Hawk Tuah's Haliey Welch lent her name to a memecoin that crashed over 90% in a day

In December 2024 Haliey Welch, the viral 'Hawk Tuah' creator, put her name behind $HAWK, a memecoin launched on her fame. The token surged past a $490 million market cap within hours of its December 4 launch, then lost over 90% of its value within a day, falling to about $41 million, and kept sliding to roughly $1 million. Onlookers called it a rug pull.

Welch later said she was 'talked into doing something that I didn't know anything about.' She admitted she still did not fully understand the crypto sector more than a year later, said she held no funds from the launch and lacked the technical expertise to create the token. The collapse drew death threats and months of public scorn, and she retreated from social media.

The fallout became legal: an investor lawsuit against the launch team accused it of selling unregistered securities — Welch was not named as a defendant, and her lawyer put retail investor losses at around $200,000. She cooperated fully with a 2025 FBI investigation, which cleared her of wrongdoing. But the damage to her brand was done — the crash became the biggest cautionary tale of the 2024 memecoin wave and followed her into 2025, when she said the episode had 'traumatized' her and warned others away from crypto.