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IntermediateLesson 3 of 73 min read

HAWK: a celebrity coin and a 96% cluster

December 4, 2024: an internet celebrity's coin reached about $490 million within minutes and lost over 90% within hours. What the holder map showed, what the team said, and what to check before buying a famous name.

Words in this lesson8

On this pageWhat happened1/6
  1. What happened
  2. What the holder map showed
  3. What the team said
  4. What a careful trader would have checked
  5. The lesson
  6. Quiz
A sly fox in a trench coat and hat aims a telescope from a brick rooftop, its red crosshair on a frightened new coin popping off a launch pad, while the ghost mascot leaps in to shield it.
Seconds after HAWK went live, one wallet had already bought a big slice.

What happened

In June 2024 a short street interview made Haliey Welch famous overnight, and she built a brand on the catchphrase from the clip. Her coin traded as HAWK. The phrase behind it is crude, and you do not need it to follow the trade, so we will leave it out.

HAWK went live on Solana around 4 pm US Eastern time on December 4, 2024, on the Meteora exchange. Welch had told fans it was not a cash grab and that the team would not sell.

Example

HAWK's first hours

Reports differ a little on the exact top, so both are shown.

  1. Step 1: Seconds after launch: one wallet buys about 17.5% of the supply for about 4,195 SOL, close to $1 million, according to the crypto news site Rekt. The team said it had set high launch fees to stop snipers. They did not stop this one.
  2. Step 2: Within about 15 minutes: the market cap reaches about $490 million by Decrypt's count, or about $400 million by The Block's.
  3. Step 3: About 90 minutes in: that early wallet has sold about 178 million tokens for about $1.3 million profit.
  4. Step 4: Within about three hours: the price is down more than 90%.
A sniper's timelineA price line over four phases after a launch. In block zero, the very first moment, snipers buy. In the next seconds early buyers arrive. Over the next minutes the crowd piles in and pushes the price up. Then the snipers sell into the crowd and the price falls.PriceBlock 0Snipersbuy firstSecondsEarlybuyersMinutesThe crowdpiles inThenSnipers sellto the crowd
The usual shape of a sniped launch: buy in the first instant, sell into the crowd that follows.

What the holder map showed

The day after launch, the on-chain research firm Bubblemaps reported that about 96% of the supply sat in one cluster of linked wallets at launch. The creator wallet had made the whole supply, put 3% into the trading pool and moved the rest through ten wallets. One of them handled a 17% 'strategic allocation' for 285 presale buyers, fully unlocked from the first minute. By Bubblemaps' count, 155 of those wallets sold at least some, about $3.3 million in total.

What the team said

The team said the cluster was simply tokens moving from the creator wallet to the wallets its published plan described, and that Welch's team had sold no tokens at all. Welch said no promoter got free tokens and that the 10% set aside for her and her team was locked for a year, then released over three years. Bubblemaps agreed the team itself had not sold. It said promoters and advisers connected to the project had.

In December 2024 a group of buyers sued people behind the launch and promotion in a New York federal court. Welch was not named at first and said she was cooperating with the buyers' lawyers. In March 2025 her lawyer said the SEC, the US markets regulator, had closed its inquiry without action against her. In May 2025 she said she had been paid a marketing fee, made nothing from the coin itself, and felt sorry for everyone who lost money. In November 2025 the buyers' lawyers asked the court to add her to the case, claiming she was set to be paid up to $325,000 to promote the coin. These are claims in a lawsuit, not findings by a court.

What a careful trader would have checked

  • Who holds the supply at minute one. A bubble map showed one cluster holding nearly everything.
  • What is unlocked. A 17% slice that presale buyers could sell from the first minute is a queue of sellers waiting for the crowd.
  • The first buys. One wallet taking 17.5% in seconds is a sniper, whatever fees were set.
  • What a promise covers. 'The team will not sell' covers the team's own wallets. Promoters, advisers and presale buyers are free to sell.

The lesson

Read the map before the name. A celebrity can be sincere and still front a launch where most of the supply sits with insiders, presale buyers and fast bots. If you cannot see who holds the coin, the safe move is to stay out.

Next: TRUMP, an official coin with 80% held back

Check what you learned

0 of 4 answered

  1. Question 1What did Bubblemaps report about HAWK's supply at launch?
  2. Question 2TrickyThe team said its own wallets sold nothing. Could holders still be sold into hard?
  3. Question 3What did high launch fees do against the snipers on HAWK?
  4. Question 4What does a famous name reliably bring to a launch?

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This guide is for learning. It is not financial advice. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Only ever trade what you can afford to lose.