“Here is an official police warning of Pi from Chinese police back in 2023, warning to the public that it’s a scam targeted at elderly folks which leaks their personal data and loses their pension,” Zhou wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Feb. 21. “There are multiple other reports out there questioning the project’s legitimacy.”

The warning attached to Zhou’s post was from the Wuxi city police department, which writes of elderly Chinese people downloading the Pi Network app on other people’s “invitation,” providing important personal documents, even making meeting appointments to “invest,” which turn out to be fraudulent.

“Criminals use the lure of ‘free’ and ‘gifts’ to attract people who are greedy for small profits to download their software, and then sweeten the situation by claiming there is no capital investment required and offering a small amount of ‘Pi tokens’ as gifts,” the Wuxi police said. “They then expand the victim group by rewarding targets for recruiting more people, ultimately reselling users’ personal information and defrauding victims out of their money.”

Zhou emphasized that Bybit has never made any requests to the Pi Network team and shall not be listing the currency at all. Some sources previously suggested that Bybit did not pass the Know Your Business (KYB) requirements set by Pi Network.

“If the project is legitimate and straight up, then you should come forth and address these reports so everyone can understand, but instead you choose to make up [profanity] and do these childish attacks with no grounds,” Zhou said. “Yes, I still think [they] are a scam, and no, Bybit will not list scams.”

Pi Network achieved open network status on 20 February afternoon. With 6.3 billion tokens in circulation and an initial price of US$2, Pi’s total airdrop is worth $12.6 billion, double that of Uniswap’s $6.43 billion in 2020. (In crypto, airdropping is the practice of gifting free coins or tokens to users before becoming an open network.)

Immediately upon launch Pi became volatile. From $2, it went as high as over $3 on some exchanges on its first day, dropped to $0.90, rebounded to $2.10, dropped again to $1.40 before finally finishing at $0.79.

The Pi Network project was created in 2019, with advertising stating users can get Pi tokens for free with daily logins to the app. When Pi Network announced plans to become an open network on February 12 this year, Zhou immediately announced his exchange would not be listing the token, citing past troubles from older people asking for their lost money back.

Zhou’s February 12 announcement cited an additional warning from blockchain researcher Haotian-CryptoInsight, who observed that Pi Network is particularly popular in markets where financial literacy is low, and that slogans of “one Pi for one Bitcoin” contributed to much misunderstanding of Pi’s true value. The immense public reaction toward this cryptocurrency’s listing is a sign of its potentially many issues, they added.

Among crypto exchanges, Bybit has the second largest trading volume behind only Binance, according to CoinMarketCap data.

As for the largest player, Binance has been surveying its community on whether to list Pi Network since February 13, but has made no further announcement.

Many Pi Network enthusiasts expected the token to be valued very highly, setting a “consensus value” for Pi at US$500-1,000 and demanding “no dumping”. One community set its global consensus value at US$314,159 per Pi.

OneSafe was skeptical of such rates, calling them “astronomical”, as Pi’s supply is expected to be capped at 100 billion and there are six billion in circulation after it became an open network. Nam Nguyen, a crypto investor for four years, pointed out: “If Pi is valued as the community expects, its capitalization will be unimaginable, and there is no actual proof or market data to back it up.”

Crypto Times commented: “There has been so much hyperbole around Pi Coin and Pi Network since its launch. This project is surviving only on its hype using investors’ sentiments just like Hamster Kombat. However, over time everyone will get a reality check on whether Pi coin is a horse for a long race or not.”