Data from cryptocurrency exchange Bitget shows Pi plummeted from $0.144 by midday Thursday before recovering slightly to around $0.13.

Le Binh, a cryptocurrency market observer in HCMC, said the sell-off came as the broader crypto market weakened, with Bitcoin falling from $64,000 to $61,366. Binh said Pi has been highly vulnerable to Bitcoin's downturns but not benefited from its rallies, reflecting weak independent momentum.

The latest decline comes ahead of Pi2Day on June 28, an annual event when the Pi Core Team has traditionally announced major updates or new features. However, enthusiasm within the community appears to be waning.

Hoang Anh, administrator of a Pi Network Facebook group with more than 200,000 members, said the number of discussion threads has dropped by around 80% from its peak a few years ago. Many Pi-related Facebook groups have also changed their names and shifted to unrelated topics, while those that remain active see far less engagement. Anh said the trend suggests the Pi Network community has weakened rapidly just one year after the project officially opened its network.

Pi Network's smartphone app next to Pi Network logo. Photo by VnExpress/Bao Lam

Pi has been under sustained pressure in recent months, falling 42% in the last six months and 96% from its record high of $3 reached early last year. Binh said the steady release of new tokens has diluted the market. Supply has reached 10.64 billion tokens, up more than 28% from 8.3 billion in February this year.

Trading activity has also slowed across major exchanges. Data from cryptocurrency exchange OKX shows Pi's daily trading volume at around $7 million, a relatively modest figure for a token with a market capitalization exceeding $1.2 billion, and far below the tens of millions of dollars worth of trading daily last year.

Pi Network has announced few major developments in recent months beyond introducing a smart contract feature on its Testnet. The project still lacks a fully operational mainnet smart contract system, a capability widely regarded as essential for modern blockchain platforms.

In early May, Pi co-founders Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan appeared at the 2026 Consensus conference on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, but their presentation offered little indication of the project's future direction.

Ryan Lee, head of research at Bitget UEX Research, said Pi's price is mainly influenced by expectations surrounding the development of its open-mainnet ecosystem, community growth, and broader cryptocurrency market conditions.

Investors remain cautious about it and continue to favor larger cryptocurrencies, he said. Several analysts have said Pi Network may struggle to regain momentum because of concerns over its centralized structure, with the Pi Foundation, established last year, controlling billions of tokens across hundreds of wallets.

Unlike blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana, Pi holders have limited influence over the project's governance.

The project faces credibility challenges with a growing number of early supporters choosing to sell out.

Launched in 2019 Pi Network promoted itself as a way for users to mine the crypto for free by tapping a button in its mobile app daily. Vietnam is among the countries with the most miners. The project has been controversial, taking nearly six years to launch its mainnet before finally allowing users to transfer Pi to exchanges for trading on Feb. 20 2025.

But the project is still viewed as an incomplete blockchain initiative, lacking smart contract functionality and open-source transparency. To date the development team has only introduced limited updates, including a domain name auction feature, the PiFest shopping campaign and a few small-scale applications.