Jessy (@susanliu33), Golden Finance
The well-known "MLM coin" PI will be officially listed on OKX spot on February 20, and PI recharge to the exchange is now open. It is said that a group of grandpas and aunts will get rich from PI coins.
However, Golden Finance found that only a small number of people can successfully withdraw coins. For most people, the big pie of wealth drawn by PI before cannot be successfully cashed out when OKX is listed on the spot. Golden Finance interviewed several PI miners, and none of them have successfully mapped the PI coins they mined to the main network. OKX's choice to list the "MLM coin" this time has also been questioned.
Only after passing the 9th layer of verification can you enter the queuing stage for withdrawing coins
Justin came into contact with PI coins in 2019, when a friend recommended him to download and participate in the project. Mining costs almost nothing. As long as you have a mobile phone, download the APP on the PI official website, and according to the rules of PI mining, you need to click the mining button once every 24 hours, and the mobile phone will continue to mine PI coins. Users can recommend other users to join PI mining. If the recommended users also remain active, their own mining power will double the original power.
Justin successfully invited two users. From intermittent mining to now, he has mined more than 6,000 PI coins in total. At present, his account shows that more than 2,000 coins meet the requirements and can be mapped to the main network.
However, at present, he has not yet completed the real main network mapping of these more than 2,000 PI coins, and is still in the queue stage. Although it is shown on his account that the mainnet mapping of PI coins will be completed "in 14 days", in fact "14" is an imaginary number. Justin estimated that when OKX opened the trading of PI spot, its more than 2,000 tokens should not have completed the mapping of the mainnet.
Justin's account information, the withdrawal is now stuck in the last step
Justin told the Golden Finance reporter that it is currently necessary to complete 9 steps to actually withdraw money, including mobile phone number verification, wallet binding, KYC, etc. Justin is currently stuck at the last step, which is the mainnet mapping stage. He can only wait for the PI team to release the coins, and the waiting time is endless. It can be seen that the early circulation of PI coins is highly controlled by the project team and is not open and transparent.
More people are stuck at the KYC step. Lucas said in an interview with Golden Finance that she applied for KYC at the end of 2024 and has not passed it yet. Justin told the Golden Finance reporter that KYC requires an ID card, the real-name mobile phone number cannot be changed, and three facial recognitions are required. In addition, there are some other requirements, such as ensuring that there are five friends in the "circle of friends" built into the PI APP. Justin recalled that he only developed two downlines at the time, and the remaining friends were PI friends found online.
In addition to Lucas, Golden Finance reporters also saw PI friends in multiple communities saying that they failed to complete KYC certification. According to the official website announcement, PI has more than 60 million users, of which 19 million users have completed KYC, and more than 10 million users have migrated to its main network.
The user base is huge and the exchange is also killing for new users
60 million users, for exchanges, represents a large number of new users.
PI was once named "pyramid scheme" by CCTV in China. Like all pyramid scheme coins, it has a great influence in the domestic sinking market. Yong, who is located in Guangxi, once joined a WeChat group founded by a "coin speculation teacher". This teacher basically recommended some capital disk projects. In the group, he also recommended PI coins. Justin, who is located in Shandong, also learned that although he had not contacted the ground promotion team, he knew that in Shandong, it was mainly some capital disk studios that were promoting PI coins.
PI coins have a wide audience not only in mainland China, but also in Southeast Asia, there are a large number of PI users. It can even be said that the main users of PI are in Southeast Asia. A Golden Finance reporter went to Malaysia for an interview in 2023. A local Chinese driver in Kuala Lumpur told reporters that he would mine PI coins every day. In May 2023, he had dug out more than 5,000 PI coins. There were many people around him doing the same thing. At that time, he was waiting for the official promise of the "PI Mall" to go online, and then he could use the PI coins he dug out to buy goods in the mall. Malaysia was originally a fertile ground for the growth of pyramid schemes and capital plates. Many pyramid schemes that were popular in mainland China originated in Malaysia, such as the split financial management model represented by the popular "MBI" in recent years.
In 2023, a Malaysian taxi driver was interviewed by a reporter from Golden Finance (Photo by Jessy from Golden Finance)
At present, only a few people can really get PI coins, especially those who can unlock all the tokens when OKX spot is launched. Justin remembers that in May last year, someone was collecting KYC-passed PI coins from everyone, and the price at that time was 1.3 US dollars each. And how can a project allow everyone to punch in every day for five years without any income?
Justin told the Golden Finance reporter that he has been able to see PI updating its software over the years, and the project party has updated the announcement from time to time. In the chat group built into the PI App, although the specific number of people in each chat space cannot be seen, it can be perceived that the chats of PI friends are very active. At present, there are multiple groups divided into languages in the PI APP.
Chat group situation in the PI APP
Moreover, although the PI official website does not guarantee the economic value of PI, in the past few years before the main network was launched, some users have spontaneously established shopping malls and want to use PI to exchange goods, but the specific transaction situation is unknown.
All of the above show the strength of the PI community.
In this cycle, OKX, which has always been cautious about listing coins, chose to list PI coins when the market is currently sluggish. This also shows the lack of liquidity in the current market and the exchange’s extreme desire for new users. After OKX announced that it would list PI spot, Bitget followed suit and announced that it would list PI. However, as of press time, Bitget’s Chinese-speaking area withdrew the PI listing notice. It is reported that this is because the compliance department reviewed it and found that there are compliance risks.
Taking huge compliance risks and choosing to list a project that has been identified as a "pyramid scheme coin" in many places, it can only be said that in this market, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make money, and exchanges are also killing like crazy.
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