What Pi Coin is really worth in Asia today, and what you can actually do with it

Pi Coin (PI) is the native token of Pi Network, a project that began as a phone app in March 2019 and, after years of promises, opened its network to the outside world on 20 February 2025. For most people in Asia the interesting question is no longer “will it launch?” but “what is it worth, what can I actually do with it, and how do I avoid losing money?” That is what this page answers, and each section points to a deeper guide when you want the detail.

Pi Coin in October 2026: where things stand

Pi started as a mobile app where users, called Pioneers, tapped a button once a day to claim newly issued coins. Pi’s own whitepaper describes a consensus mechanism adapted from the Stellar Consensus Protocol, with a trust graph built from “Security Circles” of people who vouch for one another. The company says it has more than 60 million engaged Pioneers and more than 18 million verified identities, though those are self-reported numbers that nobody has audited. If you are new to the project, what Pi Coin is and how Pi Network works is the place to start, and mining on the Pi app explains why the phone “mining” is closer to a daily claim than to proof-of-work.

The market picture is sober. According to CoinMarketCap on 12 October 2026, PI traded around US$0.082 with a market capitalisation of about US$920 million, rank 71 on that tracker (CoinGecko ranks it 85). The all-time high was US$2.98 on 26 February 2025, a few days after Mainnet opened, and the all-time low so far is US$0.07072 on 14 July 2026. Daily volume was only about US$2.9 million, which is thin for a coin of that headline size and means large orders move the price.

• ~US$0.082PI price, CoinMarketCap, 12 Oct 2026
• 11.24 bncirculating PI (tracker estimate)
• 100 bnmaximum supply, per Pi's MiCA white paper
• ~97 %below the Feb 2025 peak of US$2.98

Do not read the headline market cap as money you could cash out. Circulating supply is a tracker estimate of unlocked and migrated coins, and trackers disagree on “total supply” (CoinMarketCap shows 100 billion, CoinGecko about 17.3 billion). The price page explains the milestones and what moves PI, supply and market cap explains the numbers behind it, and the Pi Coin price prediction guide treats forecasts as scenarios with stated assumptions rather than promises. Forecast sites that print a single confident number for 2030 are guessing.

One more piece of context: Pi has never done an ICO. Per its whitepaper page, 65 % of the 100 billion maximum supply is meant for mining rewards, 10 % for an ecosystem and community fund, 5 % for liquidity pools and 20 % for the Core Team, with the team’s share unlocking at the same pace as community mining. Critics point out that the Core Team controls most of the infrastructure; the project answers that the network is opening up in stages. Is Pi Coin legit? lays out the evidence on both sides without picking a team.

What you can and cannot do with PI today

You can hold PI in Pi Wallet once you have passed KYC and migrated. You can trade PI on exchanges that list it, mostly against USDT. You can spend it in a limited number of places: Pi Browser apps, some peer-to-peer communities and small local sellers listed on Pi’s Map of Pi. Pi says there are “tens of thousands” of merchants and about 49,000 active Map of Pi sellers (March 2025 figures, self-reported). In practice that is a closed economy, and no major retailer in the world has been shown to accept PI for ordinary goods. What Pi Coin can be used for separates real in-app activity from the viral “Amazon accepts Pi” style myths.

You cannot, today, rely on PI as everyday money in Asia, and in Vietnam paying with crypto of any kind is not a lawful means of payment. You cannot sell inside the mining app. You cannot expect smart contracts, the Pi DEX or the Launchpad to be fully live on Mainnet: as of Pi’s Pi Day 2026 post these were still on Testnet, and later progress has mostly been announced as protocol upgrades and developer tools rather than finished consumer products. Pi’s most recent official post on the topic, 8 October 2026, says a stablecoin collaboration with Open Standard is exploratory and has “no launch dates”.

