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- [00:00]
Grant
Where'd you get those shoes?
- [00:02]
Molly White
Easy.
- [00:02]
Grant
They're from dsw. Because DSW has the exact right shoes for whatever you're into right now. You know, like the sneakers that make office hours feel like happy hour, the boots that turn grocery aisles into runways, and all the styles that show off the many sides of you, from daydreamer to multitasker and everything in between. Because you do it all in really great shoes. Find a shoe for every you at your DSW store or DSW.com Are you.
- [00:30]
Jamie Loftus
Still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nilsson report.
- [00:59]
Grant
I'm Grant and I'm your new Bachelor.
- [01:01]
Jamie Loftus
ABC Mondays.
- [01:02]
Molly White
Is this real? Is he real?
- [01:04]
Jamie Loftus
The Bachelor is back and the ladies are head over heels.
- [01:07]
Grant
Tall, handsome, smart, he's perfect.
- [01:09]
Jamie Loftus
It's an all new season of romance.
- [01:11]
Molly White
I'm 110% ready to fall in love.
- [01:14]
Jamie Loftus
My love story is going to happen. And of course drama.
- [01:18]
Grant
These other girls are dating my boyfriend. You act like you don't care. He knows how I feel. I did not know how hard this was going to be.
- [01:24]
Jamie Loftus
The Bachelor Mondays, 8, 7 Central on AB and stream on Hulu. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway now through February 25th. Stock up on your favorite self care items and save up to $3. Shop in store or online for items like Old Spice Deodorant Always, Ultra thin pads, Gillette Fusion razors and refills, Old Spice, Total Body Spray, Tampax Pearl and Gillette Mach 3 razors and refills and save up to $3. You won't want to miss out on these deals. Offer ends February 25th. Offers may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [02:00]
Grant
Cool Zone Media Hi everybody. Jamie here with just a few notes up top. Thank you so much for listening to the Hawk to a series. If you haven't listened to the previous parts, I would recommend you do so. I just wanted to mention because it doesn't come up in the space of this episode that we have done our due diligence. We reached out to Haley Welch's team, we heard back and then we were slow ghosted to date. So now you know. Also, if you enjoy the show, you can head over to our Reddit board. Normally I wouldn't suggest going on a Reddit board, but it's actually very lovely and wholesome R 16th minute, if you have ideas for future episodes you'd like to see, or if you just want to have a nice time with the nice listeners of this show. Also, one more note. The documentary I'm talking about towards the beginning of this episode is by Dan Olson. It is called Line Goes Up. It's on his YouTube channel, folding ideas. It's fantastic. Okay, hawk two a part three. Let's go. Welcome back to 16th minute, the podcast where we take a look at the Internet's characters of the day and see how their big moment affected them and what it says about us and the Internet. And today, in a truly grand finale, we are going to take a look at the scam that took down viral star Hayley Welch, AKA Hawk, to a girl. For now at least. If there's one thing I've learned in the course of making this show, it's to never count a diva out. And for many of you, this may be a moment in Hailey's online career you thought would have come much earlier in the series, her crypto scam. Crypto scams being something that I have postponed trying to understand for half a decade at least. But for everyone, a day does come and so hath mine, and perhaps so hath yours. So I guess just a disclaimer if you do understand crypto, even in a basic way, this part may be a little frustrating for you. But if you don't, I will walk you through this as best I can because this is the moment that I suspect most people are going to remember about Haley Welch. Well, most people didn't know much more than her original viral moment up until this time, and maybe some checked out. Talk to us this the crypto scam became the legacy. The Hawk Tour girl might be going.
- [05:24]
Molly White
To prison for the dumbest scam in history.
- [05:26]
Grant
Hawk TWA Girl, also known as Hayley Welch, launched her meme coin Hawk last week. The coin soared to a market cap of around $400 million before tanking. This girl just ruined her entire career.
- [05:39]
Jamie Loftus
And honestly, we all saw this coming, right?
- [05:42]
Grant
So how does this crypto launch for Hawk Coin go from being Hailey, Doc Hollywood and team hailing it as the biggest opportunity in years to dock Hollywood calling everyone who had invested mentally ill in under 24 hours. Well, first, let's set the scene a brief history of Crypto alongside a recap of Haley Welch's life. Attempts at cryptocurrency were underway years before Haley was born. The idea was first conceived in 1983, was acknowledged by the NSA in 1996, and systems like Bitgold were bandied about before the Internet went mainstream. And finally the technology ran smoothly enough to announce formally over a decade after that. Hayley Welch was born in 2002 to a lower class, fractured family in Tennessee. Her earliest years were under two consecutive George W. Bush presidencies heading into kindergarten, around the time that the housing bubble in the US got really bad during the mid 2000s. Then in late 2007, the Great Recession began and it had a massive effect on Tennessee, slamming the job market for years to come. And in a complete coincidence, I'm sure, as the public's faith in big banking understandably plummeted, the idea of cryptocurrency finally became palatable in the mainstream. In 2009, Bitcoin was launched by Satoshi Nakamoto, who Hayley Welch, not for nothing, regularly parodied on X, calling herself Haktoshi Tuamoto. I know, really creative. Anyways, crypto continues to grow and shrink in a pretty niche market in these early years. Silk Road is launched in 2012, and then it is shut down by the FBI several years later. The way that the crypto blockchain works at its simplest is that it's a decentralized activity log of financial transactions that relies on a consensus mechanism among users that often ends up sowing a fundamental distrust in understanding what these numbers on this blockchain actually mean. Basically, it requires a hell of a lot of checks and balances for users to get clear answers. And that kind of labor can be very time consuming for someone who's just an individual doing crypto in earnest alone. So most people you hear that have been very successful in crypto have a team doing this labor for them in order to maximize their own personal profit. Crypto, as professor of Computer science and economics Jen Lansky qualified, requires the following. First, its value is maintained through consensus and not a big bank central authority. Second, the system will decide when new cryptocurrency can be minted. Third, ownership can be proven only in the crypto blockchain. Fourth, crypto can be transferred, but transaction statements can only be accessed by the current owner. And finally, if two ownership changes are requested at once on the blockchain, only one of these transactions can be acted on. Something that ends up screwing over a lot of people down the line. It seems like as Crypto becomes more normalized, even in niche Internet communities. Interest then moves to a currency called Ethereum, a version of cryptocurrency that became very successful by marketing itself on the idea that crypto bypasses government corruption and doesn't just force you to sign up for a new set of unregulated corruptions. For years, as Dan Olson explains, there were these UN based rumors that various countries, Brazil, Venezuela, were on the brink of switching their entire economies to cryptocurrency. But this was never really true in retrospect. In fact, it was a result of the effort of crypto boosters, making it seem like the currency was far