On Monday, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who just left office following the election of Zohran Mamdani, promoted the launch of a new NYC Token memecoin on the Solana blockchain via a press conference, social media, and interviews. According to Adams, the goal of the crypto token is to help “fight anti-semitism” across the country.
“We know cities can run better, and by using this New York City Token, we’re going to continue to invest in making our city a safer city,” said Adams during his press event. “I am not going anywhere.”
Adams added that funds raised through the token offering would be used to build a non-profit organization, where the former mayor would initially refrain from taking a salary.
According to blockchain observers, the NYC Token launch was successful in terms of generating funds, as movements of cryptocurrency on the Solana network indicate that at least $2.5 million worth of the token was liquidated into Circle’s USDC stablecoin by entities involved with the original launch. This followed a common pump-and-dump pattern seen in many of the meme coins launched on Solana over the past couple of years, which occurred less than an hour after the coin went live.
As a result of the price action and blockchain activity following the NYC Token launch, Adams has been accused of operating a pump-and-dump scam, which is extremely common with these sorts of crypto coins and is often referred to as a rug pull. Data from DEXTools indicates the token went from roughly $0.12 to nearly $0.60 before falling below its original starting point. This all happened in a little over an hour.
In a statement posted on X, the NYC Token team wrote:
Given the overwhelming support and demand for the token at launch, our partners had to rebalance the liquidity. We are aware of reports flagging the transactions removing liquidity from the pool.
The team commenced the funds for TWAP and added additional funds to the liquidity pool.
We’re in it for the long haul!
Adams notably embraced Bitcoin and crypto during his mayoral campaign, and quickly became referred to as the “Bitcoin Mayor” after his election win. In fact, NYC Token is not the first cryptocurrency Adams has been involved with, as he helped launch New York City Coin during his time in office. This was a separate token that was released on top of the Stacks blockchain and was supposedly going to be used to fund various government services via investments made in the NYC-focused coin. The project behind the token, known as CityCoins, launched a similar project in Miami around the same time. Of course, neither token gained much traction despite the endorsements of the local mayors.
Eric Adams, former NYC major, has just removed liquidity of his new memecoin, $NYC, scamming investors for over $2,536,301
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
— Rune (@RuneCrypto_) January 12, 2026
A large number of entertainers, politicians, and other celebrities have been caught up in various memecoin schemes over the past couple of years, with everyone from Argentine President Javier Milei to the “Hawk Tuah” girl getting involved. Of course, U.S. President Trump also launched his own memecoin around the time of his inauguration, which is just one of his many dubious and allegedly corrupt activities in the crypto space.
Many of these celebrity-endorsed initiatives operated in the same quick pump-and-dump manner as Adams’s NYC Token, although crypto-native marketers were often the ones behind the schemes, simply paying celebrities for their endorsements. Celebrities’ social media accounts have also been hacked to promote these types of coins. Of course, some have questioned whether some of these “hacks” were simply a way for celebrities to promote outright scams without much blowback.
While bitcoin and stablecoins have clearly found product-market fit, the vast majority of alternative crypto tokens that promised various alternative technical innovations are still mostly seen as dubious. In some ways, memecoins are the more honest version of the altcoin market, where there is no expectation of real utility or long-term adoption, and the degenerate gambling aspect of the crypto market is fully embraced. In other words, it’s a casino, albeit one that is likely even more rigged than traditional markets or gambling venues.
