Bybit CEO Calls Pi Network a Scam, China Police Warned

Bybit's CEO, Ben Zhou, has publicly labeled the Pi Network a scam, citing an official police warning from China. In a post on X, Zhou stated that Bybit will not list the Pi Network's PI token, which was controversially released on Thursday. The Chinese police warning from 2023 alleged that the project was targeting elderly people, leaking their personal information, and leading to the loss of their pensions.

Zhou's comments come amidst growing concerns about the legitimacy of the Pi Network. The project's mainnet release and token launch on Thursday allowed users who had been "mining" tokens by clicking their smartphone screens once a day to finally transfer and sell their tokens. However, the project's marketing tactics, which reward users for recruiting others, have drawn comparisons to the 2017 Ponzi scheme, Bitconnect.

The PI token debuted on OKX at $0.67, rose as high as $2, and then slumped by 65% to its current price of around $0.69. The token has a market cap of $4.18 billion based on a circulating supply of $6.33 billion. However, its inflationary nature means the maximum supply is 100 billion, giving a fully diluted value (FDV) of $67 billion, assuming it holds the current price. At launch, FDV rose as high as $200 billion, almost double that of Solana.

Despite the concerns raised, some exchanges have been undeterred. OKX, Bitget, and Gate have racked up a total of $620 million in trading volume for PI trading pairs between them, according to CoinMarketCap.