more popular abroad than it actually was. After the Ethereum Boom came the NFTs, a crypto gateway of sorts that was something of a play to get normies into crypto. That seemed to work pretty well at the time. For a couple minutes at least, you probably remember this. NFTs were a craze in the early 2000s, which happens to be another time of incredible economic despair in which people paid for, quote, unquote, true digital objects, which many, including me, thought meant that you were buying the copy, the definitive copy of a digital artwork. And so, in the early days of its mainstream popularity, NFTs expanded to the sale of memes. We've actually talked about it on this show before. In our overly Attached Girlfriend episode, there was this small boom where the major meme main characters of the 2000s and the 2010s took the chance to monetize their image that in most cases had been involuntarily taken and co opted from them and actually made money off of them for the first time. However, as Dan Olsen's documentary explains in great detail, NFTs ended up being a scam of their own. It was a way to imply scarcity about an infinitely reproducible image. And NFTs became synonymous with art during this boom in the early 2000s, first coming into the news when an artist named beeple vine sold $69 million worth of NFTs. What's even more relevant, though, is that this sale was made at legacy auction house Christie's, which gave a whiff of legitimacy to the project that NFTs previously had not had by a long shot. NFT ended up being the crypto version of the Swiss speculation market, or the collector's market, which always crashes. The example that comes right to mind for me is Beanie Babies. When they're first released, you can get them for about five to seven dollars. Once they retire the value goes up in like two years. They're worth like $245 and stuff. He's worth about $4,000. But it goes far back as the tulip bulb spec bubble of the 17th century. We've been overvaluing things that are ultimately kind of trash for a long time. NFTs were perceived as exclusive collectibles, which on most timelines boils down to, I hope you actually like them because they almost never retain their value. Thankfully, I love my beanie babies and I don't care that my mom spent my college fund on them. In line goes up. Dan Olsen also emphasizes that the marks and the targets for these crypto scams aren't the fabulously wealthy that we see in media. The marks are people somewhere in the middle class, people with some disposable income who are still long term financially insecure enough that they'd take a risk on something as tenuous as a crypto scam. As Olson puts it, the target of these scams are, quote, tenuously middle class, socially isolated, and highly responsive to memes. While this was happening, Hayley Welch graduated high school in 2020 in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, beginning community college but dropping out to focus on her day job. As we've talked about before, Haley loved her home, her family, her friends, but unquestionably her grew up during a time of extreme economic and social precarity. It would probably be hard for her to remember a time before bad job markets and gun safety drills to evade mass shootings in school, when all the while, the way to make it in America was shifting from the conventional become a star model to the Internet version of the become a star model. Become a star, get your grift in and get the fuck out of there. Which brings us to meme coins. Meme coins are a newer form of crypto that are famously unstable and scammy. And saying something is particularly scammy in the crypto world is really saying something. Meme coins are exactly what they sound like. They're a currency whose relevance depends on the appeal of the meme personality who is the face of them, whether that meme is a person or a fictional character, character or an idea. The most successful examples, and one that I think has tragically crossed into the mainstream, is the Elon Musk touted dogecoin, which is based on a meme of a Shiba inu, who, bless his heart, he didn't see the storm coming. Meme coins of this nature tend to be sold as crypto on the bizarrely and I guess aptly named website Pump Fun. And the name itself is a wink at how many pump and dump schemes the space has been known for over the years. The site was started by three guys in their 20s in London, and this was a space that sort of facilitated the resurgence of crypto after NFTs sort of took a turn in the early 2000s. The New York Times reported that in the front half of 2024, 1.7 million coins launched, compared to just 250,000 ish in the same period of time in 2023. So if you've heard about meme coins more, it's certainly not an accident. And stars of the 2024 space outside of Halee, whose eventual coin was called Hawkcoin, were Magacoin Ear Coin after Donald Trump got shot in the ear Baby.
- [16:16]
Jamie Loftus
Trump Coin One of the coolest parts of my job being able to do this every day is seeing different projects and I love these Trump meme coins that have come out like Maga and obviously now Baby Trump, that's the one that, that I am sharing with you now. And you know what? It makes you smile.
- [16:35]
Grant
What? And there are celebrity coins. Manosphere influencer and convicted criminal Andrew Tate launched a Coring Daddy coin flop rapper Iggy Azalea started one called Mother Coin. There was one called Tom and Jelly. You name a cursed idea, someone probably tried to launch it as a meme coin last year. So even though crypto fell out of favor in a major way in 2022, pump fun. And these meme coins had a big hand in bringing them back because of how easy this website made it to get a crypto coin minted for as low as $2, perhaps a bone chilling AI image of baby Trump and boom, you've created the stupidest new economy on the planet. But because the barrier to entry for making meme coins is so low, this space tends to bring in new people to crypto, which, as we will learn, is kind of the perfect setup for a rug pull. In short, a rug pull is a pretty basic crypto scam that basically consists of overhyping the eventual value of a meme coin, promising a lot, and then pulling the rug out from investors, selling off all of the valuable assets of the token well in advance so that everyone else is more or less completely screwed over shortly after the token launches and the value crashes. I'll let my guests explain it better, but that's the idea. If you're a fan of a certain meme or personality or for some reason Iggy Azalea, you could cash in on the popularity of a meme to lure in investors, the average of whom, as Dan Olson says, is a middle class person throwing in around $350 on average, then pulling the rug and causing them to lose it all. But here's a weird thing that was striking me the more I looked into this world. Even the most starter crypto investors seem to have a basic understanding that crypto is to some extent a scam. For most people, the true rug pull, I think, is the average investor finding out that they're not the scammer, they're the scammed. And I know that plenty of people have said that if you get scammed by like Hawk to a Girl or Baby Trump, then you deserve everything that happens to you. And maybe for you that's true. But for the purposes of this episode, I want to hold some empathy for these people because they are being targeted out of desperation. So before we get back to Hayley Welch, it wouldn't be a fair discussion of cryptocurrency without acknowledging how gigantic and needless crypto's environmental impact is in exchange for what it does for the world, which is very little.
- [19:36]
Jamie Loftus
If you wanted to be a crypto Miner in the 2000 and tens, your home computer might be enough to get you started today. You need a bunch of specialized, very powerful computers. They're known as mining rigs, and they use a stunning amount of electricity.
