A crypto trader lost more than $473,000 in just 20 minutes after former New York City mayor Eric Adams promoted a new meme coin called $NYC that rapidly collapsed in what many investors are calling a rug pull..
On-chain data from Solscan shows the wallet Dr6s2o buying $NYC near the peak and then watching its position drop by more than 63% as liquidity vanished.
Specifically, the trader Dr6s2o first swapped a total of 745,725 USDC for $NYC across five trades and then panic-sold the meme coin for only 272,177 of the stablecoin.
What is the NYC token?
Late on January 12, Adams – whose administration was previously under scrutiny for alleged corruption – announced the launch of $NYC – the ‘NY token’ – with an unconventional sales pitch.
Specifically, the X post urging followers to invest explained that the cryptocurrency was ‘built to fight the rapid spread of antisemitism and anti-Americanism across this country and now in New York City.’
The meme coin was noted for rapidly surging to a market capitalization greater than $600 million and then collapsing below $100 million just as swiftly.
What happened to Eric Adams’ $NYC
Part of the reason for the exceptional volatility has been the fact that Adams’ team created a one-sided liquidity pool on Meteora – a DeFi platform used mainly to provide liquidity – that is utilized to pull $2.5 million USDC from $NYC’s liquidity near the market peak and then add $1.5 million after the collapse.
At press time on January 13, the token launch announcement is the last post on Eric Adams’ X account, while the cryptocurrency’s X account made a brief post regarding liquidity shortly before midnight, New York Time:
Given the overwhelming support and demand for the token at launch, our partners had to rebalance the liquidity. We are aware of reports flagging the transactions, removing liquidity from the pool.
The team commenced the funds for TWAP and added additional funds to the liquidity pool.
We’re in it for the long haul!
There has been no official communication since, though former Mayor Adams’ post was graced with a community note warning of a likely ‘rug pull.’
Featured image via Shutterstock
