One year of Pi virtual currency opening: Price dropped 95%, confidence went down

After 6 years of waiting, on February 20, 2025, the core team of Pi Network (PCT) announced that the project would move to the Open Network phase. Meaning, participants are allowed to transact with ecosystems outside of Pi. In fact, the price of virtual currency Pi immediately “danced” when it officially appeared on a number of exchanges.

Upgrade “trickle”

Although it has been open for a year, Pi Network has not yet announced smart contracts – a mandatory element for a blockchain project. Over the past year, the project has only made minor upgrades, such as introducing the concept of Business Identity Verification (KYB) in addition to Personal Identity Verification (KYC).

The project also introduces Pi App Studio – a programming tool to help build applications for Pi. According to PCT, there are more than 13,400 chatbots and 24,400 custom apps created from more than 51,800 users. Still, according to CCNmost of which are “junk apps” or take the names of famous individuals or organizations to create attraction instead of having real functions.

The team also announced Pi Network Ventures, a $100 million fund launched by the Pi Foundation to invest in startups and enterprises. However, according to CoinTelegraphwhat the fund brings to the community is “limited”, and the fact that this organization holds billions of tokens does not demonstrate the decentralization of a blockchain project.

PCT said that in 2025, more than 17.5 million users complete the KYC process and 15.8 million move to the main network (Mainnet). However, this number represents a small percentage compared to the 60 million users announced by the team by 2024.

Players are frustrated

Pi Network was born in 2019, advertised to help users own Pi virtual currency for free by entering the application to “trigger lightning” to check attendance every day. “After a year of opening the network, now only 1-2 people in the group still ‘trigger lightning’, some days there is no one,” Hoang Lan, who has been playing Pi virtual currency for more than four years and has called for more than 500 people to join the network, said.

Lan said she had set up a group on social networks to share experiences in recruiting players, but currently the number of participants is gradually decreasing for many reasons such as not being KYC approved, Pi price continuously decreasing.

Van Vien, who invested more than a hundred million dong to buy a computer running Node Pi three years ago, also said he liquidated the system at the end of last year, because “the project was vague, the price plummeted and the Pi did not return to his wallet for transactions” so he had no funding to maintain it.

In fact, the price of Pi last year continuously danced, but overall followed a downward trend. From a peak of 3 USD per coin after opening the network, Pi in early February dropped to 0.13 USD, a decrease of more than 95%, and is currently fluctuating at 0.19 USD.

According to Hoang Anh, administrator of the Facebook group about Pi Network with more than 200,000 members, the decrease in Pi price is related to the fact that the project has unlocked hundreds of millions of tokens to the market in a short time. Currently, the circulating supply of Pi reaches 8.82 billion tokens, a sharp increase compared to more than 8.3 billion recorded last month. “Continued ‘dilution’ causes Pi to continuously go down,” this person commented. “In the coming time, Pi will likely not be able to recover, because the supply pumped into the market is increasing, while the project is not making much progress.”

Before that, according to Market Periodicala decline in Pi was predicted, as supply increased due to the project continuously unlocking large amounts of tokens daily. In addition, the project no longer receives as much attention as before. Data on OKX shows that Pi trading volume is currently only a few million USD per day – a small number for a token with a market capitalization of more than 1.4 billion USD and much lower than the tens of millions of USD per day last year.

Mr. Nguyen Ha Minh Thong, founder of Cabo Capital fund (HCMC), said that the deep decrease in Pi price each month shows that market confidence is seriously declining. Pi’s low trading volume represents a “death signal” from the project, as liquidity dries up, there are no more new investors and the community loses patience. “A cryptocurrency project cannot live on the community without real products and liquidity,” he warned. “Please consider before investing time, resources, and faith in something that is plummeting in value and market psychology.”

Pi Network is also considered one of the highly centralized digital currencies. Unlike Solana or Ethereum, Pi holders have “no say” in operations. In addition, Pi Network had difficulty establishing credibility in the market, as many pioneers began to “capitulate” and sell off their tokens.

Experts also made many recommendations about Pi Network last year. Founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bybit Ben Zhou called Pi Network a fraudulent project, declaring that he would not list Pi on his exchange. By the end of 2025, seven Chinese financial associations issued warnings about digital currency risks, referring to Pi Network as a “worthless virtual currency”.