Haliey Welch quickly went from internet sweetheart to be being accused of ripping off her fans – as her team appears to have bungled an attempt to revive her down to Earth southern belle image
The rise and fall of Hawk Tuah girl Haliey Welch has been full of twists and turns. From shooting to to global fame in a mega viral video referencing a sex act to being accused of ripping off her fans with a meme coin she fronted.
The influencer was going from strength to strength with a string of appearances on podcasts before launching her own – dubbed Talk Tuah – which quickly gained 200,000 followers. She hosted big name guests such as Mark Cuban, Wiz Khalifa and Whitney Cummings on her Jake Paul associated pod.
On top of a legion of fans, she also has a popular line of Hawk Tuah-styled merchandise. At just 22, the southern belle had the world at her fingertips – until she dipped her toe into the shady world of cryptocurrencies.
Haliey’s glamourous life as a super popular influencer was brought crashing down to Earth by her failed meme coin HAWK. On launch day, the heavily promoted cryptocurrency she fronted skyrocketed in value by 900% and hit a market cap of $490million (£390million).
Within hours, HAWK’s market cap dropped to $60 million – a colossal 91% drop in value. Ordinary everyday fans of Haliey were left out of pocket, with some claiming they had lost their life savings in the meme coin “rug pull”.
Investors are suing the creators of the coin in a lawsuit, which Haliey was not mentioned in, for collectively suffered damages in excess of $151,000 (£120k). Haliey has been keeping a low profile since HAWK flopped and her last Talk Tuah podcast available on her channel is dated December 3 – an ironically named episode called ‘how to avoid getting cancelled’.
In a seemingly bungled attempt to revive her image as a straight talking down to Earth influencer, Welch recorded a podcast with crypto figure Richard Bengston, or FaZe Banks as he is known online.
While recording the podcast, Faze and his team noticed random messages asking if they had done the podcast and a spike of investment on the coin.
They took this as a sign the coin was being setup for another rug pull upon the episode’s release and pulled the plug on the entire podcast – which they claimed they could do under their agreement to take part.
The episode was then posted on the Talk Tuah Youtube channel by “accident” before it was hastily removed as clips of Haliey chocking back tears while explaining her side of the story circulated online. Representatives for Welch told Coffeezilla the “clip posting leak today was accidental by Betr’s editor who had the episodes in the YouTube queue waiting on approvals to release”.
The Hawk Tuah team also denied leaking plans to record the podcast online, that would have allowed the coin to be “pumped and dumped” upon release of the podcast.
Faze, who was infuriated by the leak, wrote on X: “These incompetent r*****s leaked and/ or inside traded the token. We noticed a random spike in volume on the coin 2/2 along with random messages asking us if we did the podcast.
“Very clearly her team was not as solid as they claimed to be. They completely blew it and we called the episode off right then and there.”
Content creator Threadguy, real name Michael Jerome, who also featured on the leaked episode, launched into an expletive-laden tirade on his livestream. He said: “The podcast was not supposed to go live.
“They f***ed it up every step of the way. They leaked the podcast and then they posted it when it was supposed to be cancelled.
“They f***ed up twice and the third was the launch itself.” In the leaked episode, Welch said the idea had been brought to her as a ‘long-term coin’ that would ‘change the way everybody thinks about crypto’.
She said: “And I feel really bad for all the people that got affected by it. And it just didn’t go the way I planned.”
She also revealed her ‘biggest mistake’ was trusting the guy who was a ‘friend of a friend’ in taking on the crypto deal. She added: “I probably should have looked into him a little bit more.”
The Daily Star has contacted Haliey Welch’s team for comment.
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