Pi Coin Pumps as Market Drops: Why a 6-Year Miner Refused the Money

Most of the market is bleeding, yet Pi is climbing. I sat down with my friend Theo, who mined Pi for six years and then walked away from a potential payday. Here is why he refused to complete KYC and what we both think happens next.

How Theo Got Into Pi

Theo is a French entrepreneur who splits his time between New Zealand and Italy. He first heard about Pi a few months after the project launched, when a friend told him the app looked interesting. What caught his attention was that Pi did not require KYC at the time, and it had a marketplace where people could exchange goods for the cryptocurrency. Mining seemed low risk: he just had to press a button once a day and the app would mine for the next 24 hours.

He set it up and let it run. After the first month he stopped actively mining because progress felt too slow, but his referral team kept mining and he kept earning tokens. His dad also used the app. This is one of the strengths of Pi: it was a pioneer in making mobile mining accessible to almost anyone, long before the current wave of Telegram tap-to-earn games.

The Relentless KYC Push

A couple of weeks ago Theo messaged me after seeing Pi trading around $40 or $45. I had noticed the same news and asked him about it. Instead of excitement, he told me he was suspicious. When we checked the official Pi Twitter account, we saw that almost every post for the past two years has been about KYC, KYC, KYC. There was almost no talk about the mainnet, the product, the vision, or what they actually plan to deliver.

The marketing tactics also worried us. The team keeps creating deadlines for KYC, then extending them. They push users to submit identity documents with urgent language, the same pattern you see in spam emails that say 'buy now, only 48 hours left.' To Theo and me, that feels less like a serious project and more like an operation focused on collecting passports and ID cards.

Theo never completed KYC. His father did not either, and neither did most people around him. He is careful about giving his identity documents to centralized platforms. I share that concern. I prefer anonymous or decentralized exchanges like HyperLiquid over platforms that force me to upload my ID. A project that only talks about KYC and ignores everything else raises a red flag, similar to the way Worldcoin pushed for identity collection.

Almost every official Pi post for two years has been about KYC
Deadlines are repeatedly extended after creating urgency
Theo refuses to share ID documents with centralized entities
The focus on KYC overshadows any product or mainnet discussion

User Numbers That Don't Add Up

Pi claims around 60 million users, but I do not trust that number. We saw the same pattern with Hamster Kombat, which claimed hundreds of millions of users while social media engagement did not match. Some researchers did their own due diligence and found that millions of accounts appear to be missing or abandoned. Theo shared a website with me where the on-chain data shows a very small fraction of wallets are actually active, even if the raw account number is still large.

Part of the problem is how easy it is to create fake accounts. You can use multiple phones or Facebook accounts to generate several wallets. The system counts wallets, not real people. One person could easily be counted as five or six different users. That inflates the user base and makes the claimed adoption look much bigger than it really is.

Six Years of Mainnet: What Is the Value?

Pi has been working on its mainnet for six years, but what value does it actually bring to the world? If each token were worth $50 or even $40, the market cap would be enormous, probably just below Bitcoin and near Ethereum. That does not make sense for a network with no clear advantage over Ethereum, Solana, or other established projects. Theo holds tokens but still cannot explain what the network does better.

Most people hold Pi because they trust the CEO and believe it will eventually succeed. That is pure speculation, not fundamental value. At listing, the most likely outcome is mass selling, just like we saw with recent airdrops and token generation events. People joined Pi because getting tokens was easy, not because they believed in the technology. When those tokens become tradable, many will dump on day one.

Will Pi Be a Memecoin or a Real Coin?

Theo does not see how Pi can sustain a high price on launch day. If the team uses their advertising revenue to build something great in the future, maybe the token could become valuable years from now. But today, based on market cap alone, $50 per Pi is unrealistic. His estimate is closer to $0.20 or $0.30 per token.

There will be some buyers at listing, especially in Asia where belief in the project is stronger. Western users are more likely to sell. In that sense, Pi might behave like a memecoin: a large community, a lot of hype, and a price driven more by narrative than by utility.

We both agree on one thing: Pi is not a pure scam, and after listing it will not be worth zero. That is already a positive. Some exchange CEOs have said they will not list the coin, while others say they will, but those decisions are often about trading fees, not legitimacy.

If you treat Pi as a memecoin, it could perform well because of the community. But if you expect it to become the next Ethereum, the numbers do not support that.

Theo's Final Prediction

Theo believes there is only a 5 to 10 percent chance of seeing a good price like $50 per Pi. Between the suspicious KYC campaign, the inflated user numbers, and the unrealistic market cap, the safer bet is a much lower price at launch. He chose not to complete KYC, so he may walk away from a few thousand dollars, but he does not regret it.

We want to hear your opinion. Do you think Pi will surprise the market or crash like other airdrops? Leave a comment below and let us know.