Solana-Based Memecoin Hawk Faces 90% Market Cap Drop

The newly launched Solana-based memecoin Hawk saw its market capitalization drop by more than 90% shortly after its debut.

The token was launched by Hailey Welch, who went viral earlier this year for her quote “Hawk Tuah” in a street interview video posted on YouTube.

According to data from DexScreener, HAWK debuted at around 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday and quickly soared to amass a market capitalization of roughly $400 million before plummeting over 90% to around $37 million at the time of writing.

This unfolded as some users on the social media platform alleged that the token's launch was ridden with market manipulation, pointing to data from Bubblemaps. The blockchain data visualization platform posted a screenshot that revealed a cluster of wallets allegedly belonging to the team. The platform noted that at one point, insiders controlled 96% of the total token supply. At the time of writing, the percentage is down to 79%.

Welch Denies Claims

Meanwhile, Welch and the Hawk team have denied such allegations.

> “Team hasn’t sold one token and not 1 KOL was given 1 free token,” Welch wrote on X Wednesday evening. “We tried to stop snipers as best we could through high fees in the start of launch on Meteora — Fees have now been dropped.”

OverHere, which appears to be the team behind HAWK’s launch, also explained on X that the 96% cluster seen on Bubblemaps shows the tokens sent by the deployer address to related addresses in compliance with its tokenomics.

The memecoin’s tokenomics, posted by Welch on X, show that only 10% of the supply goes to Welch and her team with a 12-month lock and 3-year linear vesting period.

> “Haliey's Team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever,” OverHere wrote. The Block has reached out to OverHere but has yet to hear back.