Hawk Tuah Wasn’t What It Seemed

A memecoin is a cryptocurrency that, like most cryptocurrencies, has no inherent value. It is created to represent an internet meme, and its value is tied very loosely to that meme’s popularity; you could think of it as like owning stock in, say, a knock-knock joke. The most famous memecoin is Dogecoin, which was boosted by Elon Musk and refers to an internet-famous dog.

More recently, people have fixated on a coin called Hawk, as in “Hawk Tuah,” the meme of the year. The coin was created by a team of crypto people and by Haliey Welch, the cute, blond 22-year-old woman who brought us that phrase over the summer. You may know this part of the story: In June, a man-on-the-street interviewer approached Welch, out on the town in Nashville, and asked her, “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” She replied with perfect comedic timing, in a thick Tennessee accent: “You gotta give ’em that and spit on that thang.” This was very funny and went viral on TikTok and elsewhere. (Bryce Harper, the married and Mormon first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, on national television.) In the months that followed, Welch built an online brand as a relatable country girl turned “queen of memes,” selling , , launching named after her boyfriend, appearing in, and so on.