Hawk Tuah Girl’s $HAWK Coin: Fame, Fortune, and a Fiery Crypto Crash

Haliey Welch, who shot to fame as the “Hawk Tuah Girl” after a June 2024 viral video, dove headfirst into crypto by December with her own $HAWK memecoin. But this move wasn’t smooth; it instantly stirred up a storm of debate over her profits and what happens when celebs jump on the crypto bandwagon.

Come December 2024, Welch let the world know about $HAWK, a new memecoin built on Solana with a company called overHere. She pushed it hard online and on her “Talk Tuah” podcast, saying it would “redefine memecoins” and build a community, even promising free $HAWK tokens for her fans.

Word was, Welch’s deal included $125,000 upfront, half the trading profits after expenses, plus 10% of all $HAWK coins—though she couldn’t touch those for a year. Her manager, Jonnie Forster, backed this up, adding her 10% stake would unlock over three years, with that first year being a no-sell zone.

$HAWK shot up like a rocket right after it launched on December 4, 2024, nearly hitting a $500 million market cap (or $490 million, by some counts). But that high didn’t last; just hours later, it nosedived, losing 90-95% of its value and landing somewhere between $25 million and $60 million.

That sudden, brutal crash instantly led to talk of a “pump and dump” – where insiders hype a coin, sell theirs at the top, and leave everyone else holding worthless bags. Coffeezilla, a crypto sleuth on YouTube, pointed fingers at Welch and her crew, saying they scammed her followers, many of whom knew little about crypto.

Adding fuel to the fire were stories about a few wallets, possibly connected to the team, owning a massive chunk (80-90%) of $HAWK when it started. One such wallet supposedly grabbed about 17.5% of the coins for nearly a million bucks, then flipped it less than two hours later for a cool $1.3 million profit.

Welch, along with overHere, pushed back hard against these claims. On X (what used to be Twitter), Welch insisted, “Team hasn’t sold one token,” and said they tried to stop “snipers” (bots making fast trades) by jacking up fees on an exchange. OverHere chimed in, saying they made “zero fees” and “zero profit” from the launch.

But the denials didn’t stop the bleeding. By December 19, 2024, a lawsuit landed in a New York federal court. Investors claiming they’d lost around $151,000 went after overHere Ltd., its boss Clinton So, a group called the Tuah The Moon Foundation (supposedly getting $HAWK money), and another influencer, Alex “Doc Hollywood” Schultz. They basically said Welch’s fame was used to whip up a buying craze for an illegal, unregistered crypto. Interestingly, Welch herself wasn’t sued in this case.

Welch put out a statement saying she took the whole mess very seriously and would work with lawyers for the people affected to “uncover the truth.” Mark Cuban, who actually had Welch on his podcast when $HAWK came up, figured she probably “trusted the people around her” and might not have grasped what she was getting into.

Later on, looking back, Welch said she felt bad about what happened and how much money people lost, admitting it “really hurt my feelings when it turned out the way it did.” She mentioned the crypto idea came from a “friend of a friend” as a long-term thing and conceded she should’ve probably checked out the people involved a lot more carefully.

Haliey Welch’s estimated earnings from $HAWK

So, how much did Welch actually pocket from $HAWK? It’s tricky. That $125,000 upfront payment for promoting it looks like real money she got. But her 10% slice of the tokens was locked up for a year, so she couldn’t have legally dumped them when the price first spiked and then tanked. This means stories about her making millions overnight from the coin’s short-lived high are just guesses, not backed by what we know about her locked tokens.

Sure, one wallet raked in $1.3 million profit, but nobody’s shown solid proof that wallet belonged to Welch. The lawsuit did claim the Tuah the Moon Foundation had a wallet that scooped up about $3 million in transaction fees, but it’s still fuzzy how much, if any, of that went straight to Welch.

The SEC, America’s top financial watchdog, apparently took a look into the $HAWK coin. Then, in March 2025, word came out that the SEC finished its probe and decided not to charge Haliey Welch or hit her with any penalties. After that, Welch started showing her face in public again.

This whole $HAWK mess is a big red flag about how risky memecoins can be, especially when famous faces or internet stars are pushing them. It really shows how fast people can lose their shirts and why everyone needs to do their homework before jumping in. It’s just too easy to whip up a memecoin, hype it to the moon, and then watch it crash because there was nothing real behind it, making the market a playground for tricksters.

If you’re an internet star, this story is a huge warning: shilling crypto projects without really checking them out and being totally upfront can wreck your reputation and land you in legal hot water. The $HAWK drama definitely dinged Welch’s image, even though the SEC didn’t pin anything on her personally. She’s apparently cut ties with the whole thing now.

At the end of the day, the “Hawk Tuah Girl’s” dip into crypto shows what can happen when viral fame meets wild crypto bets: a lot of ordinary folks lose money, and everyone gets another hard lesson about a market that’s still trying to figure out how to be open and play by the rules.