Hawk Tuah Moon or Prison?
I had written memecoin stories before their hype cycle started …
And before life happened and I stopped writing those all together…
But today I felt like doing it again, so here we are.
The beginning
The story started about 5 months ago, when one of those random street interview videos went viral.
What’s a wild move in bed that makes men crazy every time?
That’s the question that Hailey Welch got on-the-street interview in Nashville and now millions know her answer and people on the internet elevated her to celebrity status (I will spare you the whole “the state of society” rant, so don’t worry…).
Unlike the crazy airplane woman though, the Hawk Tuah girl was able to keep her fame alive for longer than 15 minutes. Even more so, she leveraged and monetised it.
She sold branded merchandise, launched the “Talk Tuah” podcast and was paid to appear on different events.
The memecoin
Hawk Tuah became one of the most popular memes and a few months later it was also going to become a memecoin too…
What’s the big deal though?
Celebrity tokens and memecoins are launched too often these days. Most of them are rugs, majority of those celebrities are grifters… It’s an old story - who cares, right?
Well many cared enough to put their money into $Hawk and … yup (spoiler alert), lost it.
At this point, unfortunately that’s not surprising at all though…
Anyway, let’s check what happened with this one.
At the end of last month Hailey let everyone know that she was launching a memecoin on Dec 4th.
Where?
Of course where the epicenter of the degen shitshow is: Solana (in my opinion exactly where her shitcoin belonged…).
She started collecting SOL wallet addresses for free airdrop…
Then the 4th of December came and she tweeted a 3 sec video saying the coin is live
And then…
This happened…
The drop was so steep and fast that the memecoin degens who put their hopes of getting a Lambo on $HAWK profits ended up being the exit liquidity…
Probably they’re already used to it by now…I’ve even heard some say it’s “part of the game”, but still even if they ask for it - they may not deserve it… or … do they?
The tokenomics
For those who have seen similar charts and still have no clue what happens behind the scenes - here is the summary of what seems to have happened in this particular case.
Let’s look at “tokenomics” (I can imagine the talks about it among the team while coming up with the numbers lol…)
Hayley was told to copy and paste it for us guys :)
So here it is
According to the team those 17% were SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) - basically presale…
But who in their right mind makes those FULLY UNLOCKED?...
Meaning those who get them can dump those tokens at the same minute those are issued … which is exactly what it feels like they did.
Now that’s what the team says… which may or may not be true.
Having them unlocked is already bad enough… but hey we’re in crypto - who knows who those wallets belong to… maybe the team rolled out a few hundred wallets themselves?...
Not saying that’s the case - all I am saying is we can see which are those wallets but there is no way to prove who they belong to - is there?
Whoever those wallets belonged to - they already made tons of money at this point.
Now compare that 17% to the miserable 2% allocated to the public sale…
One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know how wrong and how fast this could go, right?
Ok so now add to it the fact that many were not even able to get anything from that 2%.
Why?
Well because a sniper jumped in, sniped most of it - and then immediately sold it … walking out with millions (unlike you guys - he can now buy a Lambo!)
Who else made millions although it might look like they themselves did not sell a single token?
The team.
Looks like they had a fee set - which means that thanks to the sniper and other trades they too made substantial amount in fees.
So all these people above made millions… sorry to say - at the expense of those who aped into $HAWK.
The “iconic” X space
At some point degens realised what happened and obviously the accusations about the whole thing being a rug emerged. Most of their tweets got community noted to warn those who were still unaware.
Of course everyone was waiting for a reaction, response, comms from the team.
And they eventually got what they were waiting for - X space with Hailey and co…
Which was later deleted from their accounts…
Was that because it was a complete disaster?
Maybe…
But hey - we all know nothing disappears from the internet right?
Here is the full recording for you
Below is a short recap:
It started by the “dev” or whichever his role in the team was, who spoke for the first 10 minutes.
Here are few messages that stood out from his “speech”
You are not the target audience - this is not for crypto crowd but rather her fans
If you guys are in crypto you probably are mentally ill
You guys should be kissing my fucking ass…
Most of you we don’t want you in the community - you’re not great people
Send it to 0 couldn’t care less ….
Hawk Tuah is a cultural meme - this is not a celebrity token
You can go post shitty charts all day doesn’t fucking matter I don’t give a shit
Coffeezilla came on stage to ask questions and share his viewpoint. He was talked over and they kept muting him.
So he left and opened his own space called Straight Tuah Jail -
Funnily enough there is Straight Tuah Prison (TUAH) token now out there… (don’t think it’s related to the space though:)
In short none of the questions were addressed.
There were talks about a registered foundation in Cayman Islands, the costs paid for the foundation being $1m (not sure for what - director salaries, legal? Was not clear), them NOT going anywhere, etc…
Hailey kept saying she’s just here to have fun and pretended she did not understand much about the crypto space but learning every day...
The “iconic” space shut down as soon as Nick asked how much the team was being paid because Hailey interrupted mid sentence saying “Anywho I’m gonna go to bed I’ll see you guys tomorrow”...
Aftermath
Let’s see what happens tomorrow when Hawk Tuah girl wakes up …
This is not the first story… and it’s not gonna be the last either.
Just like in all of those there was a small group of people who made millions at the expense of many people who lost.
Noone felt accountable.
This too will probably be forgotten.
Similar stories with the same outcome but different flavours will still be happening…
So I guess I’ll “meet” you here when I write the next one :)
P.S. Saw this after writing the article - would be a shame not to share
P.S. Oh and I am wondering how Mark Cuban feels about it or what did he do with his $HAWK tokens
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