February 4, 2025 • 63 mins
Between June and December 2024, Haliey Welch completed one of the most astounding main character runs of all time. Beginning as someone with no social media, catapulted to fame all but against her will after talking to on-the-street YouTubers targeting drunk women, the end of the year saw Haliey "Hawk Tuah" Welch acting as the face of exploitative memecoin scandal. In our final part of the Hawk Tuah series, we look into the history of crypto, a play by play of the Hawk Coin scandal, and what it means when you scam before you can get scammed.
Follow Molly White's work here: https://www.mollywhite.net/linktree/
Watch Dan Olson's "Line Goes Up" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
Watch Coffeezilla's "exposing the hawk tuah scam" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUHq8AWR1Rg
List of Displaced Black Families in Altadena: https://lasentinel.net/displaced-black-families-gofund-me-directory.html
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi everybody. Jamie here with just a few notes up top.
Thank you so much for listening to the Hawk Tuus series.
If you haven't listened to the previous parts, I would
recommend you do so. I just wanted to mention, because
it doesn't come up in the space of this episode,
that we have done our due diligence. We reached out
to Haley Welch's team, we heard back, and then we
(00:27):
were slow ghosted to date, so now you know. Also,
if you enjoy the show, you can head over to
our reddit board. Normally I wouldn't suggest going on a
reddit board, but it's actually very lovely and wholesome our
slash sixteenth minute.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
If you have ideas for future.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Episodes you'd like to see, or if you just want
to have a nice time with the nice listeners of
this show. Also one more note. The documentary I'm talking
about towards the beginning of this episode is by Dan Olsen.
It is called Line Goes Up. It's on his YouTube
channel Folding Ideas. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Okay, talk to apart three Let's go.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Sixteen six sixteen.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
a look at the Internet's characters of the day and
see how their big moment affected them and what it
says about us.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And the Internet and today. In a truly grand finale, we.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Are going to take a look at the scam that
took down viral star Aley Welch aka Hawk to a
Girl for now at least. If there's one thing I've
learned in the course of making this show, it's to
never count a diva out. And for many of you,
this may be a moment in Haley's online career you
(02:34):
thought would have come much earlier in the series, her
crypto scam crypto scams being something that I have postponed
trying to understand for half a decade at least, But
for everyone, a day does come, and so half mine
and perhaps so half yours. So I guess just a disclaimer.
(02:54):
If you do understand crypto, even in a basic way,
this part may be a little frustrating for you. But
if you don't, I will walk you through this as
best I can, because this is the moment that I
suspect most people are going to remember about Hailey Welch.
While most people didn't know much more than her original
viral moment up until this time, and maybe some checked
(03:17):
out Talk TUA. This the crypto scam became the legacy.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The Wholk two girl might be going to prison for
the dumbest scam in history.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Hawk twa girl also known as Hailey Welch, launched her
mean cooin hawk last week. The coin soared to a
market cap around four hundred million dollars be fourteen game.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
This girl just ruined her entire career and honestly.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
We all saw this coming, right.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So how does this crypto launch for hawkcoin go from
being Haley Doc Hollywood and the team hailing it as
the biggest opportunity in years to Doc Hollywood calling everyone
who had invested mentally ill in under twenty four hours. Well, first,
let's set the scene a brief history of crypto alongside
(04:08):
a recap of Haley Welch's life. Attempts at cryptocurrency were
underway years before Haley was born. The idea was first
conceived in nineteen eighty three, was acknowledged by the NSA
in nineteen ninety six, and systems like BitGold were bandied
about before the Internet went mainstream. And finally the technology
(04:32):
ran smoothly enough to announce formally.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Over a decade after that.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Hailey Welch was born in two thousand and two to
a lower class, fractured family in Tennessee. Her earliest years
were under two consecutive George W. Bush presidencies, heading into
kindergarten around the time that the housing bubble in the
US got really bad during the mid two thousands. Then
in late two thousand and seven, the Great Recession began
(05:00):
and it had a massive effect on Tennessee, slamming the
job market for years to come. And in a complete coincidence,
I'm sure, as the public's faith in big banking understandably plummeted,
the idea of cryptocurrency finally became palatable in the mainstream.
(05:22):
In two thousand and nine. Bitcoin was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto,
who Hayley Welch not for nothing, regularly parodied on X
calling herself Hoktoshi to a moto. I know, really creative. Anyways,
crypto continues to grow and shrink in a pretty niche
market in these early years. Silk Road is launched in
(05:43):
twenty twelve and then is shut down by the FBI
several years later. The way that the crypto blockchain works.
At its simplest is that it's a decentralized activity log
of financial transactions that relies on a con census mechanism
among users that often ends up sowing a fundamental distrust
(06:06):
in understanding what these numbers on this blockchain actually mean. Basically,
it requires a hell of a lot of checks and
balances for users to get clear answers, and that kind
of labor can be very time consuming for someone who's
just an individual doing crypto in earnest alone. So most
(06:27):
people you hear that have been very successful in crypto
have a team doing this labor for them in order
to maximize their own personal profit.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Crypto, as professor of.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Computer science and Economics Jen Lansky qualified, requires the following. First,
its value is maintained through consensus and not a big
bank central authority. Second, the system will decide when new
cryptocurrency can be minted. Third, ownership can be proven only
in the crypto blockchain. Fourth, crypto can be transferred, but
(07:02):
transaction statements can only be accessed by the current owner.
And finally, if two ownership changes are requested at once
on the blockchain, only one of these transactions can be
acted on something that ends up screwing over a lot
of people down the line. It seems like as crypto
becomes more normalized, even in niche internet communities, interest then
(07:26):
moves to a currency called ethereum, a version of cryptocurrency
that became very successful by marketing itself on the idea
that crypto bypasses government corruption and doesn't just force you
to sign up for a new set of unregulated corruptions.
For years, as Dan Olsen explains, there were these unbased
(07:49):
rumors that various countries Brazil Venezuela were on the brink
of switching their entire economies to cryptocurrency, but this was
never really true in retrospect. In fact, it was a
result of the effort of crypto boosters making it seem
like the currency was far more popular abroad than it
(08:10):
actually was. After the Ethereum boom came the NFTs, a
crypto gateway of sorts that was something of a play
to get normies into crypto that seemed to work pretty
well at the time for a couple minutes at least.
You probably remember this. NFTs were a craze in the
early twenty twenties, which happens to be another time of
(08:31):
incredible economic despair in which people paid for quote unquote
true digital objects, which many, including me, thought meant that
you were buying the copy, the definitive copy of a
digital artwork. And so, in the early days of its
mainstream popularity, NFTs expanded to the sale of memes. We've
(08:54):
actually talked about it on this show before in our
Overly Attached Girlfriend episode.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
There was this.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Small boom where the major main characters of the two
thousands and the twenty tens took the chance to monetize
their image that in most cases had been involuntarily taken
and co opted from them, and actually made money off
of them.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
For the first time.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
However, as Danielson's documentary explains in great detail, NFTs ended
up being a scam of their own. It was a
way to imply scarcity about an infinitely reproducible image, and
NFTs became synonymous with art during this boom in the
early twenty twenties, first coming into the news when an
(09:39):
artist named people Fine sold sixty nine million dollars worth
of NFTs.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
What's even more.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Relevant, though, is that this sale was made at legacy
auction house Christie's, which gave a whiff of legitimacy to
the project that na fs previously had not had by
a long shot. NFT ended up being the crypto version
of the speculation market or the collector's market, which always crashes.
(10:13):
The example that comes right to mind for me is
beanie babies. When they're first released, you can get them
for about five to seven dollars.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Once they retire, the value goes up.
Speaker 8 (10:23):
In like two years, there were like two hundred and
forty five dollars.
Speaker 9 (10:28):
Stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Thing's worth about four thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
But it goes far back as the tulip bulbspec bubble
of the seventeenth century. We've been overvaluing things that are
ultimately kind of trash.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
For a long time.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
NFTs were perceived as exclusive collectibles, which on most timeline
spoils down to I hope you actually like them, because
they almost never retain their value. Thankfully, I love my
beanie babies, and I don't care that my mom sent
my college fund on them. In line goes up. Jan
Olsen also emphasizes that the marks and the targets for
(11:05):
these cryptos scams aren't the fabulously wealthy that we see
in media. The marks are people somewhere in the middle class,
people with some disposable income who are still long term
financially insecure enough that they'd take a risk on something
as tenuous as.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
A crypto scam.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
As Olsen puts it, the target of these scams are
quote tenuously middle class, socially isolated, and highly responsive to memes.
While this was happening, Haley Welch graduated high school in
twenty twenty in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, beginning
community college but dropping out to focus on her day job.
(11:47):
As we've talked about before, Haley loved her home, her family,
her friends, but unquestionably grew up during a time of
extreme economic and social precarity. It would probably be hard
for her to remember a time before bad job markets
and gun safety drills to evade mass shootings in school,
(12:07):
when all the while, the way to quote unquote make
it in America was shifting from the conventional become a
star model to the Internet version of the become a
star model, become a star, get your grift in, and
get the fuck out of there, which brings us to
meme coins. Meme coins are a newer form of crypto
(12:30):
that are famously unstable and scammy, and saying something is
particularly scammy in the crypto world is really saying something.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Meme coins are exactly what they sound like.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
There are a currency whose relevance depends on the appeal
of the meme personality who is the face of them,
whether that meme is a person or a fictional character
or an idea. The most successful examples, and one that
I think has tragically crossed into the mainstream, is the
Elon Musk touted doge coin, which is based on a
(13:04):
meme of Ashiba Nu who bless his heart, he didn't
see the storm coming. Meme coins of this nature tend
to be sold as crypto on the bizarrely and I
guess aptly named website pump dot fun, and the name
itself is a wink at how many pump and dump
(13:24):
schemes the space has been known for over the years.
The site was started by three guys in their twenties
in London, and this was a space that sort of
facilitated the resurgence of crypto after NFTs sort of took
a turn.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
In the early twenty twenties.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
The New York Times reported that in the front half
of twenty twenty four, one point seven million coins launched,
compared to just two hundred and fifty thousand ish in
the same period of time in twenty twenty three. So
if you've heard about meme coins more.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
It's certainly not an accident.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And stars of the twenty twenty four space outside of Haley,
whose eventual coin was called hawk Coin, were Maga coin,
ear Coin after Donald Trump got shot in the ear,
Baby Trump coin.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
One of the coolest parts of my job being able
to do this every day is seeing different projects. And
I love these Trump meme coins that have come out,
like Maga uh and obviously now baby Trump that's the
one that I am sharing with you now. And you
know what, it makes you smile what?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And there are celebrity coins. Manisphere influencer and convicted criminal
Andrew Tait launched a coin called daddy Coin. Flop rapper
Iggy Azilia started one called mother Coin, there was one
called tom and Jelly. You name a cursed idea, someone
probably tried to launch it as a meme coin last year.
(14:59):
So even though crypto fell out of favor in a
major way in twenty twenty two, pump dot Fun and
these meme coins had a big hand in bringing them
back because of how easy this website made it to
get a crypto coin minted for as low as two dollars,
perhaps a bone chilling ai image of baby Trump and boom,
(15:21):
You've created the stupidest new economy on the planet. But
because the barrier to entry for making meme coins is
so low, this space tends to bring in new people
to crypto, which, as we will learn, is kind of
the perfect setup for a rug pole. In short, a
rug pole is a pretty basic crypto scam that basically
(15:44):
consists of overhyping the eventual value of a meme coin,
promising a lot, and then pulling the rug out from investors,
selling off all of the valuable assets of the token
well in advance, so that everyone else is more or
less complex completely screwed over shortly after the token launches
and the value crashes. I'll let my guests explain it better,
(16:08):
but that's the idea.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
If you're a.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Fan of a certain meme or personality, or for some
reason Iggy Azalea, you could cash in on the popularity
of a meme to lurein investors. The average of whom
as Danielsen says, is a middle class person throwing in
around three hundred and fifty dollars on average, then pulling
the rug and causing them to lose it all. But
(16:32):
here's a weird thing that was striking me the more
I looked into this world. Even the most starter crypto
investors seem to have a basic understanding that crypto is,
to some extent a scam for most people. The true
rug pull, I think is the average investor finding out
(16:54):
that they're not the scammer, they're the scammed. And I
know that plenty of people have said that if you
get scammed by like hawked to a girl or baby Trump,
then you deserve everything that happens to you. And maybe
for you that's true. But for the purposes of this episode,
I want to hold some empathies for these people because
(17:15):
they are being targeted out of desperation. So before we
get back to Haley Welch, it wouldn't be a fair
discussion of cryptocurrency without acknowledging how gigantic and needless crypto's
environmental impact is in exchange for what it does for
the world, which is very little.