- [19:52]
Grant
So if you're listening and you're into crypto, know that you are contributing to this problem. Which is kind of ironic because helping the environment was one of the early claims that crypto advocates made in its early years. They would cite how much energy and natural resources that conventional banking generated in comparison. And sure, big banks suck up a lot of energy, and that is a valid criticism. But crypto takes up a lot more energy per person. A UN report from 2023 indicated that Bitcoin mining consumed more energy than the entire country of Pakistan in the year 2021. So I usually save interviews for the ends of these episodes, but there is truly no one better to shepherd us through the world of crypto than Molly White, a prolific writer and investigator of crypto. So I'm going to let her set us up and we'll hear from her throughout the episode.
- [20:53]
Molly White
I'm Molly. I am a crypto researcher and writer. I've been following the crypto industry for several years now.
- [21:01]
Grant
What brought you to this specialty?
- [21:04]
Molly White
I got started in 2021. I think when crypto is going through its Major sort of retail moments where it seemed like, you know, every news article was about crypto and there were ads everywhere and people were being told that they needed to buy Bitcoin or NFTs or Dogecoin or something like that in order to get ahead and to make a ton of money and, you know, buy their Lambos. And around that same time there was a lot of talk how blockchains and cryptocurrencies were going to sort of revolutionize the web and fix everything that's wrong with the web. And I've always been a big web nerd. I was, you know, a software engineer. I have my own complaints about the web as someone who really loves it ultimately, but you know, has, has watched it become this very sort of hyper capitalized landscape. And so initially I was like, great, let's fix the web. I'm in, you know, when I was hearing all this stuff about Web3, but then I actually started to dig into it and learn more about it and discuss discovered that like, wow, a lot of people are getting scammed and it doesn't feel like anyone is talking about it at the time. There were a lot of these like profiles of people who were making it rich overnight and you know, the dogecoin millionaire and all this stuff. And there was like nobody talking about the downsides of it, which were far more, I think, important and widespread for the tech illiterate.
- [22:25]
Grant
What is Web3?
- [22:28]
Molly White
Well, it doesn't really have a very specific definition, which I think is part of the point. I think generally speaking web3 is just a word that describes taking blockchains and applying them to web problems. So trying to build, well, web services with a blockchain involved is going to be a Web3 project.
- [22:48]
Grant
Just based on the way I've seen crypto talked about in the last several years. I kind of inherently associate it with Elon scams. Basically I think of dogecoin now there is this sort of like known influencer to crypto scam pipeline. When did you first notice this tendency?
- [23:11]
Molly White
Yeah, I think the whole trend of celebrities getting involved with crypto projects kicked off sort of around the time I started paying attention. It had happened before that. So, you know, in 2017 there was this huge explosion of what were called ICOs, which was similar to an IPO where a company goes public and suddenly everyone can buy the stock, but you do it with crypto tokens. And the idea was like, now you don't have to go through the SEC registration process, which is extremely challenging and onerous and helpful. At preventing scams. There were celebrities who got involved in that at, you know, at that point they were like, we're going to be ICO investors. But it was a pretty niche thing. Like not that many people are that excited about ICOs or IPOs for that matter. But then in 2021, yeah, I would say 2020 or 2021, we saw a lot of celebrities getting excited about crypto as not just a way to make money, although that certainly was a big part of it, but to sort of promote themselves and to monetize their brands. And so There were celebrity NFTs. There were celebrities getting involved in all of these web3 projects that people were talking about. We saw like Reese Witherspoon changing her Twitter profile picture to like A World of Women nft. Yeah, like a lot of people have forgotten about that.
- [24:28]
Grant
Not the feminist NFTs. Yeah, exactly.
- [24:32]
Molly White
Basketball players were launching NFTs and, you know, celebrities, a lot of like, sort of D list, like Soulja Boy.
- [24:39]
Grant
I think there was like a Super bowl celebrity crypto ad one year that I remember being like, oh, yeah, I guess this is like really a thing.
- [24:47]
Molly White
Well, yeah, and that's the other part of it is that celebrities were being used to promote crypto exchanges and things like that. It was like the crypto super bowl, but it was basically just before the collapse. Things like really peaked with crypto.com had an ad featuring Matt Damon. FTX had an ad with Larry David. You know, it was like this really weird moment where like suddenly all of these celebrities were involved. NFTs kind of fell apart and have, I guess, been sort of having a little bit of a revival. But I feel like the biggest trend recently has been these meme coins, which is like, you don't even have to bother getting an artist involved. You just make a token with your name and then you promote it and, you know, it's like less work basically, and you can still make a bunch of money off of it. Or at least that's the claim.
- [25:32]
Grant
We're going to check in with Molly more later to talk about Hawk coin style scams specifically. But let's get back into Hayley Welch's chaotic end to 2024. When we come back, Cryptua.
- [25:50]
Jamie Loftus
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- [26:49]
Molly White
Void.
- [26:50]
Jamie Loftus
In Ontario, new customers only. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng Co Audio.
- [27:00]
Grant
I'm Grant and I'm your new Bachelor.
- [27:02]
Jamie Loftus
ABC Mondays.
- [27:03]
Molly White
Is this real? Is he real?
- [27:04]
Jamie Loftus
The Bachelor is back and the ladies are head over heels.
- [27:08]
Grant
Tall, handsome, smart. He's perfect.
- [27:10]
Jamie Loftus
It's an all new season of romance.
- [27:12]
Grant
I'm 110% ready to fall in love.
- [27:15]
Jamie Loftus
My love story is gonna happen. And of course, drama.
- [27:18]
Grant
These other girls are dating my boy boyfriend. You act like you don't care. He knows how I feel. I did not know how hard this would be.
- [27:25]
Jamie Loftus
The Bachelor Mondays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. February is the month of love. And while you're spending time showing love to your family and friends, make sure you show yourself some love too. Now through February 25, shop in store and online and save on self love items from Dove. Like Dove Cucumber and Green Tea Body Wash, Dove Deep Moisture Nourishing Body Wash, Dove Antiperspirant, Dove Shampoos and Dove conditioners. Offer ends February 25th. Offers may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details. Oh, such a clutch off season pickup, Dave. I know, right? I was worried we'd bring back the same team.
- [28:07]
Grant
Oh no.
- [28:08]
Jamie Loftus
I meant those blackout motorized shades. MVP of the room lines.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds.
- [28:15]
Grant
Hard to install?
- [28:16]
Jamie Loftus
No, it's easy. Even you could do it. Nice. I installed these and then got some for my mom too. You fly across the country to do the install? Nope. Blinds.com can do it all. All she had to do was pick what she wanted. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install.
- [28:32]
Grant
Look at you.
- [28:32]
Jamie Loftus
Hall of fame, son. Oh, I just picked the winning team. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world.
- [28:39]
Molly White
Oh.
- [28:39]
Jamie Loftus
Blinds.com is the goat. The goat.