IOU versus real PI: the honest state of listings

The most expensive confusion in this market is between an IOU and a real token. Before Open Network launched, several exchanges ran pre-market or IOU-style products, which are bets on what Pi might be worth later. They were not authorised by the Pi Core Team. Some of those IOU prices went into the hundreds of dollars, and none of that was ever the price of PI. When HTX delisted its Pi IOU on 13 February 2025, it converted holdings at US$61.28 per unit, as reported by secondary sources.

After 20 February 2025 real PI began trading. Pi’s own blog says only businesses that pass its KYB (know-your-business) checks should be treated as integrated, and the KYB list we checked on 12 October 2026 names Kraken, OKX, Bitget, Gate, Pionex, Onramp.money, Onramper, Zypto, LBank, TransFi, MEXC and Banxa. Binance, Bybit, Coinbase, HTX and CEX.IO are not on it, and several large Asian exchanges such as Upbit, Bithumb, Bitkub, Indodax, Pintu, Tokocrypto and Luno are not either. Pi itself urges extreme caution with any business not on the page.

The full venue-by-venue picture, including which exchanges serve which country, is in the where to trade Pi guide. If you want one exchange in depth, we have reviews of OKX, Bitget, MEXC and Gate, covering fees, KYC, licences as the exchanges themselves state them, and which Asian countries they accept.

KYC, migration and unlocks

Pi’s gate to the outside world is identity verification. Pioneers complete KYC inside the Pi app, which uses AI plus human validators; Pi said in its 3 April 2026 post that more than 526 million validations had been completed by over a million validators. Official figures put roughly 18 million Pioneers through KYC and about 16.6 million migrated as of early 2026, but the newest official count we could find stops there. Verification is free and starts only inside the app, so any paid “KYC slot” or “fast-track” offered by a stranger is a scam. Problems such as stuck applications, duplicate-account flags and older-phone liveness failures are covered in the Pi Coin KYC guide, including the fixes Pi announced on 17 September 2026.

After KYC come the Mainnet checklist, a Pi Wallet with a passphrase, two-factor authentication through a trusted email, a place in the migration queue and a 14-day pending period during which the coins are frozen. Migration cannot be reversed. Coins you locked up before migrating stay locked for the chosen term. Only the “transferable balance” migrates, and unverified or unmigrated Pi in the app cannot be sent anywhere. The mechanics of moving coins to an exchange, including the difference between G and M addresses and when a memo is needed, are in the transfer and migration guide.

Lockups also shape the supply that reaches the market. Pi publishes no monthly unlock calendar. Third-party trackers report that between roughly 100 million and 240 million PI came free each month in the first half of 2026, but those figures come from secondary sources and sometimes conflict, and we found no reliable number for August to October. Pi Coin unlocks shows how to check wallet-level lockups yourself and why we flag every unlock number by source. Large supply arriving into a thin market is one of the plain reasons the price has drifted lower, a story told chronologically on the Pi Coin news and timeline page.

How to approach buying and selling safely

Be clear first about why you are buying. PI is a speculative asset with a weak record of retail utility, thin liquidity and a price far below its early peak. Nothing here is investment advice, and a sensible starting rule is to risk only an amount you could lose entirely.

The safest route is deliberately boring.

The how to buy Pi Coin guide goes through each stage with costs, and the how to sell Pi Coin guide covers cash-out options, P2P risk and fees. Choosing a home for your coins is a separate decision, compared in the best wallet for Pi Coin guide. Before you convert anything, the Pi Coin converter explains why a quoted rate in dollars, rupiah, won or yen is not what lands in your account once spreads and fees are applied.

CEX.IO also sells a product it calls “Pi Coin [IOU]”, described on its own page as a placeholder for future Pi Network tokens, with payment by card or bank transfer and identity verification for selling to fiat. The company says it has operated since 2013, holds more than 30 licences and registrations including a US FinCEN Money Services Business registration, and that its UK promotion was approved by CEX.IO Markets UK Limited (FRN1007192) on 3 August 2026. Those are the company’s statements, so check the relevant regulator registers yourself. It is not on Pi’s KYB list, so do not assume that what you buy there can be withdrawn to Pi Mainnet. If you accept that IOU limitation and want to look at the product, the button below opens it.

