How $HAWK Destroyed Haliey Welch’s Career
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Back in December, Haliey Welch appeared unstoppable.
She had managed to transform a classic “15 minutes of fame” moment into a lucrative career as a podcaster — with the debut episode of her show attracting more than three million impressions.
“Hawk Tuah Girl” had also attracted a staggering 2.5 million followers on Instagram, along with a further 420,000 on X.
Billionaire Mark Cuban, internet celebrity Jake Paul and U.S. rapper Wiz Khalifa were just some of the guests on her cleverly named Talk Tuah podcast.
Welch had also tweeted regularly about her enthusiasm for crypto — popping up at conferences and celebrating whenever Bitcoin raced to new all-time highs.
And as meme coin after meme coin bombarded the markets toward the end of 2024, it seemed inevitable that Welch would join the party.
In a sea of disastrous token launches, $HAWK’s debut stands out from the crowd. It initially surged to a market capitalization of $490 million — that’s right, almost half a billion dollars — before it plummeted sharply and shed 93% of its value.
Efforts to steady the ship by insisting that insider trading hadn’t taken place availed nothing — and an X Spaces designed to reassure investors went so disastrously wrong that the recording was hastily deleted.
Near the end of that livestream, Welch uttered a few words that would become her second-most-famous catchphrase: “Anyhooooo I’m gonna to bed, and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
That was December 4 — and it marked the start of what her critics would call a hell of a long sleep.
Beyond one X post on 20 December (where she said she was working with lawyers representing investors who lost money) this very-online-influencer has maintained a radio silence — her persona and popularity now in tatters.
No further podcast episodes have been officially published since that calamitous Spaces stream either — with one notable exception.
In February, a new show was uploaded by Welch that was mysteriously taken down a short time later… and appeared to address the fallout from $HAWK. The full broadcast quickly ended up doing the rounds on social media.
She appeared to get emotional in the recording, stressed that any money she made from this podcast would go to animal welfare charities, and revealed even her boyfriend “Pookie” had lost money in the launch.
But in many ways, the whole debacle only made things worse, with Welch attracting little sympathy from the crypto community. One wrote on Reddit:
“That whole podcast was full of notorious crypto scammers. She was warned many many times when she said she’d launch it and laughed at people trying to help her. I do believe she knew what she was doing, and is now doing a whole PR stunt to save face for her crimes.”
The YouTuber and crypto investigator Coffeezilla — who had confronted those involved in $HAWK on that fiery X Spaces — also revealed in his own YouTube video that he had been invited to go on this podcast, with one text to him reading:
“She does care about her fans and others that have lost money tremendously — and is cooperating with all authorities.”
Coffeezilla confirmed that he refused this invitation — and said he didn’t want to play a part in rehabilitating her image. He went on to question Welch’s assertion that she was a victim and taken advantage of, and said his requests for further information about her agreement with the coin’s promoters went unanswered.
“Hawk Tuah Girl” is the latest in a long line of celebrities (some more famous than others) to get badly burned by crypto projects. From the likes of Tom Brady and Larry David promoting FTX, to Kim Kardashian shilling Ethereum Max on Instagram, it all too often ends in tears.
At this stage, it’s unclear what potential legal consequences Welch will face for $HAWK’s launch — if any. She hasn’t been personally named in a lawsuit brought on behalf of those who purchased this meme coin. And while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has imposed penalties on stars who have plugged altcoins in the past, including Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan, a deregulation push under Donald Trump means no regulatory investigation may take place.
Perhaps the biggest consequence of all lies in the platform that Welch has now lost — with any return to being a media personality looking more unlikely with every passing week. It’s a one-in-a-million chance that’s been squandered, primarily driven by greed.
For influencers and consumers alike, the message couldn’t be any clearer: celebrities and cryptocurrencies just don’t mix.
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