Jessy (@susanliu33), Golden Finance

The well-known "pyramid scheme currency" PI will be officially launched on OKX spot on February 20. The recharge PI has been opened to transactions. Place. It is rumored online that a group of old men and women will become rich due to PI coins.

But Golden Finance survey found that a small part of the money can be successfully withdrawn. For most people, the big pie that was drawn by PI before, which was a big pie that was soon to be rich cannot be successfully cashed out when OKX is launched in stock. Golden Finance interviewed several PI miners, but none of them successfully mapped the PI coins they dug up to the main network. OKX's choice to launch "pyramid selling coins" this time has also been questioned a lot.

After the verification of the 9th layer is passed, you can enter the queuing and withdrawal stage.

Justin is a PI currency he came into contact with in 2019. At that time, a friend recommended him to download and participate in the project. Mining has almost no cost. As long as you have a mobile phone, download the APP on the PI official website. According to the rules of PI mining, you need to click the mining button 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 are also active, their mining computing power will double the most original computing power.

Justin successfully invited two users. It has been digging intermittently to the present, and it has dug up more than 6,000 PI coins in total. Currently, its account shows that more than 2,000 coins can meet the requirements and can be mapped to the main network.

However, at present, it has not completed the real mainnet mapping of these more than 2,000 PI coins, and is still in the queuing stage. Although it is displayed on its account that "14 days later" will complete the main network mapping of PI coins, in fact, "14" is an imaginary number. Justin estimates that when OKX opened up the spot trading of PI, its more than 2,000 tokens should have not completed the mapping of the main network.

Justin's account information is now in the last step

Justin told Golden Finance reporters that 9 steps are currently required to complete before the currency is withdrawn. These nine steps include mobile phone number verification, wallet binding, KYC, etc. Justin is currently stuck in the last step, that is, the main network mapping stage, and can only wait for the PI team to release coins. This waiting time is nowhere to be achieved. It can be seen that the early circulation of PI coins was highly controlled by the project team and was not open and transparent.

More people are stuck at KYC. Lucas said in an interview with Golden Finance that she applied for KYC at the end of 2024 and has not yet passed it. Justin told Golden Finance reporters that KYC needs to provide an ID card, the real-name mobile phone number cannot be changed, and three facial recognition is required. In addition, some other requirements are required, such as in the PI APPThe built-in "Friends" guarantees five friends and so on. Justin recalled that at that time he only developed two offline players, and his friends who were still missing were PI friends he looked for online.

In addition to Lucas, Golden Finance reporters also saw PI friends in multiple communities saying that they had failed to complete the 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 been moved to its main network.

The user base is huge and it has been killed in a crazy way for new users

60 million users, for the exchange, it means There are a large number of new users.

PI was once named "pyramid scheme" by CCTV. Like all pyramid scheme coins, it has a great influence in the sinking market. Yong, located in Guangxi, once joined a WeChat group founded by a "coin speculation teacher". This teacher basically recommended some funding projects. In the group, he also recommended PI coins. Justin, located in Shandong, also learned that although he had never been in contact with the ground promotion team, he knew that in Shandong, some funding studios are mainly promoting PI coins.

More than just in mainland China, PI coins have a wide audience, and there are also a large number of PI users in Southeast Asia. It can even be said that the main users of PI are all in Southeast Asia. A local Chinese driver from Kuala Lumpur told reporters that he digs PI coins every day. In May 2023, he had dug out more than 5,000 PI coins, and there were many around him. People did the same thing as him. At that time, he was waiting for the official "PI Mall" to be launched, and then he could use the PI coins he dug out of his hands to purchase goods in the mall. Malaysia was originally a fertile ground for the growth of pyramid schemes and capital platoons. Many pyramid schemes that were once popular in mainland China originated in Malaysia, such as the split financial management model represented by "MBI" that has been popular in recent years.

In 2023, Malaysian taxi driver interviewed by a reporter from Golden Finance (photo taken by Jessy of Golden Finance)

At present, there are a few people who can actually get PI coins, especially when OKX spot is online, even a few people can unlock all tokens. Justin remembers that in May last year, someone was collecting PI coins approved by KYC, and the price was $1.3 per person at that time. How can a project allow everyone to keep checking in every day for five years without any profit?

Justin told Golden Finance reporters that PI has been seeing software updates over the years, and project parties update announcements from time to time. And in the chat group built in PI App,Although you can't see the specific number of people in each chat space, you can feel that the chats of PI friends are very active. At present, multiple groups are divided into the PI APP according to language.

Chat group situation in PI APP

And, although PI The official website does not guarantee the economic value of PI, but in the past few years before the main network was launched, users have spontaneously set up shopping malls to use PI to exchange goods, but the specific transaction situation is unknown.

The above all show the strength of the PI community.

In this cycle, OKX, which has always been cautious in listing coins, chose to launch PI coins in the current market downturn, which also shows the lack of liquidity in the current market, and the exchange for new users Extremely longing. After OKX announced that it would launch PI spot, BItget followed closely and announced that it would launch PI. However, as of press time, Bitget's Chinese-speaking area revoked the PI's currency listing notice. It is reported that it was considered that it had Compliance risk.

Traveling huge compliance risks, I chose to launch a project that was designated as "pyramid scheme coins" in many places. It can only be said that in this market, money is becoming increasingly difficult to make, and exchanges are also killing it. Crazy.