Hailey Welch, the social media personality known as the “Hawk Tuah girl,” says the collapse of the HAWK memecoin she promoted in 2024 and the subsequent backlash left her “traumatized.” Welch told Andrew Callaghan of the Channel 5 YouTube channel that she was persuaded to promote the token despite having little understanding of it and warned others to be careful about what they endorse.
Welch said she fully cooperated with an FBI probe in 2025 that ultimately cleared her of wrongdoing. She maintains she never had custody of the memecoin launch funds and lacked the technical expertise to create the token herself.
Her lawyer estimated that retail investors lost roughly $200,000 in the failed launch. Despite the relatively modest total, Welch says she received death threats and withdrew from public life for months as the episode affected her mental health. “I was starting to get death threats and everything else. People telling me I owe them all this money, and I’m like, ‘I didn’t do this.’ I’m sitting here, and I’m the one getting hit for this. It’s rough. It’s one of those things where if you come out of the house, you put your head down,” she said.
Not everyone accepted Welch’s account. Onchain investigator ZachXBT criticized her, saying she posted about memecoins despite warnings, launched the token anyway, then blamed partners and vanished from social media while followers lost funds.
The HAWK memecoin debuted in December 2024 and spiked to a market capitalization above $490 million within hours. It then plunged more than 91% the next day to about $41 million and was widely labeled a rug pull. At the time of reporting, the token’s market cap had fallen to roughly $1 million.
In December 2024 an investor lawsuit was filed against the creators and entities behind the memecoin, alleging the sale of unregistered securities; Welch was not named in that suit.
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