Eric Adams, the former mayor of New York City (NYC) has found himself under fire after he promoted a meme coin which suspiciously lost a big chunk of its liquidity. Adams is now facing allegations of a ‘rug-pull’ to the tune of $3.4 million. Rug-pull is a term used for a crypto scam in which founders float a token to then artificially boost its value before exiting with huge profits leaving the token down in the dust. Over $3.4 million are currently feared at risk
Rise and fall of NYC Token
Adams had unveiled the NYC Token meme coin earlier this week during a press event at New York City’s iconic Times Square. Speaking about the token, the 65-year-old Democrat said it would be used to ‘fight antisemitism and anti-Americanism’.
As reported by on-chain intelligence firm Bubblemaps, the token quickly rose to $600 million in capitalization — reflecting the interest of New Yorkers towards the project.
Within hours, however, the token clocked massive liquidity flow raising questions on its management and structure. The coin soon fell to less than $100 million.
Bubblemaps said the wallet connected to the NYC Token deployer first removed $2.5 million USDC from the token ecosystem when it was at its peak and then added back $1.5 million USDC after the meme coin registered a fall of 60 percent. By earlier today, Bubblemaps had pointed out that these liquidations were unexplained.
As the rumour mills started to churn raising questions over Adams’ intentions with this meme coin, the official X handle created to represent the token has denied the allegations.
While Adams’ response to the situation remains awaited for now, he is facing criticism over allegations of having potentially caused losses to the investors.
Here’s what we know about the suspicious NYC Token
Sharing a promotion video for NYC Token, Adams posted, “Proud to launch
@buynyctoken, a new token built to fight the rapid spread of antisemitism and anti-Americanism across this country and now in New York City.”
While Adams has not addressed the situation as yet, he has not removed the promotional video from his official account.
The official website of the token makes it clear that it is in no way associated with the city.
“NYCTOKEN is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the City of New York, any government agency, or any official New York City organization. This is a community-driven project created by independent developers,” the website mentions.
The total supply of this Solana-powered token is capped at one billion — out of which 80,000,000 tokens were intended to be tradeable on day one. Following this, the circulating supply of NYC Token was intended to expand to 300,000,000 according to the planned unlock schedules over a period of 36 months.
“70 percent of the total token supply (700,000,000 $NYC) is allocated to the NYC Token Reserve and is not part of the planned circulating supply. Governance rights and treasury policies will be disclosed publicly. $NYC does not represent equity, ownership, or a right to distributions,” the website added.
Funds from this token were planned to be allocated towards supporting creators, liquidity pool, and charitable initiatives.
The NYC Token, as per CoinMarketCap, was trading at $0.1288 at the time of writing.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Adams had served as the 111th mayor of the Big Apple between January 2022 and December 2025 during which he emerged as an avid supporter of crypto. In October last year, he had launched New York’s first ever Office of Digital Assets and Blockchain.