There are career pivots, and then there's whatever Haliey Welch has been up to lately.
On Wednesday, February 18, an X post began making the rounds with a screenshot of Welch's Instagram story — the former viral sensation who first exploded online after her now-infamous “hawk tuah” street interview — posing in a cheetah-print bikini with a subscription link attached.
"A year ago the 'Hawk Tuah Girl' was tied to a crypto scam that extracted millions from people,” the caption read. “Now she's online again promoting adult content. What happened?" The post quickly racked up over 9.4 million views, and it wasn't long before fellow creator Dan Dangler weighed in.
The OnlyFans star, whose real name is Danielle Lanza, reshared the post on X with her own pointed commentary: "I thought she would never do 🌽? I suppose when life hits the fan you gotta keep making $ somehow 😂." The jab was a direct callback to a July 2024 Instagram video in which Welch told her followers, "Stop asking me for the link in bio for my OnlyFans. I don't have an OnlyFans and there will never be an OnlyFans.” During a Q&A, she doubled down, saying she wasn't "comfortable doing that, ever."
That was before the bottom fell out. In December 2024, Welch launched a cryptocurrency called $HAWK on the Solana blockchain. The token surged to a market cap of nearly $500 million before crashing over 90 percent within hours, prompting a class-action lawsuit tied to the token and drawing federal scrutiny.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the FBI showed up at her grandmother's door as part of the probe. By May 2025, Welch revealed on her Talk Tuah podcast that both the FBI and SEC had investigated and ultimately cleared her. "I trusted the wrong people," she told co-host Chelsea Bradford during the episode.
In the months since, Welch has quietly joined Fanfix — a subscription-based platform that technically prohibits explicit content — and has been steadily posting bikini photos and suggestive teasers to her Instagram stories with links to the page. Packages start at around $15 per month.
For Lanza, a Detroit-born creator with over two million Instagram followers, the post was right on brand. Earlier this month, she fired back at former OnlyFans creator Nala Ray for telling Fox News that adult content "is not real work," writing on X, "Funny how some people only call it “not real work” after they cashed their checks 🤔.”
