coindesk.com
Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing scrutiny from crypto traders after a memecoin he promoted appeared to suffer a sharp liquidity withdrawal shortly after launch.
During his time as mayor, Adams was a frequent promoter of cryptocurrency, consistently reiterating his desire to make New York the crypto capital of the world, taking his first three paychecks in bitcoin via Coinbase, leading to crypto advocates calling Adams the "Bitcoin mayor" for his support of the space.
Adams unveiled the “NYC Token” at a Times Square press event on Monday, pitching it as a crypto project tied to civic causes. The token zoomed to a $580 million market capitalization shortly after going live, indicating massive demand from retail traders and market watchers.
Within hours, however, on-chain data showed large liquidity movements that raised questions about how the token was structured and managed.
Analytics shared by Bubblemaps and other researchers showed that a wallet linked to the token’s deployer removed roughly $2.5 million in USDC liquidity near the market’s peak.
About $1.5 million was later added back after the token’s price had already fallen more than 60%. Roughly $900,000 in USDC was not returned, according to on-chain tracking.
3/ Wallet 9Ty4M, connected to the $NYC deployer, created one sided LP on Meteora
— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) January 13, 2026
This wallet then:
> removed ~$2.5M USDC at the peak
> added back ~$1.5M USDC after a -60% drophttps://t.co/I9pCnzIGni pic.twitter.com/GUUMahk5ya
The moves triggered accusations of a possible rug pull, a term used when liquidity is pulled from a token, leaving traders unable to exit positions without large losses.
Eric Adams, former NYC major, has just removed liquidity of his new memecoin, $NYC, scamming investors for over $2,536,301
— Rune (@RuneCrypto_) January 12, 2026
He launched a $NYC memecoin just 30 minutes ago, and has removed its liquidity after promoting it on his personal social media, claiming to be the NYC token https://t.co/4s20jOTKEN pic.twitter.com/pFAG7l0XMq
The token’s website says it has a total supply of 1 billion coins, with 70% allocated to a so-called reserve that is excluded from circulating supply.
Adams said the token would fund efforts to combat antisemitism and “anti-Americanism” through an unnamed nonprofit. He did not disclose the identities of co-founders or provide details on how funds would be managed.
During his interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, Adams offered up bizarre and vague answers to questions about the token’s use case.
“Let’s look at the best use case of blockchain: Walmart. Walmart is using blockchain right now to deal with their tracking of food and tracking of the goods in their stores. It is transparent, anyone can see it, and when you look at this coin, our New York City Coin, the money that is generated from this coin, we’re going to zero in on how do we stop this massive increase of antisemitism across our country and across the globe, really, and how do we deal with the increase in anti-Americanism?”
Accidentally calling blockchain technology “block change technology” — something Adams did twice during his interview with Bartiromo — was not his only verbal hiccup in the interview.
New York City Coin and NYCToken are two different projects. The first was launched by CityCoins in the early days of Adams’ tenure as mayor and was later delisted by major exchanges in 2023 due to its low liquidity.