Jessy (@susanliu33), Jinse Finance

The well-known "pyramid scheme coin" PI is scheduled to officially launch on the OKX spot market on February 20, and the deposit of PI into the exchange is currently open. It is rumored that many elderly people will become wealthy due to the PI coin.

However, Jinse Finance's investigation found that only a small portion of people can successfully withdraw the coins. For most people, the grand vision of wealth that PI had painted cannot be realized when the coin is launched on the OKX spot market. Jinse Finance interviewed several PI miners, and they have not yet successfully mapped the PI coins they mined to the mainnet. The behavior of OKX choosing to list a "pyramid scheme coin" has also been widely questioned.

After passing the 9-level verification, one can enter the queue for withdrawal

Justin started to get involved with the PI coin in 2019 when 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 PI official website's APP, and click the mining button once every 24 hours according to the PI mining rules, the phone will continuously mine PI coins. Users can also invite other users to join the PI mining, and if the invited users remain active, their mining power will double the original power.

Justin successfully invited two users. He has mined over 6,000 PI coins intermittently, and his account currently shows that over 2,000 coins meet the requirements to be mapped to the mainnet.

However, he has not yet completed the actual mainnet mapping of these 2,000+ PI coins, and is still in the queue. Although his account shows "14 days" until the PI coin mainnet mapping is completed, this "14" is a fictional number. Justin estimates that when OKX opens the PI spot trading, his 2,000+ tokens should still not have completed the mainnet mapping.

Justin's account information, now stuck at the last step of withdrawal

Justin told the Jinse Finance reporter that currently 9 steps need to be completed to actually withdraw the coins, including mobile number verification, wallet binding, KYC, etc. Justin is currently stuck at the last step, which is the mainnet mapping stage, and can only wait for the PI team to release the coins, which is an indefinite wait.

More people are stuck at the KYC step. Lucas told Jinse Finance that she applied for KYC at the end of 2024 and has not passed it yet. Justin told the Jinse Finance reporter that KYC requires providing an ID card, a real-name mobile number that cannot be changed, and three facial recognitions, as well as other requirements such as guaranteeing five friends in the "Moments" feature within the PI APP. Justin recalled that at the time he only developed two downlines, and the remaining friends were found online.

In addition to Lucas, the Jinse Finance reporter also saw in multiple communities that some PI users have not been able to complete the KYC authentication. According to the official website announcement, PI has over 60 million users, of which 19 million have completed KYC, and over 10 million users have migrated to its mainnet.

Huge user base, exchanges are going crazy to attract new users

60 million users represent a large number of new users for the exchange.

PI has been named by CCTV in China as a "pyramid scheme", and like all pyramid scheme coins, it has a huge impact in the lower-tier markets in China. Yong, located in Guangxi, once joined a WeChat group created by a "coin trading teacher", and this teacher mainly recommended some Ponzi projects, including the PI coin. Justin, located in Shandong, also learned that although he did not contact any ground promotion teams, he knew that some Ponzi studios in Shandong were also promoting the PI coin.

PI coin not only has a wide audience in mainland China, but also has a large user base in Southeast Asia, which can even be said to be the main user base of PI. The Jinse Finance reporter visited Malaysia in 2023 and was told by a local Chinese driver in Kuala Lumpur that he mines PI coins every day, and by May 2023 he had already mined over 5,000 PI coins. He also has many people around him doing the same thing, and at the time he was waiting for the launch of the "PI Mall" promised by the official, so that he could use the mined PI coins to purchase goods. Malaysia has long been a fertile ground for pyramid schemes and Ponzi projects, and many pyramid schemes that were once popular in mainland China originated in Malaysia, such as the "MBI" split finance model that has been popular in recent years.

In 2023, a taxi driver in Malaysia was interviewed by a Jinse Finance reporter (Jinse Finance Jessy)

Currently, only a small number of people can actually get the PI coins, and even fewer can unlock all the tokens when the OKX spot market goes live. Justin remembers that last May, someone was collecting PI coins from people who had passed KYC, and the price at the time was $1.3 per coin. How did a project manage to keep people coming back to punch in every day for five years without any returns?

Justin told the Jinse Finance reporter that over the years he has been able to see PI constantly updating its software, and the project team frequently releasing announcements. Although the specific number of people in each chat group within the PI App cannot be seen, the active chatting of PI users can be felt. Currently, the PI APP has divided the chat groups according to language.

Chat group situation within the PI APP

Although the PI official website does not guarantee the economic value of PI, during the years before the mainnet launch, users have spontaneously established marketplaces to try to use PI to redeem goods, but the specific trading situation is unknown.

All of this shows the strong community power of PI.

In this cycle, the usually cautious OKX chose to list the PI coin when the market was in a downturn, which also reflects the current lack of market liquidity and the exchange's extreme desire for new users. After OKX announced the listing of PI spot, Bitget also quickly followed suit, but as of the time of writing, Bitget's Chinese region has withdrawn the PI listing announcement, reportedly due to compliance risks identified by the compliance department.

To list a project that has been labeled as a "pyramid scheme coin" in many places, while facing huge compliance risks, can only be said that in this market, money is becoming increasingly difficult to earn, and the exchanges have gone crazy.