What do you do when celebrity status suddenly comes knocking? Well, you ride that wave to the fullest, which Hailey Welch, of the “hawk tuah” fame, did. The 22-year-old coined a catchy phrase from a mundane act and built a to-die-for social media following, even launching a meme coin.
But if she had hoped for a fairytale ending, she had another thing coming. How? The unraveling of her Hawk Tuah (HAWK) coin has soiled her reputation and left her vulnerable to prosecution.
Crypto influencer @ShurikenTrade has succinctly captured Hailey’s predicament in a series of X posts. The influencer labeled the “Hawk Tuah Girl” a fraudster who knowingly took advantage of her fans to enrich herself.
Want to steal 50 million dollars?
— Shuriken (@ShurikenTrade) December 6, 2024
Well, the Hawk Tuah girl did.
She launched a coin, rugged it, and then shamelessly went to sleep like nothing happened.
Here's how Hawk Tuah stole $50M from her fans 🧵 pic.twitter.com/3e3hrBxQE4
Who’s to blame for HAWK’s debacle?
The influencer’s post received mixed reactions. Some people attacked her while others diverted the blame elsewhere. For example, take X user Sonny Day who compared the mess to money laundering thus trying to pin down Hailey for it. Some others, such as American Luxury Interiors were more specific, telling her to pay back the investors before ending up like Sam Bankman Fried.
Meanwhile, other users tore into the investors themselves. Trigger, for instance, said in an expletive-punctuated response that those who lost their funds deserved it. Her thoughts resonated with fellow commenters Rogers Marques and Flow In, who held that Hailey’s fans had freely put their money in the coin. Another user, big-time woke guy, sarcastically quipped that anyone who’d invested in HAWK shouldn’t be allowed to have or use money.
Still, other commenters presented Hailey as a victim of the HAWK development team’s scam. Melissa Perrow, for example, doubted Hailey’s technical capacity and cunningness to pull off such an elaborate con game in the short period she’s been in the spotlight. Crown Batman insisted that “The Hawk Tuah Girl” was a newbie in crypto who didn’t know what she was getting into. He concluded that other people who were more experienced in crypto must have influenced her to join the scheme.
The HAWK fiasco highlights the need for more education on crypto investments
A major lesson from HAWK’s collapse is that people need to increase their knowledge of cryptocurrencies. Many crypto enthusiasts have fallen for scams after putting their money into projects that they did not research. There is also the question of how to deal with the FOMO that some projects and influences peddle to people aimlessly.
The crypto community is eager to know what Hailey and other project influencers will face. To this end, at least one law firm has called on affected investors who wished to file legal complaints against the project and its owners to do so. While all this was happening, Hailey and her team continued asserting that their dealings with the investors were lawful.
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