Investors still betting on Pi despite wild price fluctuations

Many Pi investors are going against the grain and investing big in the crypto amid wild fluctuations in its price in the two weeks since its listing on exchanges.

At 3:00 p.m. on Feb. 20 Chien Dong in central Binh Phuoc province, a long-time Pi community member, has his eyes glued to his phone looking at every price movement and preparing to buy more tokens.

"If the price is trending down, I wait for half an hour; if it drops even more, I stop buying because that means people are dumping," he tells VnExpress. "So let everyone dump and let the price drop, and then I start buying from the bottom. If the price stabilizes for 24 hours, that means it is recovering; that is as low as it will go."

Started in 2019 by a group of researchers at Stanford University (the U.S.)

Pi network now has over 60 million users globally, 12 million of whom have completed Pi’s (KYC) requirement as of mid-2024, mainly in Vietnam, South Korea and China.

On Feb. 20 Pi became an open network for $2.2

“Before the open network launch Pi investors expected a listing price of $500-1,000, and the $2 opening disappointed many, who sold their tokens en masse.

But many people also continue to bet on the coin and are investing even more. After six years of mining Pi, Dong was elated when it officially became an open mainnet.

The bricklayer earns VND400,000 ($15.66) per workday, but boldly invested VND34 million, some of which he borrowed from friends, to buy as many Pi tokens as possible.

Capitalizing on this trust, many are getting into the Pi trading game and making profits. A handful of established traders have emerged with their own regular customers in some provinces. The ticket sizes and margins vary widely, one such trader tells VnExpress, earning as much as $2,000-3,000 on a transaction or as little as VND2-3 million.

When Pi was a closed network, "it was just a virtual coin; there technically was no value," Minh Bao of Hanoi, a new investor says. "Now that Pi has made it onto exchanges, there is certainty. Once it is on exchanges, it is real money."