This post was originally published on this site.
Days out from his last gig as the mayor of New York City, citizen Eric Adams on Monday stood in Times Square to announce his next excellent adventure — salesman for a crypto coin he calls The NYC Token.
His new vocation is hardly a shock given his consistent cheerleading for crypto while he was mayor, but it is a bit vague. He claims he has deep-pocket backers for the venture, but during his press announcement, he declined to say who they are. He did say some of the profits raised would be used to combat antisemitism and “anti-Americanism.”
“It’s all on the website,” he proclaimed, apparently without looking at the site which contained zero information about who is behind the ex-mayor’s latest scheme. The site does state the unnamed “team” behind the coin will garner 10% of the profits.
Public disclosure of the names of these mystery investors would be helpful in determining whether the mayor is staying in line with city ethics rules he still must follow. Former city workers are prohibited from interacting with city government for a year after leaving government on any matter in which they personally participated while on the city payroll.
Adams did reveal The NYC Token’s backers do not, at the moment, include Brock Pierce, a former child actor turned billionaire founder of a bitcoin empire who was a big money Adams supporter. Pierce, for instance, gave Empowerment PAC, an independent expenditure committee backing Adams, $1.1 million a day before Adams dropped out of the race.
Adams claimed he is not receiving a salary from his crypto-currency caper but “down the line we will make a determination on doing so.” He did say he has other difficult-to-discern irons in the fire, revealing he would be “setting up some companies in the near future” and claiming there are “several business partners on an international level that I’m going to be doing business with.”
He named neither the planned companies nor the prospective business partners, but promised to do so at the appropriate time.
“I will not be taking a 9-to-5 salary job,” he added. “I’m going to be working for Eric Adams.”
The token’s website, nyctoken.info, describes the new crypto coin as “the future of decentralized finance, powered by the city that never sleeps.” It features a smiling photo of the former mayor, extolling his longtime support for all things tech and stating that the token was “inspired by Mayor Eric Adams and his bold vision for making New York City the cryptocurrency capital of the world.”
Adams embraced digital money and other new technology again and again during his four years at City Hall, proclaiming that he took his first paycheck as mayor in cryptocurrency and speaking at crypto conferences. He and his administration promoted everything from robot dogs to assist the NYPD to cameras on school buses and panic button apps in school safety officers’ phones to flag the presence of an active shooter.
In his final weeks in office, Adams went on a taxpayer-funded travel spree, flying to Albania, Israel, Uzbekistan and New Orleans. Since he’s left office, he’s continued his jet-setting ways, albeit without public subsidy. On Monday he claimed he’d just returned from Dubai and the Democratic Republic of Congo and would be boarding a flight to Dallas as soon as the press conference wrapped up.