Female Internet Celebrity Harvests $500 Million in 5 Hours, Rights Defenders Left Empty-Handed! What Happened?

In December 2024, American internet celebrity Haliey Welch launched a meme coin named HAWK. With the influence of 2.5 million fans, the token's price skyrocketed 900% after its launch, and its market capitalization instantly surpassed $500 million. However, just one day later, the coin's price plummeted 95%, and its market value evaporated almost entirely.

Data shows:

96% of the tokens are controlled by 10 associated wallets, suspected to be held by the team themselves, with one wallet selling off 135 million tokens for $1.3 million just 1.5 hours after the coin was issued; investors suffered heavy losses, with some losing $1.3 million in a single transaction, and even some going bankrupt.

Although victims filed complaints with the SEC in the United States, the team deflected by claiming they “did not sell the tokens.” Welch's X account had already deleted all promotional content, and legal accountability has become stalled due to anonymous wallets and cross-border structures. This is the standard operation of a “coin issuance factory” that uses celebrity traffic to create bubbles and employs technical anonymity to cover up the traces of harvesting.

From “Technical Packaging” to “Legal Decoupling” - Zero Threshold for Coin Issuance

Utilizing the extremely low costs of public chains like Sol (about $50 to issue a coin) requires no technical background. A certain “coin issuance factory” in Shenzhen is reported to launch dozens of meme coins each month, simply by modifying token names and logos to mass-produce them, and then leveraging celebrity endorsements and social manipulation!

Legal Evasion Design, Offshore Registration, and High Costs for Cross-Border Judicial Recovery; Exemption Clauses and User Agreements Force Arbitration Clauses that Limit Ordinary Investors' Rights to Litigation; Funds Transferred through Mixers to DeFi Protocols are Nearly Impossible to Trace On-Chain.

The Mainland's Recognition of the Validity of Virtual Currency Trading Contracts is Inconsistent; Some Cases Support “Property Attributes” Requiring Fund Returns, While More Judgments Reject Claims on the Grounds of “Harming Public Interests.” Even if victorious, the funds may have already been laundered through USDT to overseas accounts, leaving the execution rate at zero.

The Decentralized “Black Charm” - A Carefully Designed Legal Scam

The essence of the meme coin industrial chain is to use technical anonymity and regulatory lag to package financial fraud as “decentralized innovation.” When investors seek justice, they face an “invisible wall” composed of offshore companies, anonymous wallets, and judicial barriers. As a certain Web3 lawyer said, “There are no heroes or villains here, only hunters who have designed escape routes in advance and prey who cling to a sense of luck.