PI's short-term rebound faces cooling; can millions of users absorb the 134 million tokens unlocking pressure?

PI (Pi) experienced a slight rebound on January 5th, rising 1.14% within 24 hours, currently trading at $0.21, with a market cap of approximately $1.779 billion. However, behind this surge lies a deeper project dilemma—large-scale token unlocks are imminent, and whether ecological applications and commercial implementations can truly absorb this supply pressure remains a big question.

Short-term gains lack strength, long-term pressure is enormous

The true driving force behind the rebound

From the data, PI’s price increase is not particularly remarkable. It rose 1.14% in 24 hours, 3.87% over 7 days, but actually declined 6.23% over 30 days. What does this trend indicate? According to the latest news, PI is currently traded on 67 trading pairs, with a 24-hour trading volume of about $18.05 million. Compared to its market cap of $1.779 billion, the trading volume share is extremely low, indicating severe market liquidity issues.

This suggests that PI’s short-term rise is more driven by technical adjustments rather than fundamental improvements.

Token unlocks become a stress test

The real challenge lies in the upcoming large-scale token unlock. According to the latest news, Pi Network plans to unlock tokens in January 2026, releasing approximately 134 million PI tokens, which is more than 15 times the unlock scale of about 8.7 million tokens at the end of December.

What does this mean? The current circulating supply is only 838 million PI, while the total supply reaches 100 billion. The additional 134 million tokens represent about 16% of the current circulating supply. Without sufficient external liquidity, whether the market can absorb this unlock remains highly uncertain.

Imbalance between ecosystem progress and challenges

Positive signals: applications and business advancing

However, the PI project team is also working to build a foundation to absorb this supply. According to the latest updates, Pi Network has made progress in several areas:

• Infrastructure Optimization: Upgrading the decentralized exchange on the testnet, migrating liquidity pools to Pi-denominated trading pairs to reduce slippage
• User Recovery: Over 1.2 million previously restricted users have been unlocked, with about 250,000 users able to resubmit KYC applications
• Application Ecosystem: The first Open Network