Online star Hawk Tuah girl 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.