‘Bad Optics’? ‘Hawk Tuah’ Girl Returns to Spotlight at Las Vegas Poker Event

• Viral internet star Haliey Welch, aka the “Hawk Tuah girl,” resurfaced at celebrity poker tournament.
• Welch had kept a low profile amid controversy over her failed cryptocurrency, $HAWK.

Haliey Welch, better known to many as “the Hawk Tuah girl,” has returned to the public eye after a three-month hiatus with an appearance at a celebrity poker tournament at Aria, Las Vegas. The Tennessean had been lying low amid accusations of involvement in a pump-and-dump scheme through her ill-fated meme-coin, $HAWK.

Formerly a bedspring factory worker in Belfast, Tenn., Welch shot to fame on the back of a viral street interview in which she described the sound of herself spitting while performing an act of fellatio – “You gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang,” she explained.

Hawking $HAWK

Thanks to that colorful onomatopoeia, Welch quickly amassed 2.5 million followers on Instagram. A line of “Hawk Tuah” merchandise and a successful podcast, “Talk Tuah,” followed, before, inevitably, a meme coin

$HAWK initially soared to a market capitalization of nearly $500 million before falling off a cliff, leading to accusations of a “rug pull” scheme or pump and dump.

At the time of the token’s launch, approximately 96% of the $HAWK supply was controlled by insiders, including early investors and strategic advisors, according to blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps.

The platform identified that many of those connected to the project offloaded substantial portions of their holdings shortly after the token’s release, taking around $3.3 million in profits.

On March 31, the SEC closed an investigation into Welch, finding “no evidence” against her.

Pleading Ignorance

Friday’s Celebrity Poker Tour event was preceded by a Vanity Fair interview in which Welch was asked about the “optics” of gambling so soon after people lost money on her coin. The question appeared to go over the head of both Welch and her publicist before the latter intervened to say Welch wouldn’t be answering the question.

When asked whether the game was for high stakes and if she was playing with her own money, she replied that she didn’t really know. With these kinds of events, she just turned up, she said.

She was “absolutely not” a good poker player, she admitted, adding that her strategy involved “just trying to hang on as long as I can” – kind of the opposite of a pump and dump.

Welch pleaded a similar level of ignorance when it came to crypto and $HAWK.

I don’t really understand it much myself … It was one of those things that just happened, and I feel sorry for everybody that just lost money,” she said. “You got to be really careful what you tie your name to, and you definitely need to know what you’re getting yourself into when you agree to do it.”

Welch finished fifth out of 10 in the CPT event, which also featured Jose Canseco, Adrian Peterson, Zach Justice, and assorted internet personalities.