5 years waiting for the virtual currency Pi to have a price

Near 2Pi (June 28), the Pi Network community became active with the expectation that virtual currency could be traded after many years of waiting.

"Every day, I still go to the application to take attendance as a habit, not as excited as in previous years," said Thuy Linh (Binh Thuan), who has been playing Pi virtual currency since 2021.

Linh said that she joined when she saw Pi Network pop up, then a series of information from the development team that the blockchain of this virtual currency is about to enter the official network launch stage (mainnet), which means it can be traded. with other cryptocurrencies. She also invites relatives, friends, colleagues and even strangers into the circle to increase the number of Pi received.

"Most of the more than 1,000 accounts of this circle have left, no longer 'lightning lightning' every day. Now I just click the roll call for good luck, don't expect much," she said.

Pi Network was born in early 2019 and popped up in Vietnam from 2021. In that year, the development team announced the launch of the mainnet so that users could trade. On December 28, 2021, the team announced the implementation of the mainnet, but in fact there were no changes other than the addition of the Pi Mainnet wallet.

After that, the team continued to delay by dividing into two phases "closed mainnet" and "open mainnet". However, what the group does is only encapsulated in allowing participants to exchange with each other "based on consensus", which is to agree on the price of Pi.

On social networks, some people say they have bought with Pi, although buying and selling with virtual currency is not allowed in Vietnam. Even last week, more than 1,500 people held an offline meeting in Bac Ninh to discuss the price for Pi.

"Some items have been exchanged here based on consensus, but the value is very small. People value Pi to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but no one trades anything more than a few tens of dollars," said one participant. attend the disclosure event. "Meanwhile, everyone has to spend nearly a million dong for the entrance fee and buy the uniform."

According to this person, most attendees believe that Pi will soon be valuable, although there are no longer expectations as before. "We look forward to June 28, the Pi Core Teams team will come up with something new," he said.

The project is named after the number Pi, so the developer often makes important changes in the days of Pi (March 14) and 2Pi (June 28). The player community also often organizes related events on these two occasions.

Pi Network application interface on a smartphone. Photo: Luu Quy

Some people have switched to "mining" the Pi by running Node. Pi Node , or Pi network node, is software that runs on a computer with the role of creating and storing Pi. Unlike the Pi Network application on smartphones, which only plays the role of registration, login, account recovery and the main purpose is to "take attendance" to receive Pi, Pi Node is also responsible for confirming transactions in our blockchain system. Pi. Some are willing to spend hundreds of millions, even billions of dong to invest.

According to Ngo Bang, the administrator of the Pi Network group with nearly 200,000 members, compared to 2022, the occasion of March 14 and June 28 of this year is less active in the "Pi Player" community, because the developer team is almost absent. any action. "Pi holders continue to wait, and there are almost no new participants," said Mr. Bang.

Vietnam ranks second in terms of website traffic of Pi Network. Source: SimilarWeb

Data from SimilarWeb shows that traffic to minepi, the website of the Pi Network project, decreased by more than 60% from June 2022 to June 2023. Vietnam ranks second in terms of traffic to this website, after the US. According to Google Trends, the number of searches for Pi Network-related content in Vietnam has decreased by more than 70% since January.

Despite the drop in interest, Pi Network is still causing controversy in many crypto communities. Supporters say this is a long-term project, with tens of millions of people involved, so the development team needs to proceed with the stages carefully. Meanwhile, others expressed disappointment that this virtual currency has been around for 5 years but is still worthless , and the team behind also does not give a thorough roadmap, but changes from time to time.

Late last year, the Pi Network community seemed to be lit up with hope when this virtual currency appeared on a number of exchanges. But contrary to expectations, the listed Pi is actually created by the exchanges themselves in the form of IOU (I Owe You) debit. That is, the exchange will list a digital currency in advance for users to trade, and then pay in real money when the project is officially released.

According to a blockchain expert in Ho Chi Minh City, many people still believe in Pi because they think they have nothing to lose, even at the expense of phone resources, the risk of losing personal data and having to watch ads. Besides, some hope Pi can be worth thousands of dollars like Bitcoin, so "don't want to lose the opportunity".

Experts warn that Pi lacks the transparency of a blockchain project, not even excluding the possibility of fraud, which can be created to collect user information. To this day, the Pi is still worthless. In addition, trading this virtual currency is also not allowed and violates the law in Vietnam.

Bao Lam

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