Bybit CEO Ben Zhou made a bold statement on Thursday, announcing that his exchange will not be listing the Pi Network’s PI token. This decision was based on a Chinese police warning from 2023 which alleged that the project was a scam targeting elderly individuals, leading to the loss of their pensions and personal information leakage.
Zhou took to X to express his stance, stating, “There are multiple other reports out there questioning the project legitimacy. Yes, I still think you are a scam, and no, Bybit will not list a scam.”
The Pi Network did not respond to requests for comments from CoinDesk regarding the situation. The token was officially launched alongside the project’s mainnet release, allowing users to transfer and sell tokens that they had mined by simply clicking their smartphone screens once a day.
However, Zhou found himself in a separate predicament on Friday when Bybit was hacked by North Korea’s Lazarus Group, resulting in a theft of $1.5 billion.
The PI token initially debuted on OKX at $0.67, surged to $2, and then experienced a 65% decline, currently hovering around $0.69.
One major concern raised was the project’s marketing strategy, which rewarded users for recruiting new members. This tactic drew comparisons to the infamous Bitconnect Ponzi scheme from 2017.
Furthermore, the project offers users the option to lock their tokens for up to three years in exchange for increased rewards. This approach mirrors the strategy employed by the Hex project, whose founder Richard Schueler is a fugitive wanted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding investors.
With a market cap of $4.18 billion based on a circulating supply of $6.33 billion, the PI token has a fully diluted value of $67 billion if the maximum supply of 100 billion tokens were in circulation. Some exchanges such as OKX, Bitget, and Gate have shown interest in the token, accumulating a total trading volume of $620 million for PI trading pairs.
Despite the concerns raised about the legitimacy of the Pi Network and its PI token, some exchanges have proceeded with listing the token for trading. It remains to be seen how this controversy will impact the project’s future and the broader cryptocurrency market. In recent years, the topic of mental health has gained more attention and awareness than ever before. With the rise of social media and celebrities speaking out about their own struggles, the stigma surrounding mental health issues is slowly being broken down. It’s no longer seen as a sign of weakness to seek help for mental health challenges, but rather a sign of strength and self-awareness.
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