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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.

Sage D. Young

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.

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.” 

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Sage D. Young

Solana falls to a more than 3-month low

The price of solana has been struggling, dipping below $76 briefly on Tuesday, a level not seen since February.

Despite the underlying asset suffering, solana ETFs saw $115 million of inflows in May, the highest monthly figure in 2026, data from SoSoValue shows. The investment vehicles have brought in a total of $1.1 billion since their inception last year and have yet to record a monthly outflow.

However, positive ETF flows haven’t swayed traders, who are increasingly negative: prediction market-implied odds of solana dropping under $60 in the year stand at 60%, an increase from 45% three weeks ago.

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(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

"ETF flows for Solana have been positive but relatively small, so they currently only have a marginal effect on the overall price discovery for SOL," according to Carlos Guzman, research analyst at crypto trading firm GSR.

"Solana has been caught up in the broader crypto market weakness, where, outside of a few sectors that have attracted interest of late, including perpetual exchanges, privacy, and AI, most crypto token performance has been sluggish," Guzman told Sherwood News. "The meme coin narrative that drove interest in SOL in late 2024 and early 2025 has largely subsided, so the token has found itself outside of the current zeitgeist."

Meanwhile, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s Noble Mobile announced on Tuesday that it acquired Helium Mobile, a wireless carrier that runs on the solana blockchain. The two companies both declined to disclose the deal’s financial details, according to a report from Fortune.

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(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

"ETF flows for Solana have been positive but relatively small, so they currently only have a marginal effect on the overall price discovery for SOL," according to Carlos Guzman, research analyst at crypto trading firm GSR.

"Solana has been caught up in the broader crypto market weakness, where, outside of a few sectors that have attracted interest of late, including perpetual exchanges, privacy, and AI, most crypto token performance has been sluggish," Guzman told Sherwood News. "The meme coin narrative that drove interest in SOL in late 2024 and early 2025 has largely subsided, so the token has found itself outside of the current zeitgeist."

Meanwhile, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s Noble Mobile announced on Tuesday that it acquired Helium Mobile, a wireless carrier that runs on the solana blockchain. The two companies both declined to disclose the deal’s financial details, according to a report from Fortune.

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Sage D. Young

Ethereum developer unlocks $2 million of trapped tokens from 2016 ICO contract

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have been a way for people in the crypto space to fundraise capital that involved users sending ethereum to a smart contract with the expectation of receiving a project’s tokens.

Despite the popularity of ICOs, a number of projects failed, were unable to meet fundraising goals, and then, for one reason or another, were unable to return investors’ capital. One such example was HongCoin, which aimed to be a decentralized venture fund across borders.

On Sunday morning, blockchain sleuth 0xFlorent announced unlocking 1,003.62 ethereum tokens, worth $2 million, in HongCoin’s 2016 smart contract, enabling the 48 initial investors to claim funds that have been trapped for nine years. Of the investors, two have so far claimed a combined 96.5 ethereum.

The contract held all of the investors’ ethereum and was meant to auto-refund the cryptocurrencies, but “a bug in the refund function quietly broke that, and the funds got stuck,” 0xFlorent said in an X thread.

The HongCoin recovery was the second one the ethereum developer has disclosed in the past eight days. Last Sunday, 0xFlorent said they unlocked over 19.3 ETH, worth $40,590, that were stuck in two old contracts.

As to whether 0xFlorent will unlock more tokens stuck in ICO contracts, the security researcher doesn’t know. “It’s not my main activity and I did it because I found a way to help people. That’s it," 0xFlorent told Sherwood News.

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