- [28:44]
Grant
Shop blinds.com right now. And get up to 45% off select styles and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Save up to 45%@blinds.com blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back to 16th minute. The constant is the best episode of Lost. I know it's a popular opinion, but it's my opinion as well. And the best line read of all time from Lost is from season one, episode 18.
- [29:25]
Molly White
Holly talks to her about Sam hearing something. And this is when she says, you're.
- [29:31]
Grant
Talking about the numbers.
- [29:33]
Jamie Loftus
Yes, you're talking about the numbers.
- [29:35]
Grant
She's supposed to be Australian. Shout out to Mike's Mike. And here's the moment you've all been waiting for. The hawk to a crypto scam. So after I saw Michael Saylor speak at the bitcoin conference, I have decided to start putting some money into crypto. And I just want to say, oh, my God. Thank you so much, Mr. Saylor. Last week, we talked through Haley's media career as the choice talent of Jake Paul's sports gambling network, Work Better. Haley was the host of Talk to A. And throughout this time, her future as a crypto girly was teased in the background. What was also teased was the fact that Haley personally did not seem to understand how crypto worked.
- [30:19]
Molly White
Oh, yeah.
- [30:19]
Grant
If I want to main coin, can I give you some tokens? Yeah, I'll give you my wallet. I'll give you my wallet. Okay.
- [30:24]
Jamie Loftus
Are you sure you're gonna launch? I don't know. I'm not a big fan about mean co coins.
- [30:28]
Grant
I love crypto, but.
- [30:29]
Jamie Loftus
But you can make some money from it.
- [30:30]
Grant
There's no doubt about it. No doubt about it.
- [30:32]
Molly White
I'm very new to it, and I'm.
- [30:34]
Grant
Still learning what it is. This episode of Talk to Us, the penultimate ever, has Mark Cuban as a guest, the famous billionaire who's just as famously pro crypto. So this was the perfect opportunity for Haley and her team to tease her interest in crypto on her show. The idea of Haley somehow getting involved in crypto had been bandied about as early as her Bill Maher interview back in July. But when it's brought up with Cuban a few months later, Haley had already been teasing a pivot to the crypto space for months, both in her appearances and in her online presence right around November, when Trump was reelected, Haley Welch, her team, and whoever is co authoring these damn X posts starts to heavily foreshadow the eventual meme coin that she will launch the next month. So I've been in the meme trenches for a while and here's what I got so far in my wallet with my busted ass phone. And once it's announced, it keeps going with sports betting bro Jake Paul. So by the time Jake Paul fights Mike Tyson on Netflix on November 15, Haley is in the audience mask off trying to court Elon Musk in front facing videos at the boxing match hi Mr. Elon.
- [31:55]
Molly White
How do I get a job at.
- [31:56]
Grant
The Department of Government Efficiency?
- [31:58]
Molly White
Can I lead the main team?
- [32:00]
Grant
A few minutes later, still at the boxing match, she's talking about NFTs.
- [32:06]
Molly White
What in that tour should I get next? I want to go shopping after the fight.
- [32:10]
Grant
I'm so sorry. How rude of me. NF Tuas and the day after her intra and naivete surrounding crypto is teased in the Mark Cuban episode of Talk to A, she formally announces Hawk Coin on her X profile okay, y'all drop your Solana wallets. I'm giving out some meme coins for free. Coming to you December 4th. And as I alluded to last week, I can't guarantee that nothing has been deleted from her other platforms regarding this crypto launch. But it seems as if she only announced the coin on X, leaving her more relatable platforms, as it were, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Empty of a mention. Although of course Instagram stories are possible. On November 26, more details are announced. Hailey has partnered with a group called Overhear, accompanied by another truly heinous AI image. The announcement reads.
- [33:09]
Jamie Loftus
Big announcement. We're excited to partner with Hayley Welch, the Internet's favorite meme queen behind the viral hawktua Girl meme, to launch Hawk, a meme coin that's set to redefine the crypto space. Why Hawk is Special this isn't just another token launch. Halee's launch of the Hawk meme coin represents a meaningful step in bringing mainstream audiences to the crypto world, protecting the community. With free token distributions and allow list campaigns, fans who are newcomers to crypto will get to experience the blockchain in a safer way.
- [33:46]
Grant
You get it? This is the one meme coin that definitely isn't a scam. And they note that they're aware that a lot of Haley's audience knows nothing about crypto, so they want to make this easy as possible. Then they get to the timeline.
- [34:01]
Jamie Loftus
What's next? November 26th. Today, Haley officially announced the launch of Hawk on X and on her podcast episode with Mark Cuban. November 26th through December 3rd, allow list registration opened for free token claims. December 4th, at 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time, Hawk begins trading on Solana.
- [34:23]
Grant
Hailie spoke to TMZ ahead of the release of Hawk coins and implied that her motivation to get involved in crypto was similar to her motivation to become an influencer in the first place. Because if she didn't do it, someone else would. And it was rumored that other people in the meme coin space already were. Anyways, it reminds me a lot of how part of the reason she came public as the Hawktua girl was because other people were claiming her identity falsely. Anyways, she tells tmz, the paper of record, that she wanted to go into crypto to combat a bunch of imposters who'd launched their own meme coins claiming to be her. So again, this pattern of scam before you get scammed. But Haley also knows that she has to sell her fans on the idea that Hawk Coin is a good investment. So she closes out the interview by pitching this as a great opportunity for the community. It's a really good way to get all my fans and community to interact and come together. Babe. Icarus, look out. Molly White tells me that as absurd as this sounds to the uninitiated, this is a pretty straightforward cryptogrift. The meme coin phenomenon is fascinating to me. I mean, because it seems like they are relatively successful in a niche way. How? Why?
- [35:50]
Molly White
Like, yeah, I mean, I think it depends a little bit on how you define success. They can be lucrative for the people who launch them. Certainly they are very rarely lucrative for those who buy them. You know, there is this sort of brief period of time with meme coins that, you know, they tend to follow a very similar pattern, which is they launch, they spike in price, and then they crash. Or they crash and then they sort of peter along for a while. As you know, people lose interest and there are a lot of people who are very excited about them because that for that brief moment at the beginning, if you can generate enough interest and enough excitement around them, people look at it and they go, okay, if I can buy in early enough, I can be the person who dumps on everybody else and makes a bunch of money.
- [36:33]
Grant
Right? How it feels like customers are encouraged to, like, get in on the grift of, like get here early and then you can scam others just like you.