Speaker 9 (17:37):
If you wanted to be a crypto miner in the
twenty tens, your home computer might be enough to get
you started. Today you need a bunch of specialized, very
powerful computers. They're known as mining rigs, and they use
a stunning amount of electricity.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So if you're listening and you're into crypto, know that
you are contributing to this problem, which is kind of
ironic because helping the environment was one of the early
claims that crypto advocates made in its early years. They
would cite how much energy and natural resources that conventional
banking generated in comparison, and sure, big banks suck up
(18:17):
a lot of energy, and that is a valid criticism,
but crypto takes up a lot more energy per person.
A UN report from twenty twenty three indicated that bitcoin
mining consumed more energy than the entire country of Pakistan
in the year twenty twenty one. So I usually save
(18:37):
interviews for the ends of these episodes, but there is
truly no one better to shepherd us through the world
of crypto than Molly White, a prolific writer and investigator
of crypto. So I'm going to let her set us
up and we'll hear from her throughout the episode.
Speaker 10 (18:54):
I'm Mollie. I am a crypto researcher and writer. I've
been following the crypto industry for several years now.
Speaker 11 (19:02):
What brought you to this specialty?
Speaker 10 (19:05):
I got started in twenty twenty one. I think when
crypto is going through its major sort of retail moments,
where it seemed like, you know, every news article was
about crypto, and there were ads everywhere, and people were
being told that they needed to buy bitcoin or NFTs
or dogecoin or something like that in order to get
(19:26):
ahead and to make a ton of money and you know,
buy their lambos.
Speaker 12 (19:29):
And around that same time.
Speaker 10 (19:30):
There was a lot of talk about how blockchains and
cryptocurrencies were going to sort of revolutionize the Web and
fix everything that's wrong with the Web. And I've always
been a big web nerd. I was, you know, a
software engineer. I have my own complaints about the Web
as someone who really loves it ultimately, but you know,
has has watched it become this very sort of hyper
(19:52):
capitalized landscape. And so initially I was like, great, let's
fix the Web. I'm in you know, when I was
hearing all this stuff about Web three. But then I
actually started to dig into it and learn more about
it and discovered that, like, wow, a lot of people
are getting scammed and it doesn't feel like anyone is
talking about it at the time. There are a lot
of these like profiles with people who are making it
rich overnight, and you know, the dogecoin millionaire and all
(20:15):
this stuff, and there was like nobody talking about the
downsides of it, which were far more I think important
and widespread.
Speaker 11 (20:23):
For the tech illiterate. What is web three?
Speaker 12 (20:29):
Well, it doesn't.
Speaker 10 (20:29):
Really have a very specific definition, which I think is
part of the point. I think, generally speaking, web three
is just a word that describes taking blockchains and applying
them to web problems. So trying to build well web
services where the blockchain involved is going to be a
web three project.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Just based on the way I've seen crypto talked about
in the last several years, I kind of inherently associate
it with elon scams. Basically, I think of now there
is this sort of like known influencer to cryptoscam pipeline.
When did you first notice this tendency?
Speaker 10 (21:12):
Yeah, I think the whole trend of celebrities getting involved
with crypto projects kicked off sort of around the time
I started paying attention. It had happened before that, So
you know, in twenty seventeen, there was this huge explosion
of what we're called icos, which is similar to an
ipo where a company goes public and suddenly everyone can
buy the stock, but you do it with crypto tokens,
(21:34):
and the idea was like, now you don't have to
go through the SEC registration process, which is extremely challenging
and onerous and helpful at preventing scams. There were celebrities
who got involved in that. You know, at that point
they were like, we're going to be ico investors, but
it was a pretty niche thing, like not that many
people are that excited about icos or IPOs for that matter.
(21:56):
But then in twenty twenty, yeah, I would say twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, we saw a lot of celebrities getting
excited about crypto as not just a way to make money,
although that certainly was a big part of it, but
to sort of promote themselves and to monetize their brands.
And so there were celebrity NFTs, there were celebrities getting
(22:17):
involved in all of these Web three projects that people
were talking about. We saw like Reese Witherspoon changing her
Twitter profile picture to like a World of Women n
f T.
Speaker 12 (22:27):
Yeah, like a lot of people have forgot about that.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
NFTs. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 10 (22:33):
Basketball players were launching NFTs, and you know, celebrities, a
lot of like sort of dalists like Soldier Boy.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I think there was like a Super Bowl celebrity crypto
ad one year that I remember being like, oh, yeah,
this is like really a thing.
Speaker 10 (22:48):
Well yeah, and that's the other part of it is
that celebrities were being used to promote crypto exchanges and
things like that. It was like the crypto super Bowl,
but it was basically just before the collapse. Things like
really Pee with Crypto dot Com had an ad featuring
Matt Damon, FTX had an ad with Larry David. You know,
it was like this really weird moment where like, yeah,
(23:09):
suddenly all of these celebrities were involved. NFTs kind of
fell apart and have I guess been sort of having
a little bit of a revival. But I feel like
the biggest trend recently has been these meme coins, which
is like you don't even have to bother getting an
artist involved. You just make a token with your name
and then you promote it, and you know it's like
less work basically, and you can still make a bunch
(23:31):
of money off of it, or at least that's the claim.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
We're gonna check in with Molly More later to talk
about hawkcoin style scams specifically. But let's get back into
Haley Welch's chaotic end to twenty twenty four when we
come back Cryptua.
Speaker 13 (23:46):
Maybe welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
The Constant is the best episode of Lost. I know
it's a popular opinion, but it's my opinion as well.
And the best line read of all time from Lost
is from season one, episode eighteen.
Speaker 12 (24:16):
Haley talks to her about Sam hearing something and this
is when she says.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
You took and bit the numbers.
Speaker 12 (24:23):
Yes, you took and bit the nimbus.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
She's supposed to be Australian. Shout out to Mike's Mike
And here's the moment you've all been waiting for the
hawk to a crypto scam.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
So after I saw Michael Saylor speak at the bitcoin conference,
I have decided to start putting some money into crypto.
And I just want to say, oh my god, thank
you so much, mister Saylor.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Last week we talked through Haley's media career as the
choice talent of Jake Paul's sports gambling network Better Hailey
was the host of Hawktua, and throughout this time her
future as a crypto girly was teased in the background.
What was also teased was the fact that Haley personally
(25:06):
did not seem to understand how crypto worked.
Speaker 12 (25:10):
Oh yeah, can I give you some tokens?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Are you sure you're I don't know.
Speaker 12 (25:17):
I'm not a big a fan about mean coins. I
love crypto, but but you could make some money from it.
Speaker 14 (25:21):
There's no doubt about it, no doubt about it.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
I'm very new to it and I'm still learning what
it is.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
This episode of Talk to It, the penultimate ever, has
Mark Cuban as a guest, the famous billionaire who's just
as famously pro crypto. So this was the perfect opportunity
for Haley and her team to tease her interest in
crypto on her show. The idea of Haley somehow getting
involved in crypto had been bandied about as early as
(25:48):
her Bill Maher interview back in July, but when it's
brought up with Cuban a few months later, Hailey had
already been teasing a pivot to the crypto space for months,
both in her appearances and in her online presence. Right
around November, when Trump was re elected, Hailey welch her
team and whoever is co authoring these damn x posts
(26:13):
starts to heavily foreshadow the eventual meme coin that she
will launch the next month.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
So, I've been in the main trenches for a while,
and here's why I got so far.
Speaker 15 (26:22):
My'll wallet when on busted US phone and.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Once it's announced, it keeps going with sports betting bro
Jake Paul. So by the time Jake Paul fights Mike
Tyson on Netflix on November fifteenth, Hailey is in the audience,
masked off, trying to court Elon Musk in front facic
videos at the boxing match.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
How do I get a job in this apartment of
government of Can I leave the main?
Speaker 2 (26:51):
A few minutes later, still at the boxing match, she's
talking about NFTs.
Speaker 7 (26:58):
Sun the mine.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I'm so sorry, how rude of me?
Speaker 11 (27:03):
Enough to us?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And the day after her interest in naivete surrounding crypto
is teased in the Mark Cuban episode of Talk Toua,
she formally announces Hawk coin on her ex profile.
Speaker 12 (27:16):
Okay, y'all drop your Salona wallets.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
I'm giving out some main coins for free, coming to
you December four.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And as I alluded to last week, I can't guarantee
that nothing has been deleted from her other platforms regarding
this crypto launch, but it seems as if she only
announced a coin on x, leaving her more relatable platforms
as it were, Instagram, TikTok et, cetera empty of a mention,
(27:43):
although of course Instagram stories are possible. On November twenty sixth,
more details are announced. Haley has partnered with a group
called over Here, accompanied by another truly heinous aiimage.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
The announcement reads.
Speaker 7 (28:00):
Big announcement, we are excited to partner with Haley Welch,
the Internet's favorite meme queen behind the viral Hawk to
a girl meme, to launch Hawk, a mean coin that's
set to redefine the crypto space. Why Hawk is special?
This isn't just another token launch. Haley's launch of the
Hawk mean coin represents a meaningful step in bringing mainstream
(28:24):
audiences to the crypto world, protecting the community with free
token distributions and allow list campaigns. Fans who are newcomers
to crypto, We'll get to experience the blockchain in a
safer way.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
You get it.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
This is the one meme coin that definitely isn't a scam.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And they note that they're.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Aware that a lot of Haley's audience knows nothing about crypto,
so they want to make this easy as possible. Then
they get to the timeline what's next.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
November twenty sixth, Today, Haley officially announced the launch of
Hawk on x and on her podcast episode with Mark Cuban.
November twenty sixth through December third, allow list registration opened
for free token claims. December fourth, at five pm Eastern
Standard time, Hawk begins trading on Solana.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Haley spoke to TMZ ahead of the release of Hawkcoin
and implied that her motivation to get involved in crypto
was similar to her motivation to become an influencer in
the first place, because if she didn't do it, someone
else would, and it was rumored that other people in
the meme coin space already were Anyways, it reminds me
(29:37):
a lot of how part of the reason she came
public as the Hawk Tua girl was because other people
were claiming her identity falsely. Anyways, she tells TMZ the
Paper of Record, that she wanted to go into crypto
to combat quote a bunch of impostors unquote who'd launched
their own meme coins claiming to be her. So again,
(30:00):
this pattern of scam before you get scammed. But Haley
also knows that she has to sell her fans on
the idea that hawkcoin is a good investment, so she
closes out the interview by pitching this as a great
opportunity for the community.
Speaker 15 (30:15):
It's a really good way to get all my fans
in community to interact and come together.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Babe Icarus, look out.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Molly White tells me that as absurd as this sounds
to the uninitiated, this is a pretty straightforward cryptogrift. The
meme coin phenomenon is fascinating to me, I mean, because
it seems like they are relatively successful in a niche way.
Speaker 11 (30:38):
How why I like.
Speaker 10 (30:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think it depends a little bit
on how you define success. They can be lucrative for
the people who launch them, Certainly, they are very rarely
lucrative for those who buy them. You know, there is
this sort of brief period of time with meme coins that.
You know, they tend to follow a very similar pattern,
which is they launch, they spike in price, and then
they crash or they crash and then they sort of
(31:03):
peter along for a while. As you know, people lose
interests and there are a lot of people who are
very excited about them because that for that brief moment
at the beginning, if you can generate enough interest and
enough excitement around them, people look at it and they go, Okay,
if I can buy in early enough, I can be
the person who dumps on everybody else and makes a
(31:23):
bunch of money.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right how it feels like customers are encouraged to like
get in on the grift of like get here early,
and then you can scam others just like you.
Speaker 10 (31:33):
Yeah, it's a very cynical model, but that is basically
how it works.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
You know.
Speaker 10 (31:37):
There are certainly some meme coins that sort of like
broke containment and became more of a mainstream crypto. So
like dogecoin is a good example of one of those,
Like it's based around a meme but it has a
price that has not gone to zero and stayed there.
But most meme coins are just this sort of flash
in the pan thing, and people very rarely look at
(31:57):
them and say this is a good business investment, or
this is a good long term holding that I'm going
to sell in four years and have made a tidy profit.
You need to get in on the ground floor and
get out as quickly as you can because you know
it's going to go to zero.
Speaker 12 (32:12):
You know nothing's going to be left after that.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
On December third, the last episode of Talk to A
comes out, episode twelve entitled How Not to Get Canceled,
And on December fourth, hawk cooin and yes, I would
agree that it should have been called spitcoin launches with
a fair amount of dubious reception preceding it, but on
(32:37):
x Haley is excited.
