Featured Image Credit: hay_welch/Instagram
Topics: Hawk Tuah girl, Twitter, Social Media
Joe Yates
After months of silence while investigators combed through her involvement in a crypto scandal, Haliey Welch finally broke cover just weeks ago, but despite having been cleared she will be silenced once more.
The Tennessee-born viral sensation, known to the mass as 'Hawk Tuah girl', has seen her Twitter account suspended, although it is yet to be clarified as to what the 22-year-old has done to 'violate' the social media platform.
When calling up her Twitter account, you're met with blank profile picture, cover photo and the words 'Account suspended', with 'X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules' written underneath it.
To re-jog our memories, let's quickly run through what Welch's scandal entails.
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She rose to fame in June 2024 following a street interview where she coined the phrase 'hawk tuah spit on that thang', and months later, her popularity saw a team of crypto experts get in touch and eventually bring out her own meme coin, named '$HAWK token'.
In the space of less than 20 minutes on December 4, her cryptocurrency meme coin plummeted by just shy of $450 million.
Fans claimed they had lost their entire life savings in less than the amount of time it takes to watch an episode of The Simpsons, as Haliey Welch and the creators behind her '$HAWK token' have been accused of coordinating a 'rug pull'.
The term is used to describe the process where creators of cryptocurrency sell off their stock, leading to prices crashing, and those who put money into it are left with coins worth next to nothing.
The value of Welch's cryptocurrency plummeted from as much as $490 million to just $41 million - with some news outlets even claiming it lost more than 95 percent of its value in the one day it was released.
A court case was filed by the investors who were left out of pocket, against the crypto team behind the alleged 'rug pull', although Welch was notably being sued.
Tuah The Moon Foundation, which oversaw the memecoin's finances, OverHere Ltd, which created the coin, and Clinton So, executive at OverHere, were all named in the lawsuit alongside the coin's promoter Alex Larson Schultz.
Since then, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation into the meme coin, and Welch’s lawyers have confirmed that the star will not be facing any charges as a result of the investigation.
James Sallah, Welch’s attorney, said in a statement: "The SEC closed the investigation without making any findings against, or seeking any monetary sanctions from, Haliey.
"Because they did not bring any action against her, there are no restrictions on what she can do in regards to crypto or securities in the future."
UNILAD has contacted Welch's representatives for comment.