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