing followers to a law firm currently suing over the coin.
Welch last addressed the public in a late-night X Spaces audio stream on the day of the December 4 launch of the $HAWK coin on the Solana blockchain, which reportedly soared to a $490 million market capitalization then fell 95 percent within minutes. That day, she defended herself from allegations of insider trading, writing on X, her “team hasn’t sold one token.”
Critics alleged that snipers — entities that snap up large amounts of a token supply at launch — caused the price-drop and held nearly all of the coin’s supply. A single wallet managed to buy nearly 20 percent of $HAWK’s supply and flip it for a $1.3 million profit two hours later, according to Cointelegraph.
On Thursday, investors in the coin hit $HAWK’s creators with a lawsuit in New York federal court, seeking over $150,000 in damages and alleging they’d lost thousands on the coin, which they claimed was an illegal unregistered security.
The suit accuses the coin of leveraging Welch’s “extensive social media following” to “market the Token as a groundbreaking cryptocurrency project,” while attempting to “skirt the American securities laws” and making “no serious attempt to restrict purchasers” to buyers outside the U.S., creating a “speculative frenzy.”
The suit names overHere Ltd., a Web3 crypto launchpad platform that helped facilitate the sale; Clinton So, the company’s founder; the Tuah the Moon Foundation, an entity that allegedly sold an allocation of coins; and Alex Larson Schultz, a musician and crypto promoter.
Welch herself is not a named defendant, but she promoted the coin offering heavily on social media and discussed it on her podcast during an episode with billionaire investor Mark Cuban.
Cuban has defended Welch in recent days.
“It wasn’t something she fully understood,” he said during a podcast with tech journalist Jules Terpak. “But she trusted the people around her.”
Both overHere and So have denied wrongdoing, and have defended Welch.
“We have been extremely transparent about the limited scope and extent of our involvement in the Hawk Tuah token project. We are confident that we have done nothing wrong,” a spokesperson for overHere toldThe Daily Mail on Thursday.
“Haliey’s Team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever,” the company wrote on X on December 4. “Haliey’s Team has 10% allocation which is locked for 1 year and vested over 3 years.”
The company has also said it took “zero fees” and “zero profit” during the launch.
The suit alleges that overHere created the Tuah the Moon Foundation, its name a play on Welch’s fame and the crypto slang of an increasing asset going “to the moon.”
According to the suit, overHere constructed the foundation to sell a 17 percent allocation of the $HAWK tokens. The suit also alleges the foundation controlled a wallet collecting fees on token transactions, raking in roughly $3 million.
overHere has blamed Schultz, who uses the moniker Doc Hollywood, claiming in a tweet he “controlled all token decisions, fees, treasury” and that “Doc’s team vanished when things got hard.”
The Independent has contacted Schultz for comment.