- [36:43]
Molly White
Yeah, It's a very cynical model, but that is basically how it works. You know, there are certainly some meme coins that sort of like broke containment and became more of a mainstream crypto. So like Dogecoin is a good example of one of those. Like it's based around a meme, but it has a price that has not gone to zero and stayed there. But most meme coins are just this sort of flash in the pan thing and people very rarely look at them and say this is a good business investment or this is a good long term holding that I'm going to sell in four years and have made a tidy profit. You need to get in on the ground floor and get out as quickly as you can because you know it's going to go to zero. You know nothing's going to be left after that.
- [37:24]
Grant
On December 3rd, the last episode of Talk to A comes out, episode 12 entitled How not to Get Canceled. And on December 4th, Hawkcoin. And yes, I would agree that it should have been called Spitcoin launches with a fair amount of dubious reception preceding it. But on X, Haley is excited. My Hawk meme coin is Live writer for Fortune magazine. Leo Schwartz led his piece about the crypto with the headline Hawk to a Girl.
- [37:58]
Jamie Loftus
Hayley Welch launches Crypto Meme Coin but insists it's not a cash grab.
- [38:04]
Grant
This would not turn out to be true. While Hawk Coin took off upon its launch, soaring to half a billion dollars in coin valuation during its first few hours, the scam quickly revealed itself. The crash came swiftly as crypto power users, often called snipers, abruptly picked off Hawk Coins value, leaving basically nothing. For the first time, crypto users that Haley's image was used to advertise to and the blowback for this rug pull was swift. While the final numbers have not been confirmed, it seems that Hayley's team had made somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million off of this scheme, which played out in under a day. And Hayley Welch, who we know has no experience in the crypto space, copy and pastes what her crypto and legal team sends in an X post in an attempt to curb criticism. A crypto release which a big account called out as being 96% controlled by Haley's team in order to artificially inflate the worth of the coin. Haley's tweet denied this, leading to a delightful community note that explained that the team had been selling hawkcoin to bigger investors well before the launch through pre sales, saying the following Haley is lying and will likely have to talk to a judge about this. Okay, you can play the horns for that. Because of the mainstream fame that Hailey had amassed throughout 2024, this news broke pretty quickly to the mainstream media as well. A viral meme coin tied to Hawk to a star, Hayley Welch, is at.
- [39:52]
Molly White
The center of a lawsuit.
- [39:53]
Grant
Investigators rather investors claim the Hawk token.
- [39:57]
Molly White
Promoted using Welch's fame was improperly registered as a security.
- [40:02]
Grant
The lawsuit targets the Hawk tokens creators.
- [40:05]
Molly White
And promoters, but not Welsh herself.
- [40:09]
Grant
This kind of rug pull isn't unusual in the famously scammy Meme coin space, but the scale and the mainstream popularity of its subject was unique. And because of this, one of the Internet's most prevalent crypto fraud investigators, a YouTuber named Coffeezilla, aka Stephen Fin Diesen, confronted both Haley over here and and Howie Mandel's villainous crypto son in law, Doc Hollywood, about the obvious scam on the night of December 4th in a Twitter Spaces conversation. As 132,000 users tuned in, the spaces conversation, which began as basically a 15 minute lecture from Doc Hollywood, got tense pretty quickly when they opened the floor for questions.
- [40:59]
Molly White
I have questions. I. I have questions.
- [41:01]
Grant
I'm raising my hand. Hey, guys. What Coffee Zillow.
- [41:04]
Jamie Loftus
Hey.
- [41:05]
Molly White
This is one of the most miserable.
- [41:07]
Jamie Loftus
Horrible launches I've ever seen in my life.
- [41:09]
Grant
Okay, then why the are you on? Okay, it's not going well anyways. Here's Doc Hollywood profiting from the rug pull.
- [41:16]
Jamie Loftus
I think it's relevant. We didn't.
- [41:17]
Grant
We didn't pull a rug.
- [41:19]
Jamie Loftus
I don't know what you're trying to say. It's not true. That's defamation.
- [41:23]
Grant
Do the math.
- [41:24]
Jamie Loftus
Do the math. You're saying that we pulled a rod? There was no rug. 3.
- [41:29]
Grant
You're defaming. Are you. Are you knocking? Are you not going to let me talk?
- [41:33]
Jamie Loftus
You just talk over me. You talk over me.
- [41:35]
Grant
I'm hearing bullshit now. What Doc Hollywood does not know is that Coffee Zillow was showing up to this conversation with notes. He presses on the good doctor about why Hawk Coin had been marketed at fans of Haley's who had never invested in crypto before. These are people that are outside of crypto that we're going to be onboarding and they don't give a shit. They don't even know what a market cap is. They just go, oh, cool, Free coin. Now I get to join the community. Cool.
- [42:04]
Jamie Loftus
Done.
- [42:05]
Grant
In his video, Coffeezilla also explains that he had acquired their initial pitch deck for Hawk Coin, where the scam is all but encoded into the plan from.
- [42:15]
Jamie Loftus
One Slide Hawk will unite Haley's global fan base, enabling fans to connect with each other through the talk Hawk to a podcast and social media. This token redefines meme coin by offering a new class of consumer crypto.
- [42:30]
Grant
Okay, pitch deck, let's do the for Dummies version.
- [42:33]
Jamie Loftus
Next Slide Hawk will onboard normies non crypto users by linking to web2social media, making it easy for Haley's fans to create wallets via social login and claim free tokens.
- [42:46]
Grant
Oh, so they're willing to admit they are intentionally targeting a naive market. Suffice it to say that like scams before it, it appears that Haley's team designed the coin to make a shitload of money for themselves up front and then fuck anyone who is naive enough to buy it when their profiting inevitably made the value of the coin crash. But even before Coffeezilla entered the chat the night that the coin launched, the team was already on the defensive. While it's normal for a crypto rug pull to happen quickly, it was still rare for it to have happened in the space of a single day. And none of the legalese that Haley and company sharded out in their own defense was particularly convincing. And while Coffeezilla was the journalist to most explicitly break the scam down, the whole crypto world was pissed about this from the moment the token was announced and encouraged those who had been scammed to seek legal protection. This is a tweet from a firm called Berwick Law who end up becoming a major player in this story.
- [43:54]
Jamie Loftus
If you lost money on Hawk, contact our firm to learn about your legal rights. Our firm represents thousands of NFT and token investors in securities matters. This is attorney advertising.
- [44:08]
Grant
And while by all accounts this crypto scam is very commonplace, what makes it stand out is, as Coffeezilla said, its targeting of first time crypto users in order to rip them off. The mainstream nature of the meme personality and honestly, how flagrant Doc Hollywood comes off in this call with Coffeezilla, which went viral several times over and I think rightfully so. Howie Mandel's son in law calls the people who invested in his crypto coin mentally ill. Most of you, we don't want you in the community. Let's be real, right? You're not great people. I know y'all right, some of you.