Speaker 11 (32:39):
My hawk name coin is love.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Writer for Fortune magazine Leo Schwartz led his piece about
the crypto with the headline.
Speaker 7 (32:48):
Talk to a girl. Hailey Welch launches crypto meme coin
but insists it's not a cash grab.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
This would not turn out to be true. Well, hawkcoin
took off upon its life launch, swaring to half a
billion dollars in coin valuation during its first few hours.
The scam quickly revealed itself. The crash came swiftly, as
crypto power users often called snipers, abruptly picked off hawk
(33:17):
Coin's value, leaving basically nothing for the first time crypto
users that Haley's image was used to advertise to, and
the blowback for this rug pull was swift. While the
final numbers have not been confirmed, it seems that Haley's
team had made somewhere in the neighborhood of three million
dollars off of this scheme, which played out in under
(33:40):
a day, and.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Haley Welch, who we know has no.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Experience in the crypto space, copy and paste what her
crypto in legal team sends in an x post in
an attempt to curb criticism a crypto release which a
big account called out as being ninety six percent controlled
by Hailey's team in order to artificially inflate the worth
of the coin. Haley's tweet denied this, leading to a
(34:07):
delightful community note that explained that the team had been
selling hawk Coin to bigger investors well before the launch
through pre sales, saying the.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Following, Haley is lying and will likely have to talk
to a judge about this. Okay, you can play the
horns for that.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Because of the mainstream fame that Haley had a mask
throughout twenty twenty four. This news broke pretty quickly to
the mainstream media as well.
Speaker 8 (34:37):
A viral meme coin tied to Hawktua star Hailey Welch
is at the center of a lawsuit. Investigators rather investors,
claim the Hawk token promoted using Welch's fame wasn't properly
registered as a security. The lawsuit targets the Hawk tokens
creators and promoters, but not Welsh herself.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
This kind of rug pull isn't unusual in the famously
scammy meme coin space, but the scale and the mainstream
popularity of its subject was unique, and because of this,
one of the Internet's most prevalent crypto fraud investigators, a
YouTuber named coffee Zilla aka Stephen Findeesen Stay with Me,
(35:21):
confronted both Haley over Here and Howie Mandel's villainous cryptosun
in law doc Hollywood about the obvious scam on the
night of December fourth, in a Twitter spaces conversation. As
one hundred and thirty two thousand users tuned in the
spaces conversation, which began as basically a fifteen minute lecture
(35:43):
from Doc Hollywood got tense pretty quickly when they opened
the floor for questions.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
I have questions.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I have questions.
Speaker 11 (35:52):
I'm raising my hand.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
Take out.
Speaker 11 (35:54):
That's copy Zilla.
Speaker 14 (35:55):
Hey, this is one of the most miserable, horrible launches
I've ever seen in my Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
It's not going well anyways, here's Doc Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Profiting from the rugs relevant.
Speaker 16 (36:07):
We didn't we didn't pull a rug. I don't know
what you're trying to say. It's not true. That's defamation.
The man you're saying that we pulled the rug. You're
the fabing are you?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Are you not gonna are you not gonna let me talk?
Speaker 7 (36:24):
You just talk over me?
Speaker 9 (36:25):
You talk over me.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
I'm hearing both is now. What Doc Hollywood does not
know is that coffee Zilla was showing up to this
conversation with notes. He presses on the Good Doctor about
why Hawkcoin had been marketed at fans of Haley's who
had never invested in crypto before.
Speaker 17 (36:43):
These are people that are outside of crypto that we're
going to be onboarding, and they don't give a ship.
They don't even know what a market cap is. They
just go, oh, cool, free coin.
Speaker 16 (36:53):
Uh.
Speaker 17 (36:53):
Now I get to join the community cool done.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
In his video, coffee Zilla also explains that he had
acquired their initial pitch deck for hawkcoin, where the scam
is all but encoded into the plan.
Speaker 7 (37:06):
From one slide, Hawk will unite Haley's global fan base,
enabling fans to connect with each other through the talk
to a podcast, and social media. This token redefines mean
coin by offering a new class of consumer crypto.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Okay, pitch deck, let's do the for dummies version next slide.
Speaker 7 (37:25):
Hawk will onboard normies, non crypto users by linking to
Web two social media, making it easy for Haley's fans
to create wallets via social login and claim free tokens.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Oh, so they're willing to admit they are intentionally targeting
a naive market. Suffice it to say that, like scams
before it, it appears that Haley's team designed the coin
to make a shitload of money for themselves upfront, and
then fuck anyone who is naive enough to buy it
(37:57):
when they're profiting. Inevitably made the value of the coin crash.
But even before coffee Zilla entered the chat the night
that the coin launched, the team was already on the defensive.
While it's normal for a crypto rugpole to happen quickly,
it was still rare for it to have happened in
the space of a single day, and none of the
(38:19):
legally is that Halian company shouted out in their own
defense was particularly convincing. And while coffee Zilla was the
journalist to most explicitly break the scam down, the whole
crypto world was hissed about this from the moment that
token was announced and encourage those who had been scammed
to seek legal protection. This is a tweet from a
(38:40):
firm called Berwick Law who ended up becoming a major
player in this story.
Speaker 7 (38:45):
If you lost money on Hawk, contact our firm to
learn about your legal rights. Our firm represents thousands of
NFT and token investors in securities matters. This is attorney advertising.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
While by all accounts, this crypto scam is very commonplace,
what makes it stand out is, as coffee Zilla said,
it's targeting of first time crypto users in order to
rip them off, the mainstream nature of the mean personality
and honestly, how flagrant doc Hollywood comes off in this
(39:20):
call with coffee Zilla, which went viral several times over
and I think rightfully. So, Howie Mandel's son in law
calls the people who invested in his crypto coin mentally ill.
Speaker 17 (39:33):
Most of you, we don't want you in the community.
Let's be real, right, You're not great people. I know,
y'all right, I see some friendly faces in this audience.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
He's having a melt out.
Speaker 17 (39:43):
You know, you guys. I'm gonna say, y'all, you guys right,
there's a lot of negativity in the space. I think
crypto brings the mentally ill into this thing, right most
if you guys are in crypto, you're most likely mentally ill.
And I'm gonna I'm going to count myself is mentally
ill for even being here right now.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
So no one can look more unhinged than Doctor Showbiz here.
But Haley Welch obviously is not coming off well in
this call either. She barely says anything because she didn't
orchestrate this scam.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
She just represents it in a moment that is iconic.
You can't deny it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
At some point in this contentious conversation between a man
who identifies as coffee Zilla and a man who identifies
as Doc Hollywood, arguing about their make believe computer money
Haley's fight or flight instinct seems to kick in, and
since she doesn't know enough about crypto to fight a
journalist who specializes in crypto, she gets the fuck out
(40:45):
of there in the funniest way possible, interrupting a different
journalist while doing so true like.
Speaker 7 (40:51):
I guess I to interrupt you, Nick, Hello there, but
any who, I'm gonna go to bed and I'll see
you guys tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Okay, She goes full cartoon chipmunk mode.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
She gets the fuck out of there, and the Twitter
spaces press conference ends.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
And believe it or not, that was the last.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
We heard from Hailey Welch personally for weeks.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
But as always, Haley.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Ducking out of the spotlight didn't make much of a difference.
The people who had gotten ripped off in the meme
coin scam were justifiably pissed, and a lot of other
online users seemed to relish in her fall for a
main character who they felt had overstayed her welcome and
maybe didn't even deserve the attention she'd gotten in the
first place. After the Coffee Zella video called Exposing the
(41:41):
Hawk to a Scam took off the day after the
rug Pole the media attention around Haley, Doc Hollywood and
Hawk Cooin skyrocketed, and Haley's publicist, you might remember he
is the same publicist who represents Bruce Springsteen, messaged coffee
Zilla after that Twitter spasis fiasco, telling him that Hailey
(42:04):
was essentially paid to promote the token instead of orchestrating
the scheme, going on to say that she received one
hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for promoting it. When
Coffeezilla asked if Haley would see a cut of this
pre sale money or the scammy three million dollar fees
that he had confronted the crypto team with, the publicist
(42:24):
said that after expenses were recouped, Hailey was supposed to
have gotten fifty percent of net proceeds from the coin,
but that that agreement hadn't been finalized yet. But Coffeezilla
felt and I agree, that this is extremely vague and
does not specify if Hailey Welch would get these scam
(42:45):
proceeds to the tune of one point five million dollars
if the crypto team managed to get away with this.
Speaker 14 (42:53):
I don't know. I think this whole situation is terrible
and she should feel bad. I hope she does, because
she got in bed with these people who clearly saw
dollar signs. She saw dollar signs, and they did this
and people have been hurt.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
But here's the thing, we don't really know how Haley
feels about any of this, maybe because she doesn't care
to stay, or maybe because she's kind of muzzled because
of the legal risk that saying anything could have, especially
in an industry she never had much of a grip on. Understandably,
(43:30):
the internet went nuts with the whole I'm gonna go
to bed moment, and then came the lawsuit, although at
the time of this writing it is just the crypto
team that's being sued, not Hailey Welch herself. On December nineteenth,
Berwick Law Remember them, sued the distributor for the coin,
(43:51):
the promoters for.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
The coin, and thankfully.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Someone finally had the good sense to sue Doc motherfucking Hollywood.
And probably expectedly, when this lawsuit was filed, on behalf
of the people who had been scammed, over Here and
Doc Hollywood turned on each other abruptly.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
In a tweet.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Over Here said that it was the Doc who controlled
all the fees in token decisions, not them, and to
the public's delight. Hailey Welch appeared to wake up from
that nap of hers a little over two weeks later,
on December twentieth, posting what is at the time of
this recording her final tweet.
Speaker 15 (44:32):
I take this situation extremely seriously and want to address
my fans, the investors who have been affected in the
broader community. I'm fully cooperating with and I am committed
to assisting the legal team representing the individuals impacted as
well as to help uncover the truth, hold the responsible
parties accountable, and resolve the matter. If you have experienced
losses related to this, please contact Berwick Law is in
(44:54):
the link below.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
And while Hailey continues to repost memes on TikTok, we
really hear from her as a personality. Is an unrelated
post on Instagram from late December which shows pictures from
a trip to Hawaii she took with Chelsea Bradford, her
best friend. They're kind of the Bonnie and Clyde of
internet fame. They're just riding it out to the bitter end.
(45:18):
At present, the case hasn't been decided, but the public's
response to seeing these scammers painted into a corner was
universally positive, and this positive reception seems to have empowered
Berwick Law to push even further.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Into the crypto scam space.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
On January sixteenth, just a couple weeks ago, Wired reported
that the same firm was suing pump dot fun, the
site that made it so easy to run mean coin
scams in the first place, and for the moment, that's
where Haley's story ends. There's been a lot of disagreement
on whether Doc Hollywood and company will experience any meaningful
(46:00):
legal consequence for this, but what we do know is
that Hailey Welch herself doesn't seem to be legally on
the hook for anything, at least not right now. It
seems like maybe she just went back to bed. And
when we come back, Molly White's take on what this
shit show says about the future of crypto Welcome back
(46:34):
to sixteenth minute. Please pause this episode and go to
the link in the description to give to a GoFundMe
for a middle class family in Alta, Dina that's lost
their home.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
I can wait.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Thank you, I did it too. And today we are
with deepest regrets, ending our Hactuas series by discussing the
incredible speed run of our main carearacter of twenty twenty four,
Hailey Welch. To close out this episode, Here's the rest
of Molly White in my talk. She's the writer behind
(47:08):
Web three, is going just great citation needed, and is
a prolific Wikipedia editor, a legend, and so I wanted
to ask her not just what she thought of the
hawk Coin scam, but what this means for the future
of these kinds of grifts, because I don't know if
you've noticed, but the sitting American President seems thrilled about them.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Here's our talk which.
Speaker 11 (47:30):
Brings us to hawk Tua and hawk Coin.
Speaker 12 (47:34):
I believe it is.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
As this summer went on, I was observing Hailey Welch's journey.
I'm curious because it's sort of escalated to this recent cryptogrift.
Are there certain things to look out for? Are there
warning signs that a viral star is going to start
a cryptogrift before the grift is announced?
Speaker 4 (47:55):
Well?
