‘Hawk Tuah’ girl Haliey Welch’s memecoin launch didn’t go too well. Here is what happened.

Haliey Welch, the girl behind the “Hawk Tuah” video that went viral over the summer, has since grown up, growing a huge social media presence before launching her own podcast. But it seems his luck in the public sphere may have run out.

On Wednesday, Welch followed in the footsteps of celebrities like Iggy Azalea and Cardi B when she launched her own memecoin, $HAWK. However, within minutes of the launch, things started to go wrong. Here’s how it all played out.

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What is Haliey Welch’s $HAWK token?

In short, it is one of the many memecoins on the Solana blockchain. Welch teased the launch in late November, hinted at a possible memecoin launch on his podcast in an interview with entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and shared a call to X (formerly of Twitter) of a company called OverHere, which launched the token on his behalf.

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“$HAWK is not just a Meme Coin, it’s part of a culture,” reads the token’s description on the site here. “Haliey uses her meme to bring her entire community together. From: TikTok, Speak Thu podcast listeners, merchandise buyers, and even his needy supporters. Hundreds of thousands of non-crypto users will be hooked by $HAWK because Haliey makes it easy, fun, and engaging. If you like Haliey, you like memes. And $HAWK is where it comes in.”

Here is the first series of X again said that $HAWK is “not just another token launch,” arguing that it will help non-crypto users while transparency first.

So where did it go wrong?

What happened to the implementation of $HAWK?

Shortly after the launch of $HAWK, Welch X’s post was quickly discovered with a Community warning that 96 percent of the token supply appears to be held by 10 connected wallets. Wallets are anonymous (at least to some extent), but when such a large percentage of one token is owned by a few, the risks are obvious – if these people start selling, the value of the token can decrease.

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As you can see in the chart above by blockchain data analytics display, Bubblemaps, $HAWK soared to a market peak of nearly $500 million within minutes of its launch, before quickly dropping back down again. At the time of writing the coin has a market capitalization of $36.6 million. In short, many people who bought the coin during those opening times lost money on it.

What does Haliey Welch say about $HAWK?

Welch and the OverHere team tried to do damage control in the hours after the launch, saying that “Haliey’s team did not sell any tokens” and trying to blame the shooters (people using bots to quickly buy tokens at the cheapest price possible). Let them go “Hawkanomics” which appears to indicate that Welch’s tokens (10 percent of the supply) are locked up for 12 months.

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All at last joined X Spaces talking about the launch, Welch left after an hour saying “he’s going to bed.” The OverHere team promised to “be back tomorrow” and they’re not going anywhere.

However, for people who may have bought the token shortly after launch, only to find its value melting as quickly as others sold it, that may not be much comfort.