Haliey Welch

Haliey Welch became briefly famous in mid-2024 through a street interview clip that went viral as the "Hawk Tuah" meme. She subsequently built a social media following and launched a podcast capitalizing on the attention. In December 2024, she and a team around her launched the HAWK memecoin, a cryptocurrency token tied to her viral moment.

The HAWK token launched to significant initial interest. In the first minutes of trading, the token's market capitalization briefly approached five hundred million dollars as buyers rushed in. Within approximately twenty minutes, the token had lost roughly ninety-five percent of its value from its peak — one of the most rapid collapses on record for a high-profile token launch. Retail buyers who had purchased during the initial frenzy faced severe losses almost immediately.

On-chain investigators, including ZachXBT, published analysis identifying wallets that appeared to have received large HAWK token allocations before the public launch and sold during the initial price spike. This pattern, if accurate, would be consistent with insiders extracting value at the expense of public buyers — a structure commonly called a "rug pull." Reports subsequently emerged that the SEC was examining the launch for potential securities violations. Welch said she was devastated by the outcome and attributed the collapse to team members she said she had trusted, while denying personal involvement in any coordination of insider selling.

Welch's specific knowledge of and involvement in the token's structure and any insider allocation arrangements were disputed and, as of early 2026, not conclusively established through public legal proceedings. The HAWK token case is frequently cited alongside other celebrity memecoin launches as an illustration of how the combination of viral fame, cryptocurrency infrastructure, and insufficient regulation can result in rapid harm to retail investors.