Supported by Chinese mothers and fathers, the Pi Network token (PI) decoupled from the bearish trend of Bitcoin, experiencing a surge of over 50% on Wednesday (February 27), with the price soaring above $2.74, and the fully diluted value (FDV) briefly standing at $300 billion. The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has not yet listed PI coin, and the voting initiated for its users will conclude, which may further drive up the price of PI coin.
After more than six years of waiting, the PI coin officially opened its mainnet at 4 PM Beijing time on February 20, and was simultaneously listed on well-known exchanges such as OKX, Bitget, and Gate.io. However, Binance and Bybit have not yet listed PI coin; the former initiated a vote, while the latter firmly refused.
On February 17, Binance held a community vote on 'Should Binance list Pi Network', with the voting deadline set for 8 AM on February 28. If investors' expectations for PI coin's listing on Binance increase, it may further drive up the price.
Additionally, PI is a homophone for the mathematical constant pi (3.14), and March 14 is the date when Pi Network was officially launched (it was born on March 14, 2019). As a result, investors may pay special attention to PI coin's movements as March 14 approaches.
Observing the meme and narrative trends of the American blue-chip public chain Solana, the current Web3 market focus is no longer limited to price factor indicators, but increasingly includes sentiment indicators, especially community enthusiasm. Pi Network is known for its multi-level marketing model in China and Southeast Asia; therefore, if there is a wave of PI community members collectively 'shouting' on Twitter, it is likely to drive the price of PI coin.
The price of PI coin started to surge from $1.6 on Tuesday and reached a historic high of $3 on Wednesday, but the price subsequently retraced.
Based on the official total supply of 10 billion coins, the fully diluted market cap of PI coin briefly reached $300 billion, surpassing Ethereum's current fully diluted market cap of about $285 billion, shocking many.
However, simply calculating based on fully diluted market cap may also be inaccurate. According to Pi Blockexplorer data, approximately 6.6 billion PI coins are currently in circulation, of which 4.97 billion coins are locked.
It is worth mentioning that many accounts in Pi Network are choosing to stake without knowing when the mainnet will go live, and the tokens are currently locked up. (Since Pi Network started with mobile mining, many 'elders' choose to lock their tokens and are not actually proficient in Web3 trends.)
In calculation, the currently circulating number of tokens is only about 1.67 billion; if the community's cohesion is strong enough, and the composition of PI coin holders is likely to be predominantly 'non-crypto people', then the weak cryptocurrency market may indeed have a smaller impact on the price of PI coin.
However, it is important to note that the official team of Pi Network holds 20% of the tokens, approximately 1.26 billion PI coins, which are expected not to be included in this calculation, and they have not explained how these tokens will be used or whether they will be locked, making it difficult to rule out the possibility that the official team could become the largest selling pressure.
Based on a total supply of 10 billion coins, the long-term potential inflation of PI coin and the pressure from gradual unlocking are also significant.