Pi Network’s Price Plummets Below $1 as Allegations of a ‘Scam’ Fly

The token of mobile phone mining project Pi Network plunged below $1 in the last week as allegations that it is a scam continue to fly.

PI token fell below $1 on March 20, and is now down to $0.88, according to CoinGecko. That’s still well above its Feb. 20 all-time low of under $0.62, but nonetheless PI is down 40% on the month and 22% over the last seven days. It’s down 4.6% today.

Pi Network launched its long-awaited Open Mainnet on Feb. 20, leading to a week-long rally followed by a selloff.

One factor hurting its price is that despite being the No. 27 cryptocurrency by market capitalization at $6.3 billion, it still isn’t listed on several major exchanges, notably Binance, despite picking up wide support in a community poll that ended on Feb 28. Pi Network’s market cap recently had it in the top 20 cryptocurrencies. It has a 24-hour trading volume of $283 million.

PI is listed on Bitget and OKX, among other exchanges, according to CoinGecko.

A bigger problem for Pi Network is the harsh criticism it has been hit with from high-profile members of the crypto community. First Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said he thinks Pi network is “a scam” and will not list it.

Then on March 21, cryptocurrency fund Cyber Capital founder and CIO Justin Bons ripped into Pi Network with a nine-part X thread saying “PI is a straight-up scam.”

Pi Network did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Multi-level Marketing Accusations

Bons accused Pi Network of deploying “a ‘Multi Level Marketing’ type scheme through referral programs” that he said kick back 25% of miners’ rewards. He added that a program that allows miners to lock their tokens for up to several years for mining rewards could simply be a mechanism to lock “victims” in while pumping the price for an insider sell-off.

He added that it remains “extremely centralized” while claiming to be decentralized, calling that a “massive red flag.”

Bons said “delivering a mainnet five years behind schedule with ZERO innovation” is also a big red flag, claiming that its core technology “was simply copied from Stellar.”

Pi Network is neither scalable nor programmable as it doesn’t have a Turing complete virtual machine, “making DeFi a pipedream for PI,” Bons said.

“That PI made it into the top 20 is an embarrassment to our industry,” Bons added.