What’s up with Pi?

The mysterious crypto that has millions mining, but it cannot yet be bought or sold.

C.W.Morton

Mar 18, 2024

The mysterious crypto that has millions mining, but it cannot yet be bought or sold.

www.minepi.com
(use my username “solerift” as your invitation code to join my mining network)

A lot of people wonder if Pi is an advertisement scam, or what?

I really don’t know.

I have been “mining” Pi with many others in hopes that one day it does go live and obviously…..be sellable.

It requires no money or effort, or I probably wouldn’t be doing it.

I know this much :

If you read into their community (right inside the mobile app) and read into how the crypto is structured and their stated reasons for why they have chosen to operate the way they are…. the design is very well thought out.

Visit their site, download their browser, enter their chats. Read the Whitepaper.

Pi Whitepaper
Read the Whitepaper to learn how Pi Network is building a cryptocurrency and smart contracts platform secured and…minepi.com

Pi is designed and distributed in a way that took a lot of planning and effort.

Usually scammers have a hollow idea behind whatever they are selling, and usually they are taking money from you directly. They almost cannot resist doing that.

If Pi is a scam, it’s a scam with the least negative impact on it’s targets. You see an advertisement once a day. Nothing damaging you financially. They will never ask you for money either.

But Pi might be robbing us of about 1 second per day for as long as we “mine” it.

(You can always close the app before the ad starts, you don’t have to sit through it, and you will still be mining)

Let me break down how they designed it, and why they are distributing it the way they are.

Each user “mines” with the Pi app. You open the app once a day when you get the notification, and you tap “Mine”. That’s it.

Nothing is actually happening.

Pi team will admit that all it does it provide a signal that counts total users mining, trigger an ad, and they get money from ads and use that money to further fund the project.

Yes, this ultimately means the devs are probably living off of that.

But are they doing this with malice?

I don’t think so.

The money they have raised will initially set the value on the blockchain, and seems to be doing that.

Pi has a value now, whereas in the beginning - before their first Mainnet migration, it did not.

You can see that the initial funding happened in 2023, when the first Mainnet migration occurred. Before that, there was no active value.

The Pi Team state that their intention is for Pi to survive long term and become a usable crypto for daily use in exchange for goods and services, as well as a store of value for holders.

The majority of their photos and chats and developer challenges surround integrating pi as a payment system with retailers and small businesses.

They host a contest every year to try to find developers to bring into their project, and they call it the Hackathon.

Pi Hackathon
PiHackathon is an ongoing Pi Network initiative that is designed to facilitate year-round Pi ecosystem development…minepi.com

Inititial Distribution

They claim to want to have as much even distribution of it as possible, to prevent what usually happens with small cap coins if they just go live and become purchasable.

They get pumped, and dumped, sometimes into oblivion.

With Pi, everyone “mining” has committed to lock up their balance for a period, and has a minimum lock up of 25%.

Many have chosen 3 years, as this increases the mining rate by 500% or so.

This way of graduating the lockup values will help pad the stability of the chain if they go live, because at the very least, 25% cannot move off chain for 1–3 years, on anyones balance. It also allows 100% lockup for those inclined to do so.

However, I think this also means they need to go live soon, because if they wait until 2025, many of the first miners will have 100% of their initial migrated balance available to sell, and that might create quite the pump and dump.

Right? I think.

I locked up 100% for three years and only recently modified my settings so that my next Mainnet transfer will only lock up 25% for three years.

My lockup on my initial transfer will end in May of 2025.

I have 2800 Pi locked up.

Lets do some math:

2800 Pi @ current value of $44 today = $123,000. And you bet your a$$ I would be waiting to sell on the day it goes live.

Just like MANY others.
Always. Take. Profits.

It would be better if the chain launched before that was immanent, in my opinion.

So let’s hope that is what happens.

Pi chain is meant for practical daily use for products and services, but is also meant as a store of value, and to launch that way in a way that invites millions to use it and hold prior to going live worldwide, for stability sake.

They’ve built in some interesting mechanisms to attempt to create this situation for themselves.

My only real concern — this is already possible with smart contracts, right?

Why do any of this if you can launch a blockchain with specific conditions such as balance lock ups, intervals, and more?

Decred has done something like that with their staking mechanism….

That brings me back to the ad-scam idea.

It would be kind of genius to launch a fake blockchain and get millions of people worldwide to view ads, and get paid for that, while doing nothing.

I just think that with as much work seems to be going into this, as much as they communicate and speak with their users and answer questions, I don’t get “scammer” energy from them.

If you ask them anything, they answer, even if it takes a while, even the hecklers.

A clear indication of scammers, to me — blocking the hecklers. Scammers are truly afraid of being exposed. They can’t tolerate the idea that even one adverse opinion MIGHT disrupt their scam or steal a dollar from them.

People who are not afraid of being exposed, who have long term motives other than money — they answer your questions, even if they don’t like your responses.

They’d would rather defend something they are building and putting energy into, rather than block you, or insult you, or any of the things that scammers always end up doing when you challenge them.

We might also apply this reasoning to our politics, but I digress…. maybe in another era…..

My experience with Pi is having my questions answered, even when I was kind of a dick about it.

That’s my litmus test for scammers. Pi passed it.

Join me in “mining” Pi if you wish, the only thing you might loose if they turn out to be scammers after all — the one second per day it takes to tap the mine button.

Use my referral code to join my Pi mining network.

https://minepi.com — referral code = solerift