Speaker 10 (47:56):
I wouldn't say there always are, but there certainly were
with Hailey Welch, because you know, I heard of her
around the time the original meme went viral, and then
I forgot about her, and then the next time I
heard about her was in July when she turned up
to the Bitcoin twenty twenty four conference in Nashville and
was like rubbing elbows with RFK Junior all of a sudden,
and people were like, oh my god, the Hawk Tua
(48:18):
girl is at the Bitcoin conference and I was like, oh, no,
here we go, you know, And she had, by that point,
I think, maybe started her podcast and was, you know,
clearly trying to make her fifteen minutes fifteen seconds of fame,
I guess, into this bigger brand and you know, make
it into maybe a lucrative I don't know if career
(48:40):
is the word, but certainly, you know, make some money
off of it. And that is always a sign that
you know, meme coins maybe in the future, and then
certainly once they start hanging out in the crypto worlds,
you probably could have that easy money on that that
she would eventually get to this.
Speaker 11 (48:57):
For me, the red flag was the station with the
Paul brothers. They they only have bad.
Speaker 10 (49:03):
Ideas, and they have a long history of crypto scams
as well. I mean they've been in that since the
ground floor, basically offloading NFTs and things like that on
their fans.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Going up to the actual grift. Can you walk me
through how this was done and what if anything differentiates
the hawk to a grift from another crypto grift.
Speaker 10 (49:27):
Yeah, so there's kind of a handful of ways that
people start meme coins. It's become very easy to do
so over the last year or so because there have
been these platforms, including one that's called pump dot fun,
which is like a very popular platform where anyone can
launch a meme coin in a matter of minutes, and
it's really sort of reduced that sort of technical barrier
(49:49):
to entry that previously existed and has certainly helped to
fuel this explosion in meme coins where it seems like,
you know, something happens and suddenly there's twenty me coins
based around it within a span of minutes. Because you know,
the sort of point is to get as much media
attention as possible, and so if you can be the
first person to sort of glom onto a viral moment,
(50:10):
then you can potentially make money. Or at least that's
the theory.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
It feels more like it's a it's a like pr
challenge more than anything else.
Speaker 10 (50:18):
Oh for sure, that's one hundred percent the case, and
so the way that you know, celebrity meme coins. The
work is a little bit varied because often it's not
the celebrities themselves, you know, sitting down at a computer
and designing this token. There's often some sort of a
partnership with supposedly experienced people in this world who are
the ones you know, designing the tokenomics, which is what
(50:41):
they like to call the sort of distribution schemes and
things like that. People who speak the language of the
crypto world have made quite a lot of money off
of sort of offering to be a conduit for celebrities
and take all of the hard stuff off of their
plate basically, and all they have to do is endorse
it and promote it on Twitter and take their cut
(51:01):
at the end of the day. And that seems to
be what happened here with the Hawktua girl, where you know,
she was not the one on Pumped Up Fun you know,
typing in the parameters and all that, but she was
working with this group of promoters who promised to sort
of help her with the hard stuff.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Is there a particular reason why she is being singled
out and called out if this happens all the time.
Speaker 10 (51:23):
I mean, I would argue that probably more people should
be singled out and called out total types of things. Yeah,
because her particular grift was I think not particularly unique.
It's not clear to me that she is personally culpable
in a way that more meme coin creators maybe, But
she's certainly been a fun target for a lot of
(51:44):
people who are angry about.
Speaker 12 (51:46):
You know, this particular scam.
Speaker 10 (51:47):
But I think a lot of it is really just
the jokes. You know, it's it's fun to make jokes
about Hawk to a girl, and you know, she's been
sort of portrayed as this villain because it's kind of
funny to say that, like, Hawk to a girl just
stole all your money in ways that maybe it's not
with just any general meme coin.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
What was done here is so clearly a scam and
is so clearly wrong, but I just wasn't sure if
it was uniquely wrong or if this is the playbook.
Speaker 10 (52:12):
Yeah, I was actually just talking to someone about this.
Where in the crypto world, things like this happen so
often that I think people often forget that they're illegal.
Pumping numps are actually like illegal thing to do wash trading,
which is where you sort of fake buying and selling
of tokens to increase the price and to sort of
make it look more popular than it is. That's illegal,
(52:34):
but it's so common in the crypto world and it's
so rarely enforced that it's like it has become this
accepted way of doing business in the crypto world. That's
sort of what we're seeing here, where like, yeah, pumping
and dumping is illegal, rug pulling is illegal, it's also
an everyday occurrence, and the two things are not sort
of mutually exclusive. I think you see that a lot
(52:55):
with even when it comes to enforcement cases and legal action,
where people are like, I can't believe you're singling out
Kim Kardashian or something like that, like because what she's
doing is so common. You know, when she was targeted
by the SEC because she was doing paid promotions for
cryptotokens without disclosing she was being compensated. But like, if
(53:16):
you look at crypto Twitter, that's all you're seeing.
Speaker 12 (53:18):
That's every day.
Speaker 10 (53:19):
Stuff, and so it almost feels unfair to be targeted
for that when it's so rarely enforced, And honestly, you
could probably make an argument that it is unfair, but
part of the regulatory regime is trying to sort of
make an example of people to try to deter others
from doing similar activity. And so that's why you tend
to see these legal actions coming out against the Kim
(53:41):
Kardashians of the world and not some no name cryptos camera.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Our case is like this an opportunity to set a
higher precedent. Do you see cases like this altering the
types of griffs we're going to see?
Speaker 12 (53:54):
I suspect not with this one.
Speaker 10 (53:56):
For what I would be kind of surprised if legal
action comes of it. I know some people have speculated that, like, oh,
hawk to a girl's going to jail, and again it's
a part of the joke, and it's it's a funny idea.
But in the grand scheme of meme coin disasters, this
one was pretty small. Again, it's not clear to me
how much intent Haley Welch herself had around scamming her
(54:19):
fans beyond the sort of normal amount of scam that's
involved with meme coins. I don't necessarily expect the SEC
to like come out and make a big example of
Hailey Welch, especially right now with political changes and regulatory
changes that are looking to even further decrease how many
enforcement cases the SEC brings against crypto projects. And so
(54:41):
I suspect that, you know, this is all a fun
laugh and I don't think it will really meaningfully change
how many people start these projects. In fact, I suspect
there are people out there looking at Haley Welch and going,
maybe I could do something.
Speaker 11 (54:55):
A shot, Yes, sort of.
Speaker 10 (54:56):
In all, publicity is good publicity aspect to this well,
and I think that it should probably be a lesson
to celebrities who are considering getting involved with this. They
I'm sure many celebrities have received outreach from these types
of people who work with celebrities to launch meme coins,
who probably don't pitch this as a scam to the celebrities.
(55:17):
You know, they use all the talking points about how
this is a great way to engage with your fans
and to create a community around your meme coin, And
it might be tempting to some celebrities who are not
familiar with this, but ultimately they're running the risk of
being branded as a scammer. Most of these things, even
if they don't collapse quite as spectacularly is this one,
are still pretty naked cash grabs and so I don't
(55:39):
think it's something that many people who are trying to
maintain any form of legitimate reputation would necessarily want to
get involved with.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yeah, I mean a podcast is one thing, although still offensive,
but it's so funny that yeah, now it's like, oh,
the best way to engage with your fans is to
create a new kind of money and make them.
Speaker 12 (56:00):
I guess the one.
Speaker 10 (56:01):
Thing that I try to point out when it comes
to meme coins like this is, you know, the people
who are looking at them and saying, maybe I can
be the one who gets in early. Maybe I can
be the one who makes a killing off of this
when it spikes by a thousand percent before it completely crashes.
It's important to realize that in the crypto world, for
many people, it is literally not possible to get in
early enough to make money on these things. There's this
(56:23):
whole ecosystem of bots, and it's called token sniping, where
you know, there's all this infrastructure out there that is
fairly sophisticated people doing the same thing you're trying to do,
sitting at your computer watching Twitter and so getting the
idea that you are going to be the one who
gets in early enough to profit off of. This is
a very dangerous idea because it's you're trading against people
(56:46):
who are, despite the fact that they're trading meme coins,
relatively sophisticated.
Speaker 12 (56:51):
In this type of thing.
Speaker 10 (56:52):
And when it comes to meme coin markets, but certainly
crypto markets more broadly, I think a lot of people
tend to look at them as it somewhat similar to
stock markets and sort of other highly regulated trading venues,
and that is also often a mistake, because you really
should not be putting trust into even the exchanges where
(57:14):
you're trading, the people you're trading against, the platforms that
are supposedly helping you to do this trading, because there is,
like I said, just such a failure of the regulatory
apparatus to maintain these legitimate and sort of safe markets
for retail investors to trade in. So I'm always cautious about,
you know, talking about these things in a way that
(57:34):
might give people the impression that, like, ooh, you know,
maybe I can be the one who makes a killing
off of this, because it's stacked against you in ways
that people often don't realize.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Thank you so much to Mollie. You can follow all
her work, and Web three is going just great at
the links in the description, And here we find ourselves
at the end of the hawk.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
To a series. Is this purgatory? Have we been dead
the whole time?
Speaker 5 (58:00):
The whole time, the whole time you would the whole time?
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Is the only useful lesson here? Never trust Gizmo's son
in law. Maybe, But ironically enough, I think it is
this same son in law, not Hollywood himself, that has
the key to not only what the victims of the
crypto scam believed, but what I think probably motivated Haley
Welch to become a part of this scheme in the
(58:26):
first place.
Speaker 17 (58:27):
The people here that you guys are already y'all have
had every day thinking everything's a scam. And you know what,
you guys are right, Everything is a scam, but not this,
not this.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
You're right, everything's a scam, but not this. Contained in
the words of this coked out freak is an insight
into online culture today. The days where someone would be
surprised to be taken advantage of online are long gone.
To some extent, It's an expectation of being online.
Speaker 1 (58:58):
It's the rules of play.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
So why are so many people still getting scammed. I
think it's because of what Doc Hollywood is saying. A
good scammer can convince you that, sure everything is a scam,
just not this. Why is this normal girl from Tennessee
using her image to rip off people just like her,
(59:20):
people in a position that she herself would have been
in just six months earlier. I don't know for sure,
but I can say that it feels pretty nihilistic in
the way that a lot of American culture is. Here
is this young woman that went viral after being coerced
into creating content for someone else outside of a bar.
(59:44):
She panics for a week, then seems to realize that
while this isn't what she wanted, maybe it's a blessing
in disguise.
Speaker 1 (59:51):
She's grown up on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
She's seen this happen to people before, and she knows
that if she doesn't try to capitalize on this, someone
else is going to.
Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
They've already started.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
She's grown up poor, she has witnessed the American scam firsthand.
The only way you die above the class you were
born in now is for something extraordinary to happen. And sure,
some people strike it big professionally in a way that
helps and enriches the lives of others. But if you're
trying to do it quick, probably not. Again, none of
(01:00:24):
this justifies financially extorting other people, but I do think
it contextualizes it. But when the shine wears off of
this initial moment, maybe the podcast is a little amateurish.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Maybe the public seems to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Be moving on from the meme she seems.
Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
To say fuck it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Maybe it's possible to be convinced by the bad actors
you've surrounded yourself with the doc hollywoods and the Jake Pauls,
that you can get a solid cash out on your
way out the door of relevance. That becoming the scammer
is how you really jump classes. Because for all intents
and purposes, that's true. All she has to do is
(01:01:06):
convince the people she's scamming that they're the scammers too.
I am honestly really curious where Haley Welch goes from here,
if anywhere in the influencing space specifically, But if this
is it, I think Hayley ended up getting caught between
the scammers and the scammed, because yes, she absolutely used
(01:01:31):
and monetized her image to rip off a lot of people.
Who had not gotten lucky in the same way that
she had.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
But it's just as.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Undeniable to me that she was exploited and deceived by
the people surrounding her more than once. First by the
guys who posted the clip of her without explicit permission,
who then yelled at her publicly for not cutting them
in on her success. Then with the management that often
openly acknowledged that they knew she was seen as a
(01:02:01):
sexual object and that that made her uncomfortable. The same
management who openly said that they didn't think she was
smart enough to understand what real Hollywood representation would mean.
You don't need to feel bad for her, but Haley
absolutely got scammed here too, because even if she's not
the one getting sued, she's the one who gets discarded
(01:02:22):
in her first national interview a thousand years ago, all
the way back in July twenty twenty four, from that piece.
Speaker 15 (01:02:30):
They all think they know so much about me, she continues,
but nobody knows shit about me. Do you want them to,
I ask, We'll shoot a gbus smile. Don't worry they
will before it's over with.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Hailey, Welch the Hawk to a girl. Your sixteenth minute
ends now, I hope for your sake. Thank you so
much to everyone who has listened to this series. Please
tell your damn friends about it.
Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
For crying out loud.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
And next week we will return with a real mystery,
one that collides the classic exploratory, weirdo Internet communities of
lost Media and creepy pasta fans the back rooms next
week on sixteenth Minute. Sixteenth Minute is a production of
(01:03:20):
fool Zone Media and iHeart Radios. It is written, hosted,
and produced by me Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are
Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is
our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is
by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Pet.
Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kats Flee
(01:03:43):
and Casper and my pet Rockbird, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Bye
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi everybody. Jamie here with just a few notes up top.
Thank you so much for listening to the Hawk Tuus series.
If you haven't listened to the previous parts, I would
recommend you do so. I just wanted to mention, because
it doesn't come up in the space of this episode,
that we have done our due diligence. We reached out
to Haley Welch's team, we heard back, and then we
(00:27):
were slow ghosted to date, so now you know. Also,
if you enjoy the show, you can head over to
our reddit board. Normally I wouldn't suggest going on a
reddit board, but it's actually very lovely and wholesome our
slash sixteenth minute.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
If you have ideas for future.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Episodes you'd like to see, or if you just want
to have a nice time with the nice listeners of
this show. Also one more note. The documentary I'm talking
about towards the beginning of this episode is by Dan Olsen.
It is called Line Goes Up. It's on his YouTube
channel Folding Ideas. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Okay, talk to apart three Let's go.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Sixteen six sixteen.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
a look at the Internet's characters of the day and
see how their big moment affected them and what it
says about us.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And the Internet and today. In a truly grand finale, we.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Are going to take a look at the scam that
took down viral star Aley Welch aka Hawk to a
Girl for now at least. If there's one thing I've
learned in the course of making this show, it's to
never count a diva out. And for many of you,
this may be a moment in Haley's online career you
(02:34):
thought would have come much earlier in the series, her
crypto scam crypto scams being something that I have postponed
trying to understand for half a decade at least, But
for everyone, a day does come, and so half mine
and perhaps so half yours. So I guess just a disclaimer.
(02:54):
If you do understand crypto, even in a basic way,
this part may be a little frustrating for you. But
if you don't, I will walk you through this as
best I can, because this is the moment that I
suspect most people are going to remember about Hailey Welch.
While most people didn't know much more than her original
viral moment up until this time, and maybe some checked
(03:17):
out Talk TUA. This the crypto scam became the legacy.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The Wholk two girl might be going to prison for
the dumbest scam in history.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Hawk twa girl also known as Hailey Welch, launched her
mean cooin hawk last week. The coin soared to a
market cap around four hundred million dollars be fourteen game.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
This girl just ruined her entire career and honestly.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
We all saw this coming, right.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
So how does this crypto launch for hawkcoin go from
being Haley Doc Hollywood and the team hailing it as
the biggest opportunity in years to Doc Hollywood calling everyone
who had invested mentally ill in under twenty four hours. Well, first,
let's set the scene a brief history of crypto alongside
(04:08):
a recap of Haley Welch's life. Attempts at cryptocurrency were
underway years before Haley was born. The idea was first
conceived in nineteen eighty three, was acknowledged by the NSA
in nineteen ninety six, and systems like BitGold were bandied
about before the Internet went mainstream. And finally the technology
(04:32):
ran smoothly enough to announce formally.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Over a decade after that.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Hailey Welch was born in two thousand and two to
a lower class, fractured family in Tennessee. Her earliest years
were under two consecutive George W. Bush presidencies, heading into
kindergarten around the time that the housing bubble in the
US got really bad during the mid two thousands. Then
in late two thousand and seven, the Great Recession began
(05:00):
and it had a massive effect on Tennessee, slamming the
job market for years to come. And in a complete coincidence,
I'm sure, as the public's faith in big banking understandably plummeted,
the idea of cryptocurrency finally became palatable in the mainstream.
(05:22):
In two thousand and nine. Bitcoin was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto,
who Hayley Welch not for nothing, regularly parodied on X
calling herself Hoktoshi to a moto. I know, really creative. Anyways,
crypto continues to grow and shrink in a pretty niche
market in these early years. Silk Road is launched in
(05:43):
twenty twelve and then is shut down by the FBI
several years later. The way that the crypto blockchain works.
At its simplest is that it's a decentralized activity log
of financial transactions that relies on a con census mechanism
among users that often ends up sowing a fundamental distrust
(06:06):
in understanding what these numbers on this blockchain actually mean. Basically,
it requires a hell of a lot of checks and
balances for users to get clear answers, and that kind
of labor can be very time consuming for someone who's
just an individual doing crypto in earnest alone. So most
(06:27):
people you hear that have been very successful in crypto
have a team doing this labor for them in order
to maximize their own personal profit.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Crypto, as professor of.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Computer science and Economics Jen Lansky qualified, requires the following. First,
its value is maintained through consensus and not a big
bank central authority. Second, the system will decide when new
cryptocurrency can be minted. Third, ownership can be proven only
in the crypto blockchain. Fourth, crypto can be transferred, but
(07:02):
transaction statements can only be accessed by the current owner.
And finally, if two ownership changes are requested at once
on the blockchain, only one of these transactions can be
acted on something that ends up screwing over a lot
of people down the line. It seems like as crypto
becomes more normalized, even in niche internet communities, interest then
(07:26):
moves to a currency called ethereum, a version of cryptocurrency
that became very successful by marketing itself on the idea
that crypto bypasses government corruption and doesn't just force you
to sign up for a new set of unregulated corruptions.
For years, as Dan Olsen explains, there were these unbased
(07:49):
rumors that various countries Brazil Venezuela were on the brink
of switching their entire economies to cryptocurrency, but this was
never really true in retrospect. In fact, it was a
result of the effort of crypto boosters making it seem
like the currency was far more popular abroad than it
(08:10):
actually was. After the Ethereum boom came the NFTs, a
crypto gateway of sorts that was something of a play
to get normies into crypto that seemed to work pretty
well at the time for a couple minutes at least.
You probably remember this. NFTs were a craze in the
early twenty twenties, which happens to be another time of
(08:31):
incredible economic despair in which people paid for quote unquote
true digital objects, which many, including me, thought meant that
you were buying the copy, the definitive copy of a
digital artwork. And so, in the early days of its
mainstream popularity, NFTs expanded to the sale of memes. We've
(08:54):
actually talked about it on this show before in our
Overly Attached Girlfriend episode.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
There was this.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Small boom where the major main characters of the two
thousands and the twenty tens took the chance to monetize
their image that in most cases had been involuntarily taken
and co opted from them, and actually made money off
of them.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
For the first time.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
However, as Danielson's documentary explains in great detail, NFTs ended
up being a scam of their own. It was a
way to imply scarcity about an infinitely reproducible image, and
NFTs became synonymous with art during this boom in the
early twenty twenties, first coming into the news when an
(09:39):
artist named people Fine sold sixty nine million dollars worth
of NFTs.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
What's even more.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Relevant, though, is that this sale was made at legacy
auction house Christie's, which gave a whiff of legitimacy to
the project that na fs previously had not had by
a long shot. NFT ended up being the crypto version
of the speculation market or the collector's market, which always crashes.
(10:13):
The example that comes right to mind for me is
beanie babies. When they're first released, you can get them
for about five to seven dollars.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Once they retire, the value goes up.
Speaker 8 (10:23):
In like two years, there were like two hundred and
forty five dollars.
Speaker 9 (10:28):
Stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Thing's worth about four thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
But it goes far back as the tulip bulbspec bubble
of the seventeenth century. We've been overvaluing things that are
ultimately kind of trash.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
For a long time.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
NFTs were perceived as exclusive collectibles, which on most timeline
spoils down to I hope you actually like them, because
they almost never retain their value. Thankfully, I love my
beanie babies, and I don't care that my mom sent
my college fund on them. In line goes up. Jan
Olsen also emphasizes that the marks and the targets for
(11:05):
these cryptos scams aren't the fabulously wealthy that we see
in media. The marks are people somewhere in the middle class,
people with some disposable income who are still long term
financially insecure enough that they'd take a risk on something
as tenuous as.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
A crypto scam.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
As Olsen puts it, the target of these scams are
quote tenuously middle class, socially isolated, and highly responsive to memes.
While this was happening, Haley Welch graduated high school in
twenty twenty in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, beginning
community college but dropping out to focus on her day job.
(11:47):
As we've talked about before, Haley loved her home, her family,
her friends, but unquestionably grew up during a time of
extreme economic and social precarity. It would probably be hard
for her to remember a time before bad job markets
and gun safety drills to evade mass shootings in school,
(12:07):
when all the while, the way to quote unquote make
it in America was shifting from the conventional become a
star model to the Internet version of the become a
star model, become a star, get your grift in, and
get the fuck out of there, which brings us to
meme coins. Meme coins are a newer form of crypto
(12:30):
that are famously unstable and scammy, and saying something is
particularly scammy in the crypto world is really saying something.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Meme coins are exactly what they sound like.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
There are a currency whose relevance depends on the appeal
of the meme personality who is the face of them,
whether that meme is a person or a fictional character
or an idea. The most successful examples, and one that
I think has tragically crossed into the mainstream, is the
Elon Musk touted doge coin, which is based on a
(13:04):
meme of Ashiba Nu who bless his heart, he didn't
see the storm coming. Meme coins of this nature tend
to be sold as crypto on the bizarrely and I
guess aptly named website pump dot fun, and the name
itself is a wink at how many pump and dump
(13:24):
schemes the space has been known for over the years.
The site was started by three guys in their twenties
in London, and this was a space that sort of
facilitated the resurgence of crypto after NFTs sort of took
a turn.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
In the early twenty twenties.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
The New York Times reported that in the front half
of twenty twenty four, one point seven million coins launched,
compared to just two hundred and fifty thousand ish in
the same period of time in twenty twenty three. So
if you've heard about meme coins more.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
It's certainly not an accident.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And stars of the twenty twenty four space outside of Haley,
whose eventual coin was called hawk Coin, were Maga coin,
ear Coin after Donald Trump got shot in the ear,
Baby Trump coin.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
One of the coolest parts of my job being able
to do this every day is seeing different projects. And
I love these Trump meme coins that have come out,
like Maga uh and obviously now baby Trump that's the
one that I am sharing with you now. And you
know what, it makes you smile what?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
And there are celebrity coins. Manisphere influencer and convicted criminal
Andrew Tait launched a coin called daddy Coin. Flop rapper
Iggy Azilia started one called mother Coin, there was one
called tom and Jelly. You name a cursed idea, someone
probably tried to launch it as a meme coin last year.
(14:59):
So even though crypto fell out of favor in a
major way in twenty twenty two, pump dot Fun and
these meme coins had a big hand in bringing them
back because of how easy this website made it to
get a crypto coin minted for as low as two dollars,
perhaps a bone chilling ai image of baby Trump and boom,
(15:21):
You've created the stupidest new economy on the planet. But
because the barrier to entry for making meme coins is
so low, this space tends to bring in new people
to crypto, which, as we will learn, is kind of
the perfect setup for a rug pole. In short, a
rug pole is a pretty basic crypto scam that basically
(15:44):
consists of overhyping the eventual value of a meme coin,
promising a lot, and then pulling the rug out from investors,
selling off all of the valuable assets of the token
well in advance, so that everyone else is more or
less complex completely screwed over shortly after the token launches
and the value crashes. I'll let my guests explain it better,
(16:08):
but that's the idea.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
If you're a.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Fan of a certain meme or personality, or for some
reason Iggy Azalea, you could cash in on the popularity
of a meme to lurein investors. The average of whom
as Danielsen says, is a middle class person throwing in
around three hundred and fifty dollars on average, then pulling
the rug and causing them to lose it all. But
(16:32):
here's a weird thing that was striking me the more
I looked into this world. Even the most starter crypto
investors seem to have a basic understanding that crypto is,
to some extent a scam for most people. The true
rug pull, I think is the average investor finding out
(16:54):
that they're not the scammer, they're the scammed. And I
know that plenty of people have said that if you
get scammed by like hawked to a girl or baby Trump,
then you deserve everything that happens to you. And maybe
for you that's true. But for the purposes of this episode,
I want to hold some empathies for these people because
(17:15):
they are being targeted out of desperation. So before we
get back to Haley Welch, it wouldn't be a fair
discussion of cryptocurrency without acknowledging how gigantic and needless crypto's
environmental impact is in exchange for what it does for
the world, which is very little.
Speaker 9 (17:37):
If you wanted to be a crypto miner in the
twenty tens, your home computer might be enough to get
you started. Today you need a bunch of specialized, very
powerful computers. They're known as mining rigs, and they use
a stunning amount of electricity.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
So if you're listening and you're into crypto, know that
you are contributing to this problem, which is kind of
ironic because helping the environment was one of the early
claims that crypto advocates made in its early years. They
would cite how much energy and natural resources that conventional
banking generated in comparison, and sure, big banks suck up
(18:17):
a lot of energy, and that is a valid criticism,
but crypto takes up a lot more energy per person.