Rules across Asia: seven markets, seven answers

There is no single Asian rulebook, and Pi sits in a grey zone because it trades mostly on offshore venues rather than local licensed ones. The overview on the regulation page compares the seven markets, and each one has its own guide. Taxes also differ, and none of what follows is tax or legal advice.

Hong Kong. The SFC licenses virtual asset trading platforms and its list stood at 13 platforms in mid-2026, including HashKey Exchange and OSL. We found no evidence that PI is traded on any of them, and OKX lists Hong Kong as a restricted location. Read the Hong Kong guide.

Japan. The FSA register of 1 September 2026 shows 27 registered operators, and none of their asset lists included PI. Japan is also reforming crypto law, and a lower flat tax rate is reportedly expected from 2028. See the Japan guide.

South Korea. The FIU registers about 28 exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit, and we found no report of PI on a won market. Crypto income tax is scheduled from January 2027 unless delayed again. See the Korea guide.

Vietnam. A five-year pilot for licensed crypto exchanges is under way, but no licence had been confirmed as of the latest reports. In March 2025 Hanoi police warned that using Pi for payments could bring fines or criminal liability. See the Vietnam guide.

Indonesia. OJK supervises crypto and published a whitelist of licensed traders in December 2025. A 2022 trade-ministry statement called Pi unregistered, and tax under PMK 50/2025 is 0.21 % on licensed platforms and 1 % on foreign ones. See the Indonesia guide.

Thailand. The SEC licenses exchanges including Bitkub and Upbit Thailand, and Thai residents can currently claim a tax exemption on gains from licensed operators until the end of 2029. We found no evidence that PI is listed locally. See the Thailand guide.

Malaysia. The SC lists five registered digital asset exchanges, including Luno Malaysia, and we found no evidence of PI on them. The SC added MEXC Global to its Investor Alert List in September 2022. See the Malaysia guide.

How to spot a Pi Coin scam

Pi’s popularity makes it a favourite for impersonators, and the scams are repetitive enough to learn. The most common are fake KYC “fast-track” services that charge a fee, emails or sites that imitate a Pi migration or wallet alert and ask for your passphrase, “Pi IOU” or presale sellers promising to deliver coins later, group admins who reply to your public question by private message, and payment requests that you are told to approve to “unlock” your balance. Pi says it emails only from one official address and that prize winners are contacted through official email, and it directs users to its Pi Safety Center.

Three habits stop most of these. First, your passphrase is the key to a non-custodial wallet, and Pi’s FAQ warns that losing it can mean losing the coins; nobody legitimate will ask for it. Second, if a price looks too good, it is probably an IOU price, not the PI price. Third, test every new address with a small transfer before sending the full amount, because a wrong network or missing memo can mean permanently lost funds. The legitimacy guide lists the red flags in more detail, and Pi Coin KYC covers the identity-verification fraud in particular.

How this site works, and why it is independent

picoin.asia is an independent English and multilingual guide for readers in Asia. We are not Pi Network, we are not affiliated with the Pi Core Team, and we do not issue, sell or hold any crypto asset. Our pages are written for Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, and the non-English versions are rewritten for each market rather than translated word for word. Each claim carries a date, and where a figure comes from a news site or tracker instead of Pi or a regulator we say so. Where we could not verify something, such as new unlock volumes or exact listing dates, we leave it out or flag it.

The site includes calls to action that lead to a trading platform. They are there so you can act on a guide when you want to, they do not change what we write, and we point out limits such as the IOU issue wherever that platform is mentioned. Read how we work in the editorial policy, who runs the site on the about page, and the disclaimer for what this site is not. If you spot an error, tell us and we will correct it with a date.

The cards above link every guide on the site, grouped by topic. If you only have time for three, read where Pi trades, how to buy and the KYC guide, which together cover the questions new readers ask most.