Pi Network in 2026: What Actually Happened After the Mainnet Launch

Ok so people keep asking me “bhai Pi Network ka kya hua.” Short answer – mainnet launched, price pumped hard for like a week, then it fell off a cliff. $2.98 to $0.09. That’s basically it. But let me actually explain what happened because most of what’s floating around online is either 2022 leftovers or straight up wrong.

Mainnet went live Feb 20, 2025. Six days later PI touched $2.98, an all time high. Then – and this part nobody talks about enough – it just kept sliding. Almost a full year and a half later, it’s sitting around $0.09 to $0.10. That’s a 95%+ drop from the top, roughly.

I’ve mined this thing since the closed beta era. Remember when it was literally just a lightning bolt icon you tapped once a day and that’s the whole app? Yeah. Different world.

What Pi Network actually is (for people who genuinely don’t know)

Started March 2019. Stanford PhD guys – Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan, plus Vincent McPhillip as the third co founder. The idea, on paper, was decent: normal people mine crypto from a phone without murdering their battery or buying a graphics card.

For years that was it though. An app. A tap. A number going up somewhere in a database that lived nowhere near an actual blockchain. People called it a scam constantly, some still do honestly, and I get why – when something takes 6 years to “launch” that’s a fair reaction.

Feb 2025 changed that. Open Mainnet. Real blockchain, real (theoretically) tradeable asset.

The crash nobody’s old blog post mentions

Quick timeline because dates matter here more than opinions:

Feb 20 2025 – mainnet live. Feb 26 – ATH, $2.98. By April it’s already down to $0.41. Closes 2025 around $0.20. Mid 2026, new low, $0.11ish in June. Right now, late July 2026, it’s bouncing between $0.09 and $0.10.

Why though. This is where I’ll actually push back on a lot of the “Pi to $100” content still circulating – that stuff is just not honest. Millions of people had years of accumulated Pi sitting in the app with zero real supply on the market. Mainnet opens, tokens start unlocking in batches, and every batch is more sell pressure hitting a market that never had enough buyers to match it. One report I checked put upcoming unlocks north of 100 million PI. Against fairly weak demand. Do the math yourself on what that does to price.

Not a Pi problem specifically either, to be fair. Basically every mine-first-trade-later crypto project has run into this exact wall.

Where’s the price now and where can you even trade it

$0.093 to $0.10 as of late July 2026. Market cap around a billion. Circulating supply just under 11 billion PI against a max of 100 billion – so yeah, most of the supply is still locked up, which is its own long term concern honestly.

You can trade on OKX, Kraken, Gate, Bitget, MEXC. There’s also a Pi Network DEX now for direct swaps. Not on Binance. Not on Coinbase. Might change, might not, nobody actually knows.

On predictions – I’m not going to pretend I know where this goes. Some models say $0.14-$0.20 is realistic if momentum flips. Others, factoring the unlock pressure, don’t rule out $0.05. Both camps sound confident. Neither actually knows. Take every single “Pi price prediction 2026” article, including maybe this one, with a lot of salt.

How to actually mine it on your phone

Still free. Still takes about a minute total, once a day.

1. Grab the app from the official link – Android or iOS, doesn’t matter.
2. Sign up with a phone number. Facebook login also works but honestly don’t – if you lose that FB account someday you might lose your Pi balance with it.
3. Name, nickname, country, the usual.
4. You’ll need an invite code. Use Anil6653 if you don’t have one already from a friend.
5. Tap the lightning bolt. Session runs 24 hours. Come back tomorrow, tap again.

That’s genuinely the whole thing. Costs nothing except a tap and some patience. The real work – and I mean real work – comes later, in the KYC and migration part.

Withdrawing / actually selling your Pi

This is where the old guides are the most wrong, because for years there simply was no answer here. Now there is. Three steps, none of them optional.

One – KYC. Inside the app, submit a government ID. How long it takes depends entirely on your region and how backed up the verification queue is. I’ve seen anywhere from a few days to a genuinely frustrating few weeks.

Two – migrate. Once KYC clears, whatever’s in your “Available Balance” (not locked balance, that’s a different bucket) becomes eligible to move onto the actual mainnet wallet.

Three – send to an exchange. Get a PI deposit address from a supported exchange, send it from Pi Wallet inside Pi Browser, wait for confirmations, then sell for USDT or whatever and cash out normally from there.

Big thing people miss: a balance sitting in the app is not the same as money. If you skip KYC or migration, that number just sits there. Forever, basically, until you do the work.

Mistakes I keep seeing

Referral bonuses don’t auto transfer – the person you referred also needs their own KYC done before that bonus becomes migratable. People assume it’s automatic. It’s not.

Random Telegram or WhatsApp “I’ll convert your Pi to cash” guys. Just don’t. Scam rate on this is genuinely bad. KYC, migration, real exchange. Nothing else, no shortcuts.

And the app-balance-times-current-price math trap. That number isn’t money you have. It’s a number that might become money, eventually, once it’s actually gone through migration.

Is it actually worth doing in 2026

Depends what you want out of it, honestly.

If it’s casual – a minute a day, zero money spent – there’s no real downside I can point to. Worst case scenario your Pi is worth close to nothing, but you never paid for it either.

If you’re expecting this to fund your retirement though, slow down. Value’s mostly gone from the peak, unlocks keep adding supply, still no major exchange listing. That said I won’t tell you it’s dead – team’s still shipping stuff, KYC improvements, the DEX, some pivot toward AI and identity infra they’ve been talking about. Just keep your expectations realistic. That’s really all I’m saying.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Pi Network on mainnet now?

Yes, since February 20, 2025. Before that it was just an app balance, nothing on an actual blockchain.

Can I withdraw Pi coin?

Yes, but only after KYC and migrating your available balance to a mainnet wallet first. Skip either step and you’re stuck.

What’s Pi coin worth right now?

Around $0.09 to $0.10 as of late July 2026. Check a live tracker like CoinGecko for the real time number since this moves daily.

Is Pi Network on Binance?

No, not as of this writing. Currently listed on OKX, Kraken, Gate, Bitget, MEXC, plus its own DEX.

Is it a scam?

The project itself is real, mainnet exists, that’s verifiable. Whether the coin holds value is a completely different question. Treat it like any low cap, high supply crypto – real, but risky.

How long does KYC take?

Varies a lot by region. Could be a few days, could be a few weeks if your area’s verification queue is backed up.

Want to start mining while you decide what you think about all this – grab the app, code Anil6653 – here. Free either way.

Disclaimer: informational only, not financial advice. Crypto’s volatile and Pi carries extra uncertainty given how short its real trading history is. Do your own research before deciding anything.