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Until a few weeks ago, Eric Adams was the mayor of New York City. Now that he’s out of power, he isn’t wasting any time figuring out what to do next. Earlier this week, Adams launched a meme coin, the proceeds of which he claimed would fight “anti-Americanism” and antisemitism as well as help teach children about meme coins. Adams announced the coin with a splashy Fox News interview. How the meme coin was supposed to provide money for any of its goals was unclear.
What was clear is that hours after the coin launched, somebody involved in its creation—we really don’t know who, because everything is done with anonymous digital currency wallets—took out $2.5 million from the pool of cash that investors had put in to buy the coins. Then, for reasons that are equally mysterious, another $1.5 million was put in (maybe because the creators thought they’d given away the game too early).
The transactions had the hallmarks of what in the meme coin business is known as a “rug pull.” This is when a new coin launches, its backers sell millions of dollars worth, then take out the money and make the coin worthless. We’ve seen it before with Haliey Welch, or “Hawk Tuah girl,” who hawked her meme coin and closed up shop after collecting a marketing fee. There was Caitlyn Jenner, who was sued over the $JENNER, which Business Insider pegs as the first celebrity meme coin. There are many others.
After Adams’ meme coin imploded, I tried to figure out precisely how it was supposed to work in the first place. How would his token provide money to fight “anti-Americanism”? How precisely was money transferred from the buyers to the creators? What exactly did Adams mean when he promised in a promotional video that his NYC Token was “about to take off like crazy?” After the whole fiasco, Adams released a statement on X saying that he did not move the funds, or profit from the launch. So if anyone made money from this, who was it?