Suspicion of "harvesting"! Former New York City Mayor promotes NYC Token, quickly withdraws $2.5 million in liquidity after launch

Once dubbed the “Bitcoin Mayor” by the crypto community, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams has recently been embroiled in a cryptocurrency scandal. A meme coin he personally promoted was launched successfully, but shortly after going live, $2.5 million in liquidity was suddenly drained, sparking strong investor suspicion that this was a carefully planned “Rug Pull” scam. Looking back at his tenure as mayor, Eric Adams has always been an avid supporter of cryptocurrencies. He not only vowed to make New York the “global cryptocurrency capital,” but also received his first three paychecks in Bitcoin upon taking office in 2022 and led New York City’s first cryptocurrency summit. His passion for digital assets once earned him considerable applause in the crypto circle.

On January 12, Eric Adams appeared in Times Square, New York, to hold a press conference announcing a token called “NYC Token,” which he claimed was a cryptocurrency project with the mission of serving “public interests.” Riding on the former mayor’s reputation, the NYC Token’s market value skyrocketed to $580 million shortly after launch, demonstrating the strong enthusiasm from retail investors and market observers. However, this celebration lasted only a few hours. Liquidity of $2.5 million was drained at the peak

Just as the token price reached its high point, on-chain data detected abnormal fund movements, causing the situation to change instantly. According to blockchain analysis firm Bubblemaps and multiple researchers’ tracking, a wallet highly associated with the NYC Token deployer unexpectedly withdrew about $2.5 million in USDC from the liquidity pool at the token’s peak price without warning. Although the wallet later replenished about $1.5 million, the token price had already plummeted over 60%. After calculations, approximately $900,000 remained unrecovered. This method of withdrawing liquidity at the high point, preventing ordinary investors from escaping and causing significant losses, is a classic “Rug Pull” tactic in the crypto world. This series of actions quickly sparked market doubts about whether the project team deliberately manipulated the market and then withdrew liquidity. In the cryptocurrency market, “Rug Pull” usually refers to project teams or related wallets attracting funds and suddenly removing liquidity, causing the token price to collapse instantly, leaving investors nearly unable to exit. According to official website information, NYC Token has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, of which 70% are allocated to a so-called “reserve pool” and are not in circulation. Adams publicly claimed that this token would be used in the future to fund efforts against “anti-Semitism” and “anti-Americanism,” with the funds managed by an “unnamed non-profit organization.” However, the project team has not disclosed the names of co-founders nor explained the details of fund management and oversight mechanisms, raising questions about transparency. During an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Eric Adams’s answers were even more perplexing. When asked about the actual use cases of the token, he unexpectedly brought up retail giant Walmart:

Look at the best application case of blockchain: Walmart. They use this technology to track food supply chains… It’s very transparent. And our NYC coin is meant to use the money earned to stop the spread of anti-Semitism in our country and even globally.

What was more awkward was that this former New York City mayor, who is passionate about cryptocurrencies, twice mispronounced “blockchain” as “block change” during the interview, which significantly damaged his professional image and further cast doubt on the project’s credibility.