Internet Personality Haliey Welch Implicated in Cryptocurrency Scam

In a viral video last summer, Haliey Welch skyrocketed to fame overnight after starting the “hawk tuah” catchphrase, only to now be embroiled with a cryptocurrancy scandal. The catchphrase was noted for its unusual longevity, being a frequent source of jokes and memes even in August, when a typical internet trend would have died down. It got a second wind when Haliey Welch announced the “Talk Tuah” podcast, but, as Robert Frost phrased it, “nothing gold can stay”. Hawk Tuah continued to fade in popularity like all memes are fated to, but recently had a resurgence in relevance due to the announcement of “Hawk Tuah Coin”, a venture into the world of cryptocurrency by Haliey Welch. 

At first, Haliey Welch didn’t know what to do with her newfound fame. Welch remarked “[the] first week of it, I was so embarrassed … I wouldn’t come out of my house.” But she quickly adjusted and soon began leveraging her fame. She started selling merchandise and signed for representation with an agent. However, the aforementioned Talk Tuah raised her profile even further. The first episode, “I Said Hawk Tuah and Now I’m Here”, brought Talk Tuah up to being one of the most popular podcasts in the US. Using her stardom to promote their brands, she collaborated with Youtubers MrBeast, Jake Paul, and KSI. Those three influencers launched “Lunchly”, a Lunchables knock-off, trying to make money from their fanbase of impressionable children. Lunchly meals are unhealthy and don’t have enough calories or nutrients for kids, and a scandal broke out when mold was found in many Lunchly packages. This stained Haliey Welch’s reputation due to her advertising of the product, but all publicity is good publicity, as they say. She continued making new Talk Tuah episodes until December 3rd, 2024, when the last one, “How to Avoid Getting Cancelled”, was posted. 

The next day, she launched $HAWK, a cryptocurrency falling under the category of “meme coins” – coins attain popularity from being based on memes, such as Dogecoin. This caused a surge of speculative investing, with $HAWK attaining $490 million market capitalization and hitting a peak value of $0.001414 per coin on December 7th. But all bubbles burst, and over the course of the next few days its price fell over a hundredfold to $0.00009594. Haliey Welch suffered immense backlash for this, being accused of orchestrating a pump-and-dump scam. Such things are common in the crypto world. It entails artificially inflating the value of a cryptocurrency through speculative hype, waiting until a large number of people have bought the coins created by the scammer, and then selling the supply when it’s at its peak value. This “rug pull” leaves most investors holding onto a worthless coin and losing nearly all their money while the creators of it are millions of dollars richer.

Haliey Welch’s scam had an immense impact. In anguish, many went to the internet to commiserate about how they lost thousands of dollars on Hawk Tuah Coin, leading to both sympathy and mockery. Haliey Welch may be subject to legal action, with 12 plaintiffs who collectively lost $151,000 being represented in a case against her. The lawsuit alleges that Haliey Welch misleadingly promoted and inflated the price of the unlawfully unregistered Hawk Tuah coin to for use in a pump-and-dump scam. 

The full impact of Haliey Welch’s actions remains to be seen. It is unclear how the lawsuit will go and how the Securities and Exchange Commission, a government agency that regulates financial markets, will respond to complaints against her. Haliey Welch’s reputation took a big hit. Hawk tuah fans were devastated not just financially, but emotionally. One user of X, formerly Twitter, commented “Hawk tuah was supposed to lift people up. It’s sad to see it become this”. In a classic story of fame and money corrupting an individual, the only person that seems to have been lifted up is Haliey Welch herself.