Those of you that have been following the 1BTC project know that I have been a "Pi-oneer" was a long time. You will also know that Pi Network is among the projects I have the least faith in. Its been too long for me to stop, but also I would not start today if I was being introduced to the story for the first time.
Too many crypto-projects have proprietary tokens when they should just be using Bitcoin or Ethereum. I firmly believe that the pi network falls into this category. There are real world debates about the utility for cryptocurrencies.
I believe that Pi Network pretends to be a blockchain or cryptocurrency but in reality it is a advertising firm. They sell advertising space to brands and other firms and then have audience that will watch the ad so they can guarantee views. What I hope is happening behind the scenes is the developers are collect advertising revenue and building their asset pool by acquiring stable coins, bitcoin, and earning interest on these assets. Then when everything goes live this value will be passed onto the token holders.
Which brings me back to the the first point, why even have a native token? With this many active users and a well developed platform why not just be a Bitcoin or Ethereum faucet? Well I suspect because that isn't sexy enough and getting value off a faucet is a lot easier. The last thing devs want is users pulling assets off a platform.
So where does this leave Pi Network? Well they are desperately searching for a problem to solve. They run hackathons and other event to figure out a case use for pi. Their newest innovation that the hackathons have brought to the table is Stake Direct Messages.
You can now message any other pioneer directly through the app, but only if you stake a pi token. This is more than dumb. This is very dumb. I am unsure why so many crypto projects have messaging functionality. They all have chat scrolls and they contribute nothing to society. Now pi network thought we don't have enough messaging apps on our phone so now they want to compete with major telecoms and Meta to develop a messenger.
But there is a twist. If you desperately wanted to message a pi-oneer and you didn't have their phone number, you can now stake a pi token and message them directly. This does add some functionality (I guess) but it doesn't make my life any better. What it does do is provide opportunities for tokens to be locked up. Its important to remember that developers lock up periods. If pi network tokens do start trading live. There will be other worldly selling pressure. How many people are sitting on thousands of pi tokens?
The obvious solution is implementing a lock up period. This is a tool used all the time in traditional capital markets to stop early investors from ruining the share price on the first day of public trading. If you invested at $0.05 and the projected IPO price is $1.25, you won't mind hitting the market order button and slamming the price down to $0.95 because you will be liquid. Now imagine if you got your shares for free. At the first day of live trading everyone is hitting the market order sell as hard as they can. Hiding a lock up period behind a utility feature is an advanced level of con artistry.
This isn't a feature, it is a trick. The SWEAT app does it as well. An optimist would interpret these ploys as a method to lock up as many tokens as possible prior to the tokens going live imminently. The pessimist in me thinks its smoke and mirrors.
I think it it laughable that this is the best idea to come out of a hackathon. Its also amazing that they are proud of it. This idea is bad and doesn't solve a issue that I don't have. I do not have any desire to direct message someone in the Philippines and if I did I could use Instagram or Twitter (X) without having to lock up any of my cryptocurrencies.
This is a miss step for a project without a direction and they are bragging about it. It has been a year since the tokens began without the developers permission. I will admit that there has been movement of late, but the KYC progress has been slow and many crypto enthusiast are not enthusiastic about any KYC progress, especially before any proof of concept.
What do you think? Will pi ever find a purpose? Will it ever go live and when it does how low will the go?
Keep Building.
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