- [44:49]
Jamie Loftus
So I see some friendly faces in this audience. He's having a meltdown.
- [44:52]
Grant
You know, you got honestly y'all, you guys right? There's a lot of negativity in the space. I think crypto brings the mentally ill into this thing, right? Most.
- [45:04]
Jamie Loftus
If you guys are in crypto, you're.
- [45:06]
Grant
Most likely mentally ill. And I'm going to. I'm going to count myself as mentally ill for even being here right now. So no one can look more unhinged than Dr. Shob is here. But Haley Welch obviously is not coming off well in this call either. She barely says anything because she didn't orchestrate this scam. She just represents it in a moment. That. That is iconic, you can't deny it. At some point in this contentious conversation between a man who identifies as Coffeezilla and a man who identifies as Doc Hollywood arguing about their make believe computer money, Hayley's fight or flight instinct seems to kick in. And since she doesn't know enough about crypto to fight a journalist who specializes in crypto, she gets the fuck out of there in the funniest way possible. Interrupting a different journalist while doing so.
- [46:00]
Molly White
Like, I hate to interrupt you, Nick. Hello there.
- [46:03]
Grant
But anywho, I'm gonna go to bed and I'll see you guys tomorrow, okay? She goes full cartoon chipmunk mode, she gets the fuck out of there. And the Twitter Spaces press conference ends. And believe it or not, that was the last we heard from Haley Welcome Welch personally for weeks. But as always, Hailey ducking out of the spotlight didn't make much of a difference. The people who had gotten ripped off in the meme coin scam were justifiably pissed. And a lot of other online users seemed to relish in her fall for a main character who they felt had overstayed her welcome and maybe didn't even deserve the attention she'd gotten in the first place. After the Coffeezilla video called Exposing the Hawk to a Scam took off the day after the rug pull, the media attention around Hailey, Doc Hollywood and Hawk coin skyrocketed. And Hailey's publicist, you might remember, he is the same publicist who represents Bruce Springsteen messaged Coffeezilla after that Twitter Spaces fiasco, telling him that Hayley was essentially paid to promote the token instead of orchestrating the scheme going on to say that she received $125,000 for promoting it. When Coffeezilla asked if Haley would see a cut of this pre sale money or the scammy three million dollar fees that he had confronted the crypto team with, the publicist said that after expenses were recouped, Haley was supposed to have gotten 50% of net proceeds from the coin, but that that agreement hadn't been finalized yet. But Coffeezilla felt, and I agree that this is extremely vague and does not specify if Hayley Welch would get these scam proceeds to the tune of $1.5 million. If the crypto team managed to get away with this, I don't know.
- [48:03]
Jamie Loftus
I think this whole situation is terrible and she should feel bad. I hope she does, really, because she got in bed with these people who clearly saw dollar signs. She saw dollar signs, and they did this, and people have been hurt.
- [48:18]
Grant
But here's the thing. We don't really know how Haley feels about any of this. Maybe because she doesn't care to stay, or maybe because she's kind of muzzled because of the legal risk that saying anything could have, especially in an industry she never had much of a grip on. Understandably, the Internet went nuts with the whole I'm gonna go to bed moment. And then came the lawsuit. Although at the time of this writing, it is just the crypto team that's being sued, not Hayley welch herself. On December 19, Berwick Law, remember them sued the distributor for the coin, the promoters for the coin, and thankfully, someone finally had the good sense to sue Doc motherfucking Hollywood. And probably expectedly, when this lawsuit was filed on behalf of the people who had been scammed, Overhear and Doc Hollywood turned on each other abruptly. In a tweet, Overhear said that it was the DOC who controlled all the fees and token decisions, not them. And to the public's delight, Hayley Welch appeared to to wake up from that nap of hers a little over two weeks later on December 20, posting what is, at the time of this recording, her final tweet. I take this situation extremely seriously and want to address my fans, the investors who have been affected, and the broader community. I'm fully cooperating with and am committed to assisting the legal team representing the individuals impacted, as well as to help uncover the truth, hold the responsible parties accountable, and resolve the matter. If you've experienced losses related to this, please contact Berwick Law using the link below. And while Haley continues to Repost memes on TikTok, the last we really hear from her as a personality is an unrelated post on Instagram from late December, which shows pictures from a trip to Hawaii she took with Chelsea Bradford, her best friend. They're kind of the Bonnie and Clyde of Internet fame. They're just riding it out to the bitter end. At present, the case hasn't been decided, but the public's response to seeing these scammers painted into a corner was universally positive. And this positive reception seems to have empowered Berwick law to push even further into the crypto scam space. On January 16, just a couple weeks ago, Wired reported that the same firm was suing Pump Fun, the site that made it so easy to run meme coin scams in the first place. And for the moment, that's where Haley's story ends. There's been a lot of disagreement on whether doc Hollywood & Co. Will experience any meaningful legal consequence for this. But what we do know is that that Hayley Welch herself doesn't seem to be legally on the hook for anything. At least not right now. It seems like maybe she just went back to bed. And when we come back, Molly White's take on what this shit show says about the future of crypto I'm Grant and I'm your new Bachelor.
- [51:37]
Jamie Loftus
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Molly White
Is this real? Is he real?
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Jamie Loftus
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Grant
Tall, handsome, smart. He's perfect.
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Jamie Loftus
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Molly White
I'm 110% ready to fall in love.
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Jamie Loftus
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Grant
These other girls are dating my boyfriend. You act like you don't care. He knows how I feel. I did not know how hard this was going to be.
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Jamie Loftus
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- [54:03]
Grant
Seek terms and conditions welcome back to 16th minute. Please pause this episode and go to the link in the description to give to a GoFundMe for a middle class family in Altadena that's locked lost their home. I can wait. Thank you. I did it too. And today we are, with deepest regrets, ending our Hawk to a series by discussing the incredible speedrun of our main character of 2024, Hayley Welch. To close out this episode, here's the rest of Molly White and my talk. She's the writer behind Web3 is going down. Just great. Citation needed. And is a prolific Wikipedia editor, a legend. And so I wanted to ask her not just what she thought of the hawkcoin scam, but what this means for the future of these kinds of Griffs. Because I don't know if you've noticed, but the sitting American President seems thrilled about them. Here's our talk. Which brings us to Hock to a and hawkcoin I believe it is. As the summer went on, I was observing Hayley Welch's journey. I'm curious because it sort of escalated to this recent crypto grift. Are there certain things to, like, look out for? Are there warning signs that a viral star is going to start a crypto grift before the grift is announced?