A UN report from twenty twenty three indicated that bitcoin
mining consumed more energy than the entire country of Pakistan
in the year twenty twenty one. So I usually save
(18:37):
interviews for the ends of these episodes, but there is
truly no one better to shepherd us through the world
of crypto than Molly White, a prolific writer and investigator
of crypto. So I'm going to let her set us
up and we'll hear from her throughout the episode.
Speaker 10 (18:54):
I'm Mollie. I am a crypto researcher and writer. I've
been following the crypto industry for several years now.
Speaker 11 (19:02):
What brought you to this specialty?
Speaker 10 (19:05):
I got started in twenty twenty one. I think when
crypto is going through its major sort of retail moments,
where it seemed like, you know, every news article was
about crypto, and there were ads everywhere, and people were
being told that they needed to buy bitcoin or NFTs
or dogecoin or something like that in order to get
(19:26):
ahead and to make a ton of money and you know,
buy their lambos.
Speaker 12 (19:29):
And around that same time.
Speaker 10 (19:30):
There was a lot of talk about how blockchains and
cryptocurrencies were going to sort of revolutionize the Web and
fix everything that's wrong with the Web. And I've always
been a big web nerd. I was, you know, a
software engineer. I have my own complaints about the Web
as someone who really loves it ultimately, but you know,
has has watched it become this very sort of hyper
(19:52):
capitalized landscape. And so initially I was like, great, let's
fix the Web. I'm in you know, when I was
hearing all this stuff about Web three. But then I
actually started to dig into it and learn more about
it and discovered that, like, wow, a lot of people
are getting scammed and it doesn't feel like anyone is
talking about it at the time. There are a lot
of these like profiles with people who are making it
rich overnight, and you know, the dogecoin millionaire and all
(20:15):
this stuff, and there was like nobody talking about the
downsides of it, which were far more I think important
and widespread.
Speaker 11 (20:23):
For the tech illiterate. What is web three?
Speaker 12 (20:29):
Well, it doesn't.
Speaker 10 (20:29):
Really have a very specific definition, which I think is
part of the point. I think, generally speaking, web three
is just a word that describes taking blockchains and applying
them to web problems. So trying to build well web
services where the blockchain involved is going to be a
web three project.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Just based on the way I've seen crypto talked about
in the last several years, I kind of inherently associate
it with elon scams. Basically, I think of now there
is this sort of like known influencer to cryptoscam pipeline.
When did you first notice this tendency?
Speaker 10 (21:12):
Yeah, I think the whole trend of celebrities getting involved
with crypto projects kicked off sort of around the time
I started paying attention. It had happened before that, So
you know, in twenty seventeen, there was this huge explosion
of what we're called icos, which is similar to an
ipo where a company goes public and suddenly everyone can
buy the stock, but you do it with crypto tokens,
(21:34):
and the idea was like, now you don't have to
go through the SEC registration process, which is extremely challenging
and onerous and helpful at preventing scams. There were celebrities
who got involved in that. You know, at that point
they were like, we're going to be ico investors, but
it was a pretty niche thing, like not that many
people are that excited about icos or IPOs for that matter.
(21:56):
But then in twenty twenty, yeah, I would say twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, we saw a lot of celebrities getting
excited about crypto as not just a way to make money,
although that certainly was a big part of it, but
to sort of promote themselves and to monetize their brands.
And so there were celebrity NFTs, there were celebrities getting
(22:17):
involved in all of these Web three projects that people
were talking about. We saw like Reese Witherspoon changing her
Twitter profile picture to like a World of Women n
f T.
Speaker 12 (22:27):
Yeah, like a lot of people have forgot about that.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
NFTs. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 10 (22:33):
Basketball players were launching NFTs, and you know, celebrities, a
lot of like sort of dalists like Soldier Boy.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I think there was like a Super Bowl celebrity crypto
ad one year that I remember being like, oh, yeah,
this is like really a thing.
Speaker 10 (22:48):
Well yeah, and that's the other part of it is
that celebrities were being used to promote crypto exchanges and
things like that. It was like the crypto super Bowl,
but it was basically just before the collapse. Things like
really Pee with Crypto dot Com had an ad featuring
Matt Damon, FTX had an ad with Larry David. You know,
it was like this really weird moment where like, yeah,
(23:09):
suddenly all of these celebrities were involved. NFTs kind of
fell apart and have I guess been sort of having
a little bit of a revival. But I feel like
the biggest trend recently has been these meme coins, which
is like you don't even have to bother getting an
artist involved. You just make a token with your name
and then you promote it, and you know it's like
less work basically, and you can still make a bunch
(23:31):
of money off of it, or at least that's the claim.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
We're gonna check in with Molly More later to talk
about hawkcoin style scams specifically. But let's get back into
Haley Welch's chaotic end to twenty twenty four when we
come back Cryptua.
Speaker 13 (23:46):
Maybe welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
The Constant is the best episode of Lost. I know
it's a popular opinion, but it's my opinion as well.
And the best line read of all time from Lost
is from season one, episode eighteen.
Speaker 12 (24:16):
Haley talks to her about Sam hearing something and this
is when she says.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
You took and bit the numbers.
Speaker 12 (24:23):
Yes, you took and bit the nimbus.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
She's supposed to be Australian. Shout out to Mike's Mike
And here's the moment you've all been waiting for the
hawk to a crypto scam.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
So after I saw Michael Saylor speak at the bitcoin conference,
I have decided to start putting some money into crypto.
And I just want to say, oh my god, thank
you so much, mister Saylor.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Last week we talked through Haley's media career as the
choice talent of Jake Paul's sports gambling network Better Hailey
was the host of Hawktua, and throughout this time her
future as a crypto girly was teased in the background.
What was also teased was the fact that Haley personally
(25:06):
did not seem to understand how crypto worked.
Speaker 12 (25:10):
Oh yeah, can I give you some tokens?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Are you sure you're I don't know.
Speaker 12 (25:17):
I'm not a big a fan about mean coins. I
love crypto, but but you could make some money from it.
Speaker 14 (25:21):
There's no doubt about it, no doubt about it.
Speaker 5 (25:23):
I'm very new to it and I'm still learning what
it is.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
This episode of Talk to It, the penultimate ever, has
Mark Cuban as a guest, the famous billionaire who's just
as famously pro crypto. So this was the perfect opportunity
for Haley and her team to tease her interest in
crypto on her show. The idea of Haley somehow getting
involved in crypto had been bandied about as early as
(25:48):
her Bill Maher interview back in July, but when it's
brought up with Cuban a few months later, Hailey had
already been teasing a pivot to the crypto space for months,
both in her appearances and in her online presence. Right
around November, when Trump was re elected, Hailey welch her
team and whoever is co authoring these damn x posts
(26:13):
starts to heavily foreshadow the eventual meme coin that she
will launch the next month.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
So, I've been in the main trenches for a while,
and here's why I got so far.
Speaker 15 (26:22):
My'll wallet when on busted US phone and.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Once it's announced, it keeps going with sports betting bro
Jake Paul. So by the time Jake Paul fights Mike
Tyson on Netflix on November fifteenth, Hailey is in the audience,
masked off, trying to court Elon Musk in front facic
videos at the boxing match.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
How do I get a job in this apartment of
government of Can I leave the main?
Speaker 2 (26:51):
A few minutes later, still at the boxing match, she's
talking about NFTs.
Speaker 7 (26:58):
Sun the mine.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I'm so sorry, how rude of me?
Speaker 11 (27:03):
Enough to us?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And the day after her interest in naivete surrounding crypto
is teased in the Mark Cuban episode of Talk Toua,
she formally announces Hawk coin on her ex profile.
Speaker 12 (27:16):
Okay, y'all drop your Salona wallets.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
I'm giving out some main coins for free, coming to
you December four.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And as I alluded to last week, I can't guarantee
that nothing has been deleted from her other platforms regarding
this crypto launch, but it seems as if she only
announced a coin on x, leaving her more relatable platforms
as it were, Instagram, TikTok et, cetera empty of a mention,
(27:43):
although of course Instagram stories are possible. On November twenty sixth,
more details are announced. Haley has partnered with a group
called over Here, accompanied by another truly heinous aiimage.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
The announcement reads.
Speaker 7 (28:00):
Big announcement, we are excited to partner with Haley Welch,
the Internet's favorite meme queen behind the viral Hawk to
a girl meme, to launch Hawk, a mean coin that's
set to redefine the crypto space. Why Hawk is special?
This isn't just another token launch. Haley's launch of the
Hawk mean coin represents a meaningful step in bringing mainstream
(28:24):
audiences to the crypto world, protecting the community with free
token distributions and allow list campaigns. Fans who are newcomers
to crypto, We'll get to experience the blockchain in a
safer way.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
You get it.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
This is the one meme coin that definitely isn't a scam.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And they note that they're.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Aware that a lot of Haley's audience knows nothing about crypto,
so they want to make this easy as possible. Then
they get to the timeline what's next.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
November twenty sixth, Today, Haley officially announced the launch of
Hawk on x and on her podcast episode with Mark Cuban.
November twenty sixth through December third, allow list registration opened
for free token claims. December fourth, at five pm Eastern
Standard time, Hawk begins trading on Solana.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Haley spoke to TMZ ahead of the release of Hawkcoin
and implied that her motivation to get involved in crypto
was similar to her motivation to become an influencer in
the first place, because if she didn't do it, someone
else would, and it was rumored that other people in
the meme coin space already were Anyways, it reminds me
(29:37):
a lot of how part of the reason she came
public as the Hawk Tua girl was because other people
were claiming her identity falsely. Anyways, she tells TMZ the
Paper of Record, that she wanted to go into crypto
to combat quote a bunch of impostors unquote who'd launched
their own meme coins claiming to be her. So again,
(30:00):
this pattern of scam before you get scammed. But Haley
also knows that she has to sell her fans on
the idea that hawkcoin is a good investment, so she
closes out the interview by pitching this as a great
opportunity for the community.
Speaker 15 (30:15):
It's a really good way to get all my fans
in community to interact and come together.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Babe Icarus, look out.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Molly White tells me that as absurd as this sounds
to the uninitiated, this is a pretty straightforward cryptogrift. The
meme coin phenomenon is fascinating to me, I mean, because
it seems like they are relatively successful in a niche way.
Speaker 11 (30:38):
How why I like.
Speaker 10 (30:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think it depends a little bit
on how you define success. They can be lucrative for
the people who launch them, Certainly, they are very rarely
lucrative for those who buy them. You know, there is
this sort of brief period of time with meme coins that.
You know, they tend to follow a very similar pattern,
which is they launch, they spike in price, and then
they crash or they crash and then they sort of
(31:03):
peter along for a while. As you know, people lose
interests and there are a lot of people who are
very excited about them because that for that brief moment
at the beginning, if you can generate enough interest and
enough excitement around them, people look at it and they go, Okay,
if I can buy in early enough, I can be
the person who dumps on everybody else and makes a
(31:23):
bunch of money.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right how it feels like customers are encouraged to like
get in on the grift of like get here early,
and then you can scam others just like you.
Speaker 10 (31:33):
Yeah, it's a very cynical model, but that is basically
how it works.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
You know.
Speaker 10 (31:37):
There are certainly some meme coins that sort of like
broke containment and became more of a mainstream crypto. So
like dogecoin is a good example of one of those,
Like it's based around a meme but it has a
price that has not gone to zero and stayed there.
But most meme coins are just this sort of flash
in the pan thing, and people very rarely look at
(31:57):
them and say this is a good business investment, or
this is a good long term holding that I'm going
to sell in four years and have made a tidy profit.
You need to get in on the ground floor and
get out as quickly as you can because you know
it's going to go to zero.
Speaker 12 (32:12):
You know nothing's going to be left after that.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
On December third, the last episode of Talk to A
comes out, episode twelve entitled How Not to Get Canceled,
And on December fourth, hawk cooin and yes, I would
agree that it should have been called spitcoin launches with
a fair amount of dubious reception preceding it, but on
(32:37):
x Haley is excited.
Speaker 11 (32:39):
My hawk name coin is love.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Writer for Fortune magazine Leo Schwartz led his piece about
the crypto with the headline.
Speaker 7 (32:48):
Talk to a girl. Hailey Welch launches crypto meme coin
but insists it's not a cash grab.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
This would not turn out to be true. Well, hawkcoin
took off upon its life launch, swaring to half a
billion dollars in coin valuation during its first few hours.
