“I’m a big fan of Hawk Tuah but you cost me my savings,” one X user wrote earlier this month. That’s a sentence you probably never thought you’d read, not even when Haliey Welch– also known as the “Hawk Tuah Girl” – first burst into the national zeitgeist after she talked about giving blowjobs in a nine-second clip (“You gotta give them that Hawk Tuah and…”) spit on this thing!”) went viral this summer. With her courageous, determined attitude and Dolly Parton Accent, the 22-year-old from Belfast, Tennessee, turned her 15 minutes of fame into a business empire of sorts: She was soon selling merchandise, making public appearances and launching a popular podcast. But the bubble may have burst with its ill-advised foray into cryptocurrency, which at best cost certain investors a huge chunk of money and, at worst, may have been criminal in nature. Here’s how Hawk Tuah Girl went from viral sensation to recipient of an SEC complaint in record time.

When we first met Miss Hawk Tuah in June this year, she was simply a clueless social media star on the rise. In the last six months, Welch has sold tons of merchandise, been signed to management company The Penthouse, and launched the ridiculously named podcast Talk to Haliey Welch about Tuah (get it?). Produced by YouTuber turned boxer Jake Paul‘s production company, Say Tuah has featured a number of celebrity guests, including comedian Paul himself Whitney Cummings, Rappers Wiz Khalifa, And Shark tank billionaire Mark Cuban. Oh, and her grandmother, Grandma Welch, came on stage for an episode with the awkward title “I Told Grandma About Hawk Tuah.”

Say Tuah found an immediate audience, ranking at number five on Spotify just a few weeks after its premiere – one behind The Joe Rogan Experience but outstanding Alex Cooper‘S Call her dad. Even though it didn’t end up being one of the top 10 podcasts of the year on Spotify, Say Tuah, Like its namesake, it certainly made an impression and currently has 202,000 subscribers on YouTube.

YouTube isn’t the only place Welch is making an impression. Her personal Instagram account has around 2.6 million followers, her TikTok has 1.8 million followers, and her X account has 424.5k followers. Out in the real world, Welch has continued her victory lap after a surprise guest appearance on a Zach Bryan Concert with performance on Bill Maher‘s podcast. In August, she threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Mets game. In November, it released a dating app aimed at Generation Z called pookie tools, which uses AI to help users (and received mediocre reviews).

Everything was going well for Hawk Tuah – until she got involved in cryptocurrencies. On December 4, Welch announced that she would be launching her own memecoin, a Solana-based crypto coin called $HAWK. OverHere, the team that worked with Welch to sell the memecoin, posted on In Interview With Assets, Welch himself assured skeptics that this was “not just a money grab,” like all the other memecoins.

“$HAWK is not just a memecoin, it is a part of culture,” the OverHere website assures. “Haliey uses her meme to unite her entire community. From: TikTok, Say Tuah Podcast listeners, merchandise buyers and even their charity supporters. Hundreds of thousands of non-crypto users are brought on board by $HAWK because Haliey makes it easy, fun and engaging. If you love Haliey, you love memes. And $HAWK is where it all comes together.”

And the coin undoubtedly united individuals – against Welch. Shortly after $HAWK went live, its value skyrocketed, reaching a market cap of $490 million – certainly impressive. But 20 minutes after that peak, $HAWK fell to $60 million; Within a few hours, $HAWK lost over 90% of its value.

What happened? That depends on who you ask. Skeptic like YouTube crypto journalist Coffeezillahave accused Welch and her team of engaging in a “pump and dump” fraud in which they quickly inflated the value of $HAWK (to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars, mind you) and They then immediately sold coins, causing the value of $HAWK to plummet. (This is the same scheme Jordan Belfort immortalized in The Wolf of Wall Street.) Welch’s attorney responded to Coffeezilla and the team denied the pump-and-dump allegations at the time the video was released. Welch’s attorney further clarified her stance against the YouTuber, explaining that the percentage of the net proceeds from the allocation of the tokens to Welch “would not be realized until she sold them” and that she “would have to assume” that percentage. Also pay her non-crypto team, so in reality she would probably only hold 3.5% of the tokens withdrawn.”

“The episode has all the hallmarks of a dreaded ‘rug pull’ – crypto slang for a well-known scam in which bad actors pitch a new project to investors in order to drive up the price. They then sell a supply they have been keeping for themselves, causing the value of the new cryptocurrency to decline,” wrote Leo Schwartz Assets. “They turned it into a one-day pump-and-dump,” he said Nicolas Vaiman, the founder and CEO of blockchain analyst Bubblemaps.