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It seemed like Eric Adams was ready for a vacation. After four years of his grueling social schedule as New York City mayor, he was seen on his second day out of office with his long-term girlfriend en route to Dubai, where he soon commenced doing one of his favorite things — hanging out with a random guy. This time, the guy was a cosmetic vaginoplasty expert from whom Adams learned about “stem cell,” he said in a video without explaining much more.
But Adams, 65, says he is hard at work. In an interview with Fox Business early on Monday morning, Adams announced that he was working on a cryptocurrency called New York City Coin. Speaking with Maria Bartiromo, Adams said the main reason he was launching this coin was to promote the use of cryptocurrency in New York City. It would also fund three separate initiatives: antisemitism awareness and education, “crypto education for New York City youth,” and scholarship opportunities for the aforementioned crypto-educated youth.
For a politician who has been boosting crypto for years now, Adams does not display a detailed understanding of how it works. In his interview with Bartiromo, he said the word “blockchange” twice. Describing an actual use case of this coin, he said, “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? And so the money that is raised will go to nonprofits like Combat Antisemitism, the historical HBCUs.” He added that a “substantial” amount of any revenue generated will be going to philanthropic causes. His new coin does not appear to have a website, and Adams gave no specifics on the wonky stuff that would attract actual investors, like “tokenomics,” which blockchain it is built on, if it will be available for trading on Robin Hood, etc. But wearing a hat that said “$NYC” in a press conference near Times Square later on Monday, Adams did say he would not take a salary “at this time.”
Adams also said he has more plans other than this coin launch. “Last week I was in places like Dubai as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo to look at how do we look at some of the great things we do here in the city, how do we show how to implement them in other countries,” he said. He added that his general mission in the coming months would be to “fight like heck to make sure this city does not go backwards” under new leadership. As for the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani wasn’t too impressed by Adams’s coin, saying that he would not invest.