The scam quickly revealed itself. The crash came swiftly, as
crypto power users often called snipers, abruptly picked off hawk
(33:17):
Coin's value, leaving basically nothing for the first time crypto
users that Haley's image was used to advertise to, and
the blowback for this rug pull was swift. While the
final numbers have not been confirmed, it seems that Haley's
team had made somewhere in the neighborhood of three million
dollars off of this scheme, which played out in under
(33:40):
a day, and.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Haley Welch, who we know has no.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Experience in the crypto space, copy and paste what her
crypto in legal team sends in an x post in
an attempt to curb criticism a crypto release which a
big account called out as being ninety six percent controlled
by Hailey's team in order to artificially inflate the worth
of the coin. Haley's tweet denied this, leading to a
(34:07):
delightful community note that explained that the team had been
selling hawk Coin to bigger investors well before the launch
through pre sales, saying the.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Following, Haley is lying and will likely have to talk
to a judge about this. Okay, you can play the
horns for that.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Because of the mainstream fame that Haley had a mask
throughout twenty twenty four. This news broke pretty quickly to
the mainstream media as well.
Speaker 8 (34:37):
A viral meme coin tied to Hawktua star Hailey Welch
is at the center of a lawsuit. Investigators rather investors,
claim the Hawk token promoted using Welch's fame wasn't properly
registered as a security. The lawsuit targets the Hawk tokens
creators and promoters, but not Welsh herself.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
This kind of rug pull isn't unusual in the famously
scammy meme coin space, but the scale and the mainstream
popularity of its subject was unique, and because of this,
one of the Internet's most prevalent crypto fraud investigators, a
YouTuber named coffee Zilla aka Stephen Findeesen Stay with Me,
(35:21):
confronted both Haley over Here and Howie Mandel's villainous cryptosun
in law doc Hollywood about the obvious scam on the
night of December fourth, in a Twitter spaces conversation. As
one hundred and thirty two thousand users tuned in the
spaces conversation, which began as basically a fifteen minute lecture
(35:43):
from Doc Hollywood got tense pretty quickly when they opened
the floor for questions.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
I have questions.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
I have questions.
Speaker 11 (35:52):
I'm raising my hand.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
Take out.
Speaker 11 (35:54):
That's copy Zilla.
Speaker 14 (35:55):
Hey, this is one of the most miserable, horrible launches
I've ever seen in my Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
It's not going well anyways, here's Doc Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Profiting from the rugs relevant.
Speaker 16 (36:07):
We didn't we didn't pull a rug. I don't know
what you're trying to say. It's not true. That's defamation.
The man you're saying that we pulled the rug. You're
the fabing are you?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Are you not gonna are you not gonna let me talk?
Speaker 7 (36:24):
You just talk over me?
Speaker 9 (36:25):
You talk over me.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
I'm hearing both is now. What Doc Hollywood does not
know is that coffee Zilla was showing up to this
conversation with notes. He presses on the Good Doctor about
why Hawkcoin had been marketed at fans of Haley's who
had never invested in crypto before.
Speaker 17 (36:43):
These are people that are outside of crypto that we're
going to be onboarding, and they don't give a ship.
They don't even know what a market cap is. They
just go, oh, cool, free coin.
Speaker 16 (36:53):
Uh.
Speaker 17 (36:53):
Now I get to join the community cool done.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
In his video, coffee Zilla also explains that he had
acquired their initial pitch deck for hawkcoin, where the scam
is all but encoded into the plan.
Speaker 7 (37:06):
From one slide, Hawk will unite Haley's global fan base,
enabling fans to connect with each other through the talk
to a podcast, and social media. This token redefines mean
coin by offering a new class of consumer crypto.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Okay, pitch deck, let's do the for dummies version next slide.
Speaker 7 (37:25):
Hawk will onboard normies, non crypto users by linking to
Web two social media, making it easy for Haley's fans
to create wallets via social login and claim free tokens.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Oh, so they're willing to admit they are intentionally targeting
a naive market. Suffice it to say that, like scams
before it, it appears that Haley's team designed the coin
to make a shitload of money for themselves upfront, and
then fuck anyone who is naive enough to buy it
(37:57):
when they're profiting. Inevitably made the value of the coin crash.
But even before coffee Zilla entered the chat the night
that the coin launched, the team was already on the defensive.
While it's normal for a crypto rugpole to happen quickly,
it was still rare for it to have happened in
the space of a single day, and none of the
(38:19):
legally is that Halian company shouted out in their own
defense was particularly convincing. And while coffee Zilla was the
journalist to most explicitly break the scam down, the whole
crypto world was hissed about this from the moment that
token was announced and encourage those who had been scammed
to seek legal protection. This is a tweet from a
(38:40):
firm called Berwick Law who ended up becoming a major
player in this story.
Speaker 7 (38:45):
If you lost money on Hawk, contact our firm to
learn about your legal rights. Our firm represents thousands of
NFT and token investors in securities matters. This is attorney advertising.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
While by all accounts, this crypto scam is very commonplace,
what makes it stand out is, as coffee Zilla said,
it's targeting of first time crypto users in order to
rip them off, the mainstream nature of the mean personality
and honestly, how flagrant doc Hollywood comes off in this
(39:20):
call with coffee Zilla, which went viral several times over
and I think rightfully. So, Howie Mandel's son in law
calls the people who invested in his crypto coin mentally ill.
Speaker 17 (39:33):
Most of you, we don't want you in the community.
Let's be real, right, You're not great people. I know,
y'all right, I see some friendly faces in this audience.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
He's having a melt out.
Speaker 17 (39:43):
You know, you guys. I'm gonna say, y'all, you guys right,
there's a lot of negativity in the space. I think
crypto brings the mentally ill into this thing, right most
if you guys are in crypto, you're most likely mentally ill.
And I'm gonna I'm going to count myself is mentally
ill for even being here right now.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
So no one can look more unhinged than Doctor Showbiz here.
But Haley Welch obviously is not coming off well in
this call either. She barely says anything because she didn't
orchestrate this scam.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
She just represents it in a moment that is iconic.
You can't deny it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
At some point in this contentious conversation between a man
who identifies as coffee Zilla and a man who identifies
as Doc Hollywood, arguing about their make believe computer money
Haley's fight or flight instinct seems to kick in, and
since she doesn't know enough about crypto to fight a
journalist who specializes in crypto, she gets the fuck out
(40:45):
of there in the funniest way possible, interrupting a different
journalist while doing so true like.
Speaker 7 (40:51):
I guess I to interrupt you, Nick, Hello there, but
any who, I'm gonna go to bed and I'll see
you guys tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Okay, She goes full cartoon chipmunk mode.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
She gets the fuck out of there, and the Twitter
spaces press conference ends.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
And believe it or not, that was the last.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
We heard from Hailey Welch personally for weeks.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
But as always, Haley.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Ducking out of the spotlight didn't make much of a difference.
The people who had gotten ripped off in the meme
coin scam were justifiably pissed, and a lot of other
online users seemed to relish in her fall for a
main character who they felt had overstayed her welcome and
maybe didn't even deserve the attention she'd gotten in the
first place. After the Coffee Zella video called Exposing the
(41:41):
Hawk to a Scam took off the day after the
rug Pole the media attention around Haley, Doc Hollywood and
Hawk Cooin skyrocketed, and Haley's publicist, you might remember he
is the same publicist who represents Bruce Springsteen, messaged coffee
Zilla after that Twitter spasis fiasco, telling him that Hailey
(42:04):
was essentially paid to promote the token instead of orchestrating
the scheme, going on to say that she received one
hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for promoting it. When
Coffeezilla asked if Haley would see a cut of this
pre sale money or the scammy three million dollar fees
that he had confronted the crypto team with, the publicist
(42:24):
said that after expenses were recouped, Hailey was supposed to
have gotten fifty percent of net proceeds from the coin,
but that that agreement hadn't been finalized yet. But Coffeezilla
felt and I agree, that this is extremely vague and
does not specify if Hailey Welch would get these scam
(42:45):
proceeds to the tune of one point five million dollars
if the crypto team managed to get away with this.
Speaker 14 (42:53):
I don't know. I think this whole situation is terrible
and she should feel bad. I hope she does, because
she got in bed with these people who clearly saw
dollar signs. She saw dollar signs, and they did this
and people have been hurt.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
But here's the thing, we don't really know how Haley
feels about any of this, maybe because she doesn't care
to stay, or maybe because she's kind of muzzled because
of the legal risk that saying anything could have, especially
in an industry she never had much of a grip on. Understandably,
(43:30):
the internet went nuts with the whole I'm gonna go
to bed moment, and then came the lawsuit, although at
the time of this writing it is just the crypto
team that's being sued, not Hailey Welch herself. On December nineteenth,
Berwick Law Remember them, sued the distributor for the coin,
(43:51):
the promoters for.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
The coin, and thankfully.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Someone finally had the good sense to sue Doc motherfucking Hollywood.
And probably expectedly, when this lawsuit was filed, on behalf
of the people who had been scammed, over Here and
Doc Hollywood turned on each other abruptly.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
In a tweet.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Over Here said that it was the Doc who controlled
all the fees in token decisions, not them, and to
the public's delight. Hailey Welch appeared to wake up from
that nap of hers a little over two weeks later,
on December twentieth, posting what is at the time of
this recording her final tweet.
Speaker 15 (44:32):
I take this situation extremely seriously and want to address
my fans, the investors who have been affected in the
broader community. I'm fully cooperating with and I am committed
to assisting the legal team representing the individuals impacted as
well as to help uncover the truth, hold the responsible
parties accountable, and resolve the matter. If you have experienced
losses related to this, please contact Berwick Law is in
(44:54):
the link below.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
And while Hailey continues to repost memes on TikTok, we
really hear from her as a personality. Is an unrelated
post on Instagram from late December which shows pictures from
a trip to Hawaii she took with Chelsea Bradford, her
best friend. They're kind of the Bonnie and Clyde of
internet fame. They're just riding it out to the bitter end.
(45:18):
At present, the case hasn't been decided, but the public's
response to seeing these scammers painted into a corner was
universally positive, and this positive reception seems to have empowered
Berwick Law to push even further.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Into the crypto scam space.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
On January sixteenth, just a couple weeks ago, Wired reported
that the same firm was suing pump dot fun, the
site that made it so easy to run mean coin
scams in the first place, and for the moment, that's
where Haley's story ends. There's been a lot of disagreement
on whether Doc Hollywood and company will experience any meaningful
(46:00):
legal consequence for this, but what we do know is
that Hailey Welch herself doesn't seem to be legally on
the hook for anything, at least not right now. It
seems like maybe she just went back to bed. And
when we come back, Molly White's take on what this
shit show says about the future of crypto Welcome back
(46:34):
to sixteenth minute. Please pause this episode and go to
the link in the description to give to a GoFundMe
for a middle class family in Alta, Dina that's lost
their home.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
I can wait.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Thank you, I did it too. And today we are
with deepest regrets, ending our Hactuas series by discussing the
incredible speed run of our main carearacter of twenty twenty four,
Hailey Welch. To close out this episode, Here's the rest
of Molly White in my talk. She's the writer behind
(47:08):
Web three, is going just great citation needed, and is
a prolific Wikipedia editor, a legend, and so I wanted
to ask her not just what she thought of the
hawk Coin scam, but what this means for the future
of these kinds of grifts, because I don't know if
you've noticed, but the sitting American President seems thrilled about them.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Here's our talk which.
Speaker 11 (47:30):
Brings us to hawk Tua and hawk Coin.
Speaker 12 (47:34):
I believe it is.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
As this summer went on, I was observing Hailey Welch's journey.
I'm curious because it's sort of escalated to this recent cryptogrift.
Are there certain things to look out for? Are there
warning signs that a viral star is going to start
a cryptogrift before the grift is announced?
Speaker 4 (47:55):
Well?
Speaker 10 (47:56):
I wouldn't say there always are, but there certainly were
with Hailey Welch, because you know, I heard of her
around the time the original meme went viral, and then
I forgot about her, and then the next time I
heard about her was in July when she turned up
to the Bitcoin twenty twenty four conference in Nashville and
was like rubbing elbows with RFK Junior all of a sudden,
and people were like, oh my god, the Hawk Tua
(48:18):
girl is at the Bitcoin conference and I was like, oh, no,
here we go, you know, And she had, by that point,
I think, maybe started her podcast and was, you know,
clearly trying to make her fifteen minutes fifteen seconds of fame,
I guess, into this bigger brand and you know, make
it into maybe a lucrative I don't know if career
(48:40):
is the word, but certainly, you know, make some money
off of it. And that is always a sign that
you know, meme coins maybe in the future, and then
certainly once they start hanging out in the crypto worlds,
you probably could have that easy money on that that
she would eventually get to this.
