1/12) WARNING: PI is a straight-up scam! ⚠️ Offering an "MLM" based "mining" scheme on mobile is a gimmick, as it does not contribute to consensus! PI is fully permissioned (centralized) & everything requires KYC They dumped on retail & continue to lie to their victims now: 🧵

2/12) Claiming decentralization while remaining extremely centralized is a massive red flag 🚩 Delivering a mainnet five years behind schedule with ZERO innovation is another 🚩 PI claims to be a revolutionary new decentralized crypto; nothing could be further from the truth...

3/12) PI's core tech was simply copied from Stellar (another permissioned chain) Even though the documentation is a total mess! (another red flag) 🚩 We can conclude that PI is not scalable nor even programmable, as it lacks a Turing-complete VM Making DeFi a pipedream for PI!

4/12) PI has deployed a "Multi-Level Marketing" type scheme through referral programs 🚩 Kicking back 25% of the "mining" reward The bottom line is that pointless "mining" is a huge cost to the network while providing no return! 🚩 Except for luring in ignorant investors...

5/12) To make things worse, there is an additional Ponzi-like mechanism within PI similar to HEX! Where users lock up their PI for several years to increase the "mining" rate Another mechanism that is designed to lock the victims in & pump the price so that insiders can exit 🚩

6/12) Talking about insiders... The team has a 20% allocation + all future "mining" rewards are controlled by the team! In reality, it is all unlocked! As the 3 "validators" are controlled by them & can veto the "DAO" Putting total supply controlled by the team at 83% now! 🚩

7/12) There is evidence of the team dumping their tokens on retail after pumping the price 🚩 In May 2025, the token pumped from $0.66 to $1.60, then crashed by over 50% in days There are insider whistleblowers who confirmed this & there is even on-chain evidence of this crime:

8/12) Chinese authorities branded it a straight-up pyramid scheme in 2023 While Vietnamese regulators echoed the fraud alarms, citing data breaches and unauthorized operations Ben Zhou, the founder of Bybit also spoke out against PI, calling it a scam targeting elderly people

9/12) There are no independent audits, public reports, or disclosures on locking mechanisms! 🚩 Delaying listings on exchanges like Binance & Coinbase Unbelievably hypocritical for a chain that KYCs all its users! They even burnt coins from users refusing to do additional KYC!

10/12) These mechanisms are not strictly speaking by definition "MLM" & "Ponzi" As crypto has put its own twist on the formula In crypto, the variations on these scams are, in fact, worse! In a traditional Ponzi, the scammers need to carefully balance paying out old investors

11/12) That is not the case in crypto, as we can use a "token money printer" while locking it up! So the scammers end up making way more money in the crypto version of this scam The same is true for the "MLM" as there is no real product in this case; it is all smoke & mirrors

12/12) That PI is still in the top 50 is an embarrassment to our industry We identified 9 major red flags after only a few days of research! 🕵️ Exposing 3 types of scams! Digging deeper will surely only reveal more skeletons... Speak out against PI! Crypto deserves better! 💪