The $HAWK memecoin rode a viral catchphrase to $490 million, then fell 91% in hours

The $HAWK token went live on December 4, 2024, at 5:00 pm EST, built around Haliey Welch — the internet personality known as the 'Hawk Tuah girl' — and launched with the Web3 platform overHere. Early enthusiasm was ferocious: TRM Labs reports the token's market capitalization peaked near $490 million.

It did not last. Within hours the price collapsed 91%, dragging the market cap down to about $41.7 million, according to TRM Labs. On-chain analysts found that a single wallet acquired 17.5% of the total supply seconds after launch and sold it rapidly, while a small cluster of wallets controlled a disproportionate share of the float.

Insiders at the front of the line

The structure, not the meme, is what stings. TRM Labs notes that Welch herself retained 10% of the supply and pledged not to sell for at least a year — but a project-controlled address appears to have funded 'strategic investors' who were then able to sell into the peak. In other words, the damage came from insiders positioned ahead of the public, not from Welch's locked stake.

On December 19, 2024, investors sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (case 1:24-cv-08650), naming overHere Limited, its founder Clinton So, the Tuah the Moon Foundation and promoter Alex Larson Schultz, per court-filing summaries from ClassAction.org. The complaint alleged the sale of unregistered securities and cited 17 investors with more than $151,000 in combined losses. Welch was not named as a defendant.

Welch, who ClassAction.org says received a fixed fee for lending her likeness, publicly said she took the situation 'extremely seriously' and was 'fully cooperating' with lawyers representing those who lost money. In March 2025 her attorney said the SEC had closed its investigation of Welch without findings or monetary sanctions, and the agency does not generally treat memecoins as securities, per CoinCentral.

How to read a celebrity launch

• A famous face is paid promotion, not a guarantee of the token's mechanics or fairness.
• Ask who holds the supply at launch: if snipers or 'strategic investors' can sell at the peak, retail buyers are the exit liquidity.
• A public 'lock-up' on the celebrity's own tokens says nothing about the insiders and market-makers around them.
• Being an unnamed promoter is not the same as being cleared — regulators and plaintiffs pursue the structure, not just the face.

The $HAWK episode became a template for the celebrity-token wave of 2024: viral fame, a thin public float, and a launch engineered so the earliest wallets could cash out first. The catchphrase was free; the tokens were not.

— Sources: [TRM Labs](https://www.trmlabs.com/post/tracking-the-hawk-tuah-memecoin-launch-on-solana) · [ClassAction.org](https://www.classaction.org/news/hawk-tuah-memecoin-investors-file-lawsuit-over-alleged-sale-of-unregistered-securities) · [CoinCentral](https://coincentral.com/sec-clears-hawk-tuah-girl-hailey-welch-in-hawk-token-investigation/)