Speaker 11 (48:57):
For me, the red flag was the station with the
Paul brothers. They they only have bad.
Speaker 10 (49:03):
Ideas, and they have a long history of crypto scams
as well. I mean they've been in that since the
ground floor, basically offloading NFTs and things like that on
their fans.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Going up to the actual grift. Can you walk me
through how this was done and what if anything differentiates
the hawk to a grift from another crypto grift.
Speaker 10 (49:27):
Yeah, so there's kind of a handful of ways that
people start meme coins. It's become very easy to do
so over the last year or so because there have
been these platforms, including one that's called pump dot fun,
which is like a very popular platform where anyone can
launch a meme coin in a matter of minutes, and
it's really sort of reduced that sort of technical barrier
(49:49):
to entry that previously existed and has certainly helped to
fuel this explosion in meme coins where it seems like,
you know, something happens and suddenly there's twenty me coins
based around it within a span of minutes. Because you know,
the sort of point is to get as much media
attention as possible, and so if you can be the
first person to sort of glom onto a viral moment,
(50:10):
then you can potentially make money. Or at least that's
the theory.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
It feels more like it's a it's a like pr
challenge more than anything else.
Speaker 10 (50:18):
Oh for sure, that's one hundred percent the case, and
so the way that you know, celebrity meme coins. The
work is a little bit varied because often it's not
the celebrities themselves, you know, sitting down at a computer
and designing this token. There's often some sort of a
partnership with supposedly experienced people in this world who are
the ones you know, designing the tokenomics, which is what
(50:41):
they like to call the sort of distribution schemes and
things like that. People who speak the language of the
crypto world have made quite a lot of money off
of sort of offering to be a conduit for celebrities
and take all of the hard stuff off of their
plate basically, and all they have to do is endorse
it and promote it on Twitter and take their cut
(51:01):
at the end of the day. And that seems to
be what happened here with the Hawktua girl, where you know,
she was not the one on Pumped Up Fun you know,
typing in the parameters and all that, but she was
working with this group of promoters who promised to sort
of help her with the hard stuff.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Is there a particular reason why she is being singled
out and called out if this happens all the time.
Speaker 10 (51:23):
I mean, I would argue that probably more people should
be singled out and called out total types of things. Yeah,
because her particular grift was I think not particularly unique.
It's not clear to me that she is personally culpable
in a way that more meme coin creators maybe, But
she's certainly been a fun target for a lot of
(51:44):
people who are angry about.
Speaker 12 (51:46):
You know, this particular scam.
Speaker 10 (51:47):
But I think a lot of it is really just
the jokes. You know, it's it's fun to make jokes
about Hawk to a girl, and you know, she's been
sort of portrayed as this villain because it's kind of
funny to say that, like, Hawk to a girl just
stole all your money in ways that maybe it's not
with just any general meme coin.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
What was done here is so clearly a scam and
is so clearly wrong, but I just wasn't sure if
it was uniquely wrong or if this is the playbook.
Speaker 10 (52:12):
Yeah, I was actually just talking to someone about this.
Where in the crypto world, things like this happen so
often that I think people often forget that they're illegal.
Pumping numps are actually like illegal thing to do wash trading,
which is where you sort of fake buying and selling
of tokens to increase the price and to sort of
make it look more popular than it is. That's illegal,
(52:34):
but it's so common in the crypto world and it's
so rarely enforced that it's like it has become this
accepted way of doing business in the crypto world. That's
sort of what we're seeing here, where like, yeah, pumping
and dumping is illegal, rug pulling is illegal, it's also
an everyday occurrence, and the two things are not sort
of mutually exclusive. I think you see that a lot
(52:55):
with even when it comes to enforcement cases and legal action,
where people are like, I can't believe you're singling out
Kim Kardashian or something like that, like because what she's
doing is so common. You know, when she was targeted
by the SEC because she was doing paid promotions for
cryptotokens without disclosing she was being compensated. But like, if
(53:16):
you look at crypto Twitter, that's all you're seeing.
Speaker 12 (53:18):
That's every day.
Speaker 10 (53:19):
Stuff, and so it almost feels unfair to be targeted
for that when it's so rarely enforced, And honestly, you
could probably make an argument that it is unfair, but
part of the regulatory regime is trying to sort of
make an example of people to try to deter others
from doing similar activity. And so that's why you tend
to see these legal actions coming out against the Kim
(53:41):
Kardashians of the world and not some no name cryptos camera.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
Our case is like this an opportunity to set a
higher precedent. Do you see cases like this altering the
types of griffs we're going to see?
Speaker 12 (53:54):
I suspect not with this one.
Speaker 10 (53:56):
For what I would be kind of surprised if legal
action comes of it. I know some people have speculated that, like, oh,
hawk to a girl's going to jail, and again it's
a part of the joke, and it's it's a funny idea.
But in the grand scheme of meme coin disasters, this
one was pretty small. Again, it's not clear to me
how much intent Haley Welch herself had around scamming her
(54:19):
fans beyond the sort of normal amount of scam that's
involved with meme coins. I don't necessarily expect the SEC
to like come out and make a big example of
Hailey Welch, especially right now with political changes and regulatory
changes that are looking to even further decrease how many
enforcement cases the SEC brings against crypto projects. And so
(54:41):
I suspect that, you know, this is all a fun
laugh and I don't think it will really meaningfully change
how many people start these projects. In fact, I suspect
there are people out there looking at Haley Welch and going,
maybe I could do something.
Speaker 11 (54:55):
A shot, Yes, sort of.
Speaker 10 (54:56):
In all, publicity is good publicity aspect to this well,
and I think that it should probably be a lesson
to celebrities who are considering getting involved with this. They
I'm sure many celebrities have received outreach from these types
of people who work with celebrities to launch meme coins,
who probably don't pitch this as a scam to the celebrities.
(55:17):
You know, they use all the talking points about how
this is a great way to engage with your fans
and to create a community around your meme coin, And
it might be tempting to some celebrities who are not
familiar with this, but ultimately they're running the risk of
being branded as a scammer. Most of these things, even
if they don't collapse quite as spectacularly is this one,
are still pretty naked cash grabs and so I don't
(55:39):
think it's something that many people who are trying to
maintain any form of legitimate reputation would necessarily want to
get involved with.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yeah, I mean a podcast is one thing, although still offensive,
but it's so funny that yeah, now it's like, oh,
the best way to engage with your fans is to
create a new kind of money and make them.
Speaker 12 (56:00):
I guess the one.
Speaker 10 (56:01):
Thing that I try to point out when it comes
to meme coins like this is, you know, the people
who are looking at them and saying, maybe I can
be the one who gets in early. Maybe I can
be the one who makes a killing off of this
when it spikes by a thousand percent before it completely crashes.
It's important to realize that in the crypto world, for
many people, it is literally not possible to get in
early enough to make money on these things. There's this
(56:23):
whole ecosystem of bots, and it's called token sniping, where
you know, there's all this infrastructure out there that is
fairly sophisticated people doing the same thing you're trying to do,
sitting at your computer watching Twitter and so getting the
idea that you are going to be the one who
gets in early enough to profit off of. This is
a very dangerous idea because it's you're trading against people
(56:46):
who are, despite the fact that they're trading meme coins,
relatively sophisticated.
Speaker 12 (56:51):
In this type of thing.
Speaker 10 (56:52):
And when it comes to meme coin markets, but certainly
crypto markets more broadly, I think a lot of people
tend to look at them as it somewhat similar to
stock markets and sort of other highly regulated trading venues,
and that is also often a mistake, because you really
should not be putting trust into even the exchanges where
(57:14):
you're trading, the people you're trading against, the platforms that
are supposedly helping you to do this trading, because there is,
like I said, just such a failure of the regulatory
apparatus to maintain these legitimate and sort of safe markets
for retail investors to trade in. So I'm always cautious about,
you know, talking about these things in a way that
(57:34):
might give people the impression that, like, ooh, you know,
maybe I can be the one who makes a killing
off of this, because it's stacked against you in ways
that people often don't realize.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Thank you so much to Mollie. You can follow all
her work, and Web three is going just great at
the links in the description, And here we find ourselves
at the end of the hawk.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
To a series. Is this purgatory? Have we been dead
the whole time?
Speaker 5 (58:00):
The whole time, the whole time you would the whole time?
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Is the only useful lesson here? Never trust Gizmo's son
in law. Maybe, But ironically enough, I think it is
this same son in law, not Hollywood himself, that has
the key to not only what the victims of the
crypto scam believed, but what I think probably motivated Haley
Welch to become a part of this scheme in the
(58:26):
first place.
Speaker 17 (58:27):
The people here that you guys are already y'all have
had every day thinking everything's a scam. And you know what,
you guys are right, Everything is a scam, but not this,
not this.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
You're right, everything's a scam, but not this. Contained in
the words of this coked out freak is an insight
into online culture today. The days where someone would be
surprised to be taken advantage of online are long gone.
To some extent, It's an expectation of being online.
Speaker 1 (58:58):
It's the rules of play.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
So why are so many people still getting scammed. I
think it's because of what Doc Hollywood is saying. A
good scammer can convince you that, sure everything is a scam,
just not this. Why is this normal girl from Tennessee
using her image to rip off people just like her,
(59:20):
people in a position that she herself would have been
in just six months earlier. I don't know for sure,
but I can say that it feels pretty nihilistic in
the way that a lot of American culture is. Here
is this young woman that went viral after being coerced
into creating content for someone else outside of a bar.
(59:44):
She panics for a week, then seems to realize that
while this isn't what she wanted, maybe it's a blessing
in disguise.
Speaker 1 (59:51):
She's grown up on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
She's seen this happen to people before, and she knows
that if she doesn't try to capitalize on this, someone
else is going to.
Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
They've already started.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
She's grown up poor, she has witnessed the American scam firsthand.
The only way you die above the class you were
born in now is for something extraordinary to happen. And sure,
some people strike it big professionally in a way that
helps and enriches the lives of others. But if you're
trying to do it quick, probably not. Again, none of
(01:00:24):
this justifies financially extorting other people, but I do think
it contextualizes it. But when the shine wears off of
this initial moment, maybe the podcast is a little amateurish.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Maybe the public seems to.
Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Be moving on from the meme she seems.
Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
To say fuck it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Maybe it's possible to be convinced by the bad actors
you've surrounded yourself with the doc hollywoods and the Jake Pauls,
that you can get a solid cash out on your
way out the door of relevance. That becoming the scammer
is how you really jump classes. Because for all intents
and purposes, that's true. All she has to do is
(01:01:06):
convince the people she's scamming that they're the scammers too.
I am honestly really curious where Haley Welch goes from here,
if anywhere in the influencing space specifically, But if this
is it, I think Hayley ended up getting caught between
the scammers and the scammed, because yes, she absolutely used
(01:01:31):
and monetized her image to rip off a lot of people.
Who had not gotten lucky in the same way that
she had.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
But it's just as.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Undeniable to me that she was exploited and deceived by
the people surrounding her more than once. First by the
guys who posted the clip of her without explicit permission,
who then yelled at her publicly for not cutting them
in on her success. Then with the management that often
openly acknowledged that they knew she was seen as a
(01:02:01):
sexual object and that that made her uncomfortable. The same
management who openly said that they didn't think she was
smart enough to understand what real Hollywood representation would mean.
You don't need to feel bad for her, but Haley
absolutely got scammed here too, because even if she's not
the one getting sued, she's the one who gets discarded
(01:02:22):
in her first national interview a thousand years ago, all
the way back in July twenty twenty four, from that piece.
Speaker 15 (01:02:30):
They all think they know so much about me, she continues,
but nobody knows shit about me. Do you want them to,
I ask, We'll shoot a gbus smile. Don't worry they
will before it's over with.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Hailey, Welch the Hawk to a girl. Your sixteenth minute
ends now, I hope for your sake. Thank you so
much to everyone who has listened to this series. Please
tell your damn friends about it.
Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
For crying out loud.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
And next week we will return with a real mystery,
one that collides the classic exploratory, weirdo Internet communities of
lost Media and creepy pasta fans the back rooms next
week on sixteenth Minute. Sixteenth Minute is a production of
(01:03:20):
fool Zone Media and iHeart Radios. It is written, hosted,
and produced by me Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are
Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The amazing Ian Johnson is
our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is
by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Pet.
Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kats Flee
(01:03:43):
and Casper and my pet Rockbird, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Bye
Host
Jamie Loftus
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