- [55:35]
Molly White
Well, I wouldn't say there always are, but there certainly were with Hayley Welch, because, you know, I heard of her around the time the original meme went viral and then I forgot about her. And then the next time I heard about her was in July when she turned up to the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville and was like, rubb elbows with RFK Jr. All of a sudden, and people were like, oh, my God, the Hawk to a girl is at the bitcoin conference. And I was like, oh, no, here we go. You know, and she had, by that point, I think maybe started her podcast and was, you know, clearly trying to make her 15 minutes, 15 seconds of fame, I guess, into this bigger brand and, you know, make it into maybe a lucrative of. I don't know if career is the word, but certainly, you know, make some money off of it. And that is always a sign that, you know, meme coins may be in the future, and then certainly once they start hanging out in the crypto world, you probably could have bet. Bet easy money on that, that she would eventually get to this.
- [56:37]
Grant
For me, the. The red flag was the association with the Paul brothers. They. They have. They only have bad ideas, and they.
- [56:43]
Molly White
Have a long history of crypto scams as well. I mean, they've been in that since the ground floor, basically offloading NFTs and things like that on their.
- [56:53]
Grant
On their fans going up to the actual grift. Can you walk me through how this was done and what, if anything, differentiates the Hawk to a grift from another crypto grift?
- [57:07]
Molly White
Yeah, so there's kind of a handful of ways that people start meme coins. It's become very easy to do so over the last year or so because there have been these platforms, including one that's called Pump Dot Fun, which is like a very popular platform where anyone can launch a meme coin in a matter of minutes. And it's really sort of reduced the sort of technical barrier to entry that previously existed and has certainly helped to fuel this explosion in meme coins where it seems like, you know, something happens, and suddenly there's 20 meme coins based around it within a span of minutes. Because, you know, the sort of point is to get as much media attention as possible. And so if you can be the first person to sort of glom onto a viral moment, then you can potentially make money, or at least that's the theory.
- [57:53]
Grant
It feels more like it's a. It's a, like, PR challenge more than anything else.
- [57:57]
Molly White
Oh, for sure. That's 100% the case. And so the way that, you know, celebrity meme coins work is a little bit varied because often it's not the celebrities themselves, you know, sitting down at a computer and designing this token. There's often some sort of a partnership with supposedly experienced people in this world who are the ones, you know, designing the tokenomics. Which is what they like to call the sort of distribution schemes and things like that. People who speak the language of the crypto world have made quite a lot of money off of sort of offering to be a conduit for celebrities and take all of the hard stuff off of their plate, basically. And all they have to do is endorse it and promote it on Twitter and take their cut at the end of the day. And that seems to be what happened here with the Hoktua girl, where, you know, she was not the one on Pump Fun, you know, typing in the parameters and all that, but she was working with this group of promoters who promised to sort of help her with the hard stuff.
- [58:56]
Grant
Is there a particular reason why she's being singled out and called out if this happens all the time?
- [59:03]
Molly White
I mean, I would argue that probably more people should be singled out and called out totally of these types of things. Yeah. Because her particular grift was, I think, not particularly unique. It's not clear to me that she is personally culpable in a way that more meme coin creators may be, but she has certainly been a fun target for a lot of people who are angry about, you know, this particular scam. But I think a lot of it is really just the jokes. You know, it's. It's fun to make jokes about Hawk to a girl and, you know, she's been sort of portrayed as this villain because it's kind of funny to say that, like, Hawk to a girl just stole all your money in ways that maybe it's not with just any general meme coin.
- [59:41]
Grant
What was done here is so clearly a scam and is so clearly wrong, but I just wasn't sure if it was uniquely wrong or if this is the playbook.
- [59:52]
Molly White
Yeah, I was actually just talking to someone about this, where in the crypto world, things like this happen so often that I think people often forget that they're illegal. Pumping ups are actually like illegal thing to do. Wash trading, which is where you sort of fake buying and selling of tokens to increase the price and to sort of make it look more popular than it is. That's illegal. But it's so common in the crypto world and it's so rarely enforced that it's like it has become this accepted way of doing business in the crypto world. That's sort of what we're seeing here where like, yeah, pumping and dumping is illegal, rug pulling is illegal. It's also an everyday occurrence and the two things are not sort of mutually exclusive. I think you see that a lot with, even when it comes to enforcement cases and legal actions where people are like, I can't believe you're singling out Kim Kardashian or something like that. Like, because what she's doing is so common. You know, when she, she was targeted by the SEC because she was doing paid promotions for crypto tokens without disclosing she was being compensated. But like, if you look at crypto Twitter, that's all you're seeing. That's everyday stuff. And so it almost feels unfair to be targeted for that when it's so rarely enforced. And honestly, you could probably make an argument that it, it is unfair, but part of the regulatory regime is trying to sort of make an example of people to try to deter others from doing similar activity. And so that's why you tend to see these legal actions coming out against the Kim Kardashians of the world and not some no name crypto scammer.
- [61:24]
Grant
Are cases like this an opportunity to set a higher precedent? Do you see cases like this altering the types of groups rifts we're going to see?
- [61:34]
Molly White
I suspect not with this one. For one, I would be kind of surprised if legal action comes of it. I know some people have speculated that like, oh, hawk to a girl is going to jail. And again, it's a part of the joke and it's a funny idea, but in the grand scheme of meme coin disasters, this one was pretty small. Again, it's not clear to me how much intent Hayley Welch herself had around scamming her fans beyond the sort of normal amount of scam that's involved with meme coins. I don't necessarily expect the SEC to like, come out and make a big example of Hayley Welch, especially right now with political changes and regulatory changes that are looking to even further decrease how many enforcement cases the SEC brings against crypto projects. And so I suspect that, you know, this is all a fun laugh and I don't think it will really meaningfully change how many people start these projects. In fact, I suspect there are people out there looking at Hayley Welch and going, maybe I could do something.
- [62:34]
Grant
Should I give it a shot? Right.
- [62:36]
Molly White
Sort of an all publicity is good publicity aspect to this as well. And I think that it should probably be a lesson to celebrities who are considering getting involved with this. I'm sure many celebrities have received outreach from these types of people who work with celebrities to launch Meme Coins who probably don't pitch this as a scam to the celebrities. You know, they use all the talking points about how this is a great way to engage with your fans and to create a community around your meme coin. And it might be tempting to some celebrities who are not familiar with this, but ultimately they're running the risk of being branded as a scammer. Most of these things, even if they don't collapse quite as spectacularly as this one, are still pretty naked cash grabs. And so I don't think it's something that that many people who are trying to maintain any form of legitimate reputation would necessarily want to get involved with.
- [63:26]
Grant
Yeah, I mean, a podcast is one thing, although still offensive, but it's so funny that, yeah, now it's like, oh, the best way to engage with your fans is to create a new kind of money and make them buy it.
