Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently cannonballed into the crypto pool, launching his very own NYC token. Unfortunately for the 4,300 traders who bought in, the splash was less a graceful dive and more a catastrophic belly flop.
Within 24 hours of the launch, over 60% of those traders were left nursing losses that would make a degen blush. The token briefly hit a $600 million market cap before crashing spectacularly to under $100,000—a trajectory that had analysts quickly labeling the event as a textbook rug pull, complete with a rug that had already been rolled up and sold for parts.
This episode briefly resurrected the political meme coin trend, which many thought had died alongside the countless other tokens launched by sitting politicians that previously evaporated retail funds. Adams claimed the token was created to "fight the rapid spread of antisemitism and anti-Americanism," but the price action told a different story, one where the only thing being fought was the buyers' will to live.
On-chain sleuths at Bubblemaps uncovered suspicious activity, noting that a wallet linked to the deployer pulled approximately $2.5 million in USDC from the liquidity pool right as the price peaked. When the token subsequently tanked 60%, the creators re-added $1.5 million and executed large buy orders to simulate support—a move that did little to stop the bleeding and only fueled insider allegations, like pouring gasoline on a dumpster fire to see if it would burn brighter.
Blockchain analyst Fernando Molina noted the technical similarities to infamous rug pulls like the LIBRA token, launched by Argentine President Javier Milei earlier this year. "The similarities are striking," Molina observed, pointing to unusual single-sided liquidity pools used in both launches, a feature that screams "exit strategy" louder than a bullhorn at a quiet library.
Despite the data, Adams' team denied any wrongdoing. A spokesperson stated the allegations were "false and unsupported by any evidence," clarifying that Adams' involvement wasn't for "personal or financial gain." They attributed the price drop to typical early volatility, though that explanation did little to comfort the 15 investors who lost over $100,000 each, a comfort level roughly equivalent to a heating pad in a blizzard.
The launch marks Adams' first personal foray into a crypto project, following a mayoral term where he championed Bitcoin and even took his first paychecks in crypto. While that pro-crypto stance failed to secure him a second term, the NYC token has certainly cemented his legacy in the crypto history books—for better or worse, and mostly for the meme.
