New NYC token, backed by former mayor Eric Adams, plummets as “rugpull” allegations swirl
On-chain sleuths flagged suspicious activity regarding the liquidity of the nascent cryptocurrency.
A new crypto token named after New York City that is backed by former mayor Eric Adams plunged shortly after it began trading, prompting social media allegations of a "rugpull,” crypto parlance for when developers hype a project and extract liquidity.
The former government official, who converted his first paycheck into cryptocurrencies, announced the rollout of a new token in a Monday press conference held in Time Square.
According to the project’s website, a portion of $NYC’s proceeds will be dedicated to antisemitism and anti-Americanism awareness, but it does not detail how the venture will distribute these funds.
On-chain sleuths quickly flagged what they called suspicious activity with the nascent cryptocurrency. An Adams spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
For example, blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps identified wallet address 9Ty4M, connected to the token’s deployer, as creating one-sided liquidity pools for $NYC on solana-based decentralized exchange Meteora at 5:18 p.m. ET.
By 5:43 p.m. ET, the address obtained $2.4 million of USDC from removed liquidity and trading fees on Meteora in four transactions (tx1, tx2, tx3, and tx4).
9Ty4M then returned $1.5 million in USDC liquidity between 5:57 p.m. and 6:12 p.m, but by the last transaction, the price of the token had plummeted.
2/ A few hours ago, Eric Adams, former mayor of New York, announced the New York City token $NYC
— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) January 13, 2026
It surged to $600M mcap before dropping <$100M pic.twitter.com/QOlCdx5Vv3
The team behind the $NYC token is aware of the reports flagging the transactions removing liquidity from the pool, according to the project’s latest social media post. “Our partners had to rebalance the liquidity,” the account stated. “The team commenced the funds for TWAP and added additional funds to the liquidity pool.”
The address has since been adding $NYC to its holdings by executing several dollar-cost-averaging orders each minute for the past 16 hours, bringing its total stash to 2.7% of the token’s 1 billion supply, on-chain data from blockchain explorer SolScan shows.
Bubblemaps added that the Adams-promoted venture “is unfortunately reminiscent of the $LIBRA launch, where liquidity was also heavily manipulated.”
