Pi Network Faces Pressure—Whale Moves Hint at More Downside for PI

• The PI network, a project that has gained popularity from 2019 to the present, launched in 2025, is currently facing significant controversy.
• While the broader cryptocurrency market is in the green, the network’s token, PI, has lost almost 16% of its value in the past week. 

Piscan, a newly updated Pi blockchain explorer, has exposed what is being labelled as the biggest Rug of 2025. A  whale wallet labeled “GASIC7…3WVDBN,” received 2,000,001 PI tokens from the Pi Foundation roughly four years ago. Over the past three weeks, this wallet has quietly offloaded a chunk of those funds in separate transactions. According to Piscan’s on-chain data, the whale moved two batches, each consisting of 707,667.51 PI, to a second wallet identified as “GBC65D…LKOULB.”

Later, the fund found its way to the Gate.io exchange. Notably, the first transfer happened 21 days ago and was valued at roughly $556,489.15. The second transfer took place just a day ago and was slightly higher at $557,266.80. In total, over $1.11 million worth of Pi has been quietly moved.

These outflows come at a time when accusations are mounting that members of Pi Network’s core team could be behind the transactions.

One crypto analyst, known as Dr. Altcoin, brought another incident to light on this X page. “Now that Piscan has made Pi blockchain transactions user-friendly and that past transactions can be easily tracked,” he wrote, “check this wallet address created by PCT, you’ll find that at least 19 million PI were sold in the past 20 to 30 days. And that’s just one of many wallets in question.”

This information has fueled suspicions that insiders could be liquidating large amounts of PI, a move that would contradict the network’s long-standing promises of transparency and long-term commitment.

Consensus 2025 Was Supposed to Bring Hope

Back on May 12, PI was sitting at about $1.60, and there was a decent amount of buzz leading up to Consensus 2025, the event that ran from May 14 to 16. The Pi community was hopeful, especially since Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis, the founder and CTO of Pi Network, was scheduled to speak; indeed, he delivered some pretty big news.

He talked about the $100 million venture fund that’s now live, set up to support startups. He also laid out a vision for Pi’s future, touching on everything from DeFi and digital ID to big ideas like healthcare, education, and e-commerce. The assets from the Pi Foundation’s reserves should go toward areas like AI, fintech, and new marketplace platforms.

But oddly enough, the market didn’t respond the way many expected. Instead of climbing, PI’s price tanked just one day after the event took place, dropping more than 20% to around $0.69 on May 17. That slump shaved off nearly $1.8 billion from its market cap, which fell from $6.72 billion to $4.93 billion.

Sure, the coin still managed to hang onto a 5.5% gain over the past two weeks, but that’s been mostly overshadowed by a 14.8% dip just in the last seven days.

Fast-forward to today, and PI is trading at about $0.75. But the volume has taken a hit, too; it’s down over 30%, sitting at $220 million. That drop means one thing: investors are losing confidence, at least in the short term. The market cap has also slipped, now down to $5.4 billion.