- [63:40]
Molly White
I guess the one thing that I try to point out when it comes to meme coins like this is, you know, the people who are looking at them and saying, maybe I can be the one who gets in early. Maybe I can be the one who makes. Makes a killing off of this when it spikes by a thousand percent before it completely crashes. It's important to realize that in the crypto world, for many people, it is literally not possible to get in early enough to make money on these things. There's this whole ecosystem of bots, and it's called token sniping, where, you know, there's all this infrastructure out there that is fairly sophisticated, people doing the same thing you're trying to do, sitting at your computer, watching Twitter, and so getting the idea that you are going to be the one who gets in early enough to profit off of this is a very dangerous idea because it's. You're trading against people who are, despite the fact that they're trading meme coins, relatively sophisticated in this type of thing. And when it comes to meme coin markets, but certainly crypto markets more broadly, I think a lot of people tend to look at them as somewhat similar to stock markets and sort of other highly regulated trading venues. And that is also often a mistake stake, because you really should not be putting trust into even the exchanges where you're trading, the. The people you're trading against, the. The platforms that are supposedly helping you to do this trading, because there is, like I said, just such a failure of the regulatory apparatus to maintain these legitimate and sort of safe markets for retail investors to trade in. So I'm always cautious about, you know, talking about these things in a way that, that might give people the impression that, like, ooh, you know, maybe I can be the one who makes a killing off of this because it's stacked against you in ways that people often don't realize.
- [65:23]
Grant
Thank you so much to Molly. You can follow all her work and Web three is going just great at the links in the description. And here we find ourselves at the end of the honk to a series. Is this purgatory? Have we been dead the whole time?
- [65:39]
Molly White
The whole time.
- [65:40]
Grant
The whole time. You would. The whole time is the only useful lesson here. Never trust Gizmo's son in law. Maybe. But ironically enough, I think it is this same son in law, Doc Hollywood himself, that has the key to not only what the victims of the crypto scam believed, but what I think probably motivated Hayley Welch to become a part of this scheme in the first place. The people here that you, you guys are already, y'all are ahead every day thinking everything's a scam. And, and you know what? You guys are right. Everything is a scam, but not this. Not this. You're right, everything's a scam, but not this. Contained in the words of this coked out freak is an insight into online culture today. The days where someone would be surprised to be taken advantage of online are long gone. To some extent, it's an expectation of being online. It's the rules of play. So why are so many people still getting scammed? I think it's because of what Doc Hollywood is saying. A good scammer can convince you that sure, everything is a scam, just not this. Why is this normal girl from Tennessee using her image to rip off people just like her, her people in a position that she herself would have been in just six months earlier. I don't know for sure, but I can say that it feels pretty nihilistic in the way that a lot of American culture is. Here is this young woman that went viral after being coerced into creating content for someone else outside of a bar. She panics for a week, then seems to realize that that while this isn't what she wanted, maybe it's a blessing in disguise. She's grown up on the Internet. She's seen this happen to people before. And she knows that if she doesn't try to capitalize on this, someone else is going to. They've already started. She's grown up poor, she's witnessed the American scam firsthand. The only way you die above the class you were born in now is for something extraordinary to happen happen. And sure, some people strike it big professionally in a way that helps and enriches the lives of others. But if you're trying to do it quick, probably not. Again, none of this justifies financially extorting other people, but I do think it contextualizes it. But when the shine wears off of this initial moment, maybe the podcast is a little amateurish. Maybe the public public seems to be moving on from the meme she seems to say fuck it. Maybe it's possible to be convinced by the bad actors you've surrounded yourself with, the Doc Hollywoods and the Jake Paul's that you can get a solid cash out on your way out the door of relevance, that becoming the scammer is how you really jump classes. Because for all intents and purposes, that's true. All she has to do is convince the people she's scamming that they're the scammers too. I am honestly really curious where Hayley Welch goes from here, if anywhere in the influencing space specifically. But if this is it, I think Haley ended up getting caught between the scammers and the scammed. Because yes, she absolutely used and monetized her image to rip off a lot of people who had not gotten lucky in the same way that she had. But it's just as undeniable to me that she was exploited and deceived by the people surrounding her more than once. First by the guys who posted the clip of her without explicit permission, who then yelled at her publicly for not cutting them in on her success. Then with the management that often openly acknowledged that they knew she was seen as a sexual object and that that made her uncomfortable. The same management who openly said that they didn't think she was smart enough to understand what real Hollywood representation would mean. You don't need to feel bad for her. But Hailey absolutely got scammed here too, because even if she's not the one getting sued, she's the one who gets disappointed, discarded in her first national interview a thousand years ago, all the way back in July 2024 from that piece. They all think they know so much about me, she continues, but nobody knows shit about me. Do you want them to?
- [70:15]
Molly White
I ask.
- [70:16]
Grant
Will shoots a devious smile. Don't worry, they will. Before it's over with Haley Welch. The Hawk to a girl. Your 16th minute ends now. I hope for your sake. Thank you so much to everyone who has listened to this series. Please tell your damn friends about it, for crying out loud. And next week we will return with a real mystery, one that collides the classic exploratory weirdo Internet communities of lost media and creepypasta fans the Backroom next week on 16th Minute. 16th Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising Producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Pet Shout Outs to our dog producer Anderson, My cats Flea and Casper and my pet Rock Bird who will outlive us all. Bye.
- [71:30]
Jamie Loftus
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report this Valentine's Day.
- [72:00]
Grant
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- [72:40]
Jamie Loftus
For Albertsons and Safeway. February is the month of love and while you're spending time showing love to your family and friends, make sure you show yourself some love too. Now through February 25, shop in store and online and save on self love items from Dove like Dove Cucumber and Green Tea Body Wash, Dove Deep Moisture Nourishing Body Wash, Dove antiperspirants, Dove Shampoos and Dove conditioners. Offer ends February 21st. Fit offers may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [73:10]
Grant
I'm Grant and I'm your new Bachelor.
- [73:12]
Jamie Loftus
ABC Mondays.
- [73:13]
Molly White
Is this real? Is he real?
- [73:15]
Jamie Loftus
The bachelor is back and the ladies are head over heels.
- [73:18]
Grant
Tall, handsome, smart. He's perfect.
- [73:21]
Jamie Loftus
It's an all new season of romance.
- [73:22]
Molly White
I'm 110 ready to fall in love.
- [73:26]
Jamie Loftus
My love story is going to happen. And of course, drama.
- [73:29]
Grant
These other girls are dating my boyfriend friend. You act like you don't care. He knows how I feel. I did not know how hard this would be.
- [73:36]
Jamie Loftus
The Bachelor Mondays, 8.7Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.