Crypto mining is a lucrative business. However, it calls for significant initial investment in software and hardware, intensive technical knowledge, and high electricity bills due to high energy consumption.
This makes crypto mining inaccessible for most retail traders.
The gap in accessibility was an entry point for Pi Network. Introduced by Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan in 2019, Pi Network allows users to mine Pi with a single click on their mobile app.
As it makes cryptocurrency mining possible for everyone, Pi Network now enjoys a total participation of over 60 million users. In this TRU Insight, we’ll look closely at Pi Network and determine its legitimacy.
Read on and explore whether this emerging coin with a user-oriented mining feature could be the best coin to invest in 2025.
PI Price Today 2025
| Market Capitalization | USD 10.06 billion |
| Maximum Supply | 100 billion PI |
| Launch-to-Date range | USD 0.6152 to USD 2.9816 |
| All-time High | USD 2.9816 |
Crypto Mining: What Is It and Is It Accessible?
Apart from trading the actual coin, there’s another way to participate in the cryptocurrency market to grow capital and secure future wealth.
And that is by mining cryptocurrency.
Crypto mining is validating transactions and adding them to a blockchain ledger. Crypto miners use powerful computers to solve complex mathematical problems, and in return, they earn cryptocurrency rewards.
However, the challenge here is accessibility – due to its complex process, it requires high initial cost for advanced software and hardware, technical knowledge, and extremely high electricity bills due to its energy consumption.
This limits the retail traders, those who only have enough to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, to participate in the lucrative nature of cryptocurrency mining.
This was an entry point for Kokkalis and Fan’s Pi Network. This free, intuitive mobile mining software allows users to earn Pi coins by running nodes, mining coins, and referring new members to increase mining productivity.
What Is Pi Network?
Pi Network is a crypto project that aims to develop Pi coins as a digital asset to facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions and price speculation.
It’s still in its beta phase to fully make the system’s main network functional. The coin is finally set to launch in the open network to make Pi coins spendable and tradeable on February 20, 2025.
This crypto project has attracted large participation from people worldwide due to its user-friendly mining system.
The Pi Network mobile application allows Pioneers to mine Pi coins without intensive computational and costly processes. Through this application, the user initiates a mining process by simply clicking a button and leaving the app open to process the block validation without constant monitoring.
The Profitability Behind Pi Network
Pi Network is a US-developed cryptocurrency project. Thus, it carries a significant chance of being a US-reserved cryptocurrency.
As US President Trump ventured to further the strength of the American economy, he pledged to have a significant number of crypto reserves in the Federal bank. This follows his vision for America to be the primary miner of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other large-cap cryptocurrencies
Read more: Dogecoin Price in Rands Following Trump’s Victory 2025 : Pi Network Review: Is This Mobile Mining Scheme Legit?The Stellar Consensus Protocol
Unlike the typical Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and Proof-of-History (PoH), Pi Network uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) to facilitate a community-centric block validation without the energy-intensive protocols.
The project forms “Security Circles” through the SCP to validate blocks to be added to the chain network. Essentially, this protocol employs a real voting system to allow nodes to vote on the block’s validity to be added to the blockchain network.
Is Pi Network Legit in Africa?
Critics often label Pi Networks as another Ponzi scheme due to its multi-level marketing business operation, as its mining system is solely referral-based.
Additionally, its lucrative opportunities, the continuous delay of its main net launch, and the warning of Ben Zhou (ByBit’s CEO) posed significant legitimacy concerns for the users and investors.
However, Analyst Kim Wong defended the legitimacy of the crypto project. He noted that the mainstream acceptance, large user base, and KYC procedure attest to the project’s legitimacy.
According to Pi Network, its native KYC had onboarded over 19 million verified users in 2014. Additionally, the platform has over 100 million users, of whom 65 million actively participating in the mining project.
Pi Open Network was Launched on February 20, 2025
After years of delay, Pi Network announced the launch of Pi coins on its open network on February 20, 2025, at 8 am UTC (GMT +0).
As Pi’s open network launches, KYC-verified Pioneers can migrate Pi coins from the beta environment to the open network. Once migrated, users can use the Pi coin outside the network’s ecosystem.
Additionally, OKX announced the inclusion of Pi in its spot market exchange. Being one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, Pioneers can transfer their Pi coins to OKX to trade other cryptocurrencies.
The public also anticipates that Binance will include Pi coins in the platform’s new listing model. This listing in tier-1 exchanges ensures sufficient transaction/trading volume to sustain the coin and network operations.
Red Flags of Pi Network
Pi Network has been criticized for not providing a detailed whitepaper or technical documentation, which is standard practice for credible cryptocurrency projects.
Additionally, the project’s financial model is ambiguous. There are no clear details on how Pi Network is funded or how it plans to sustain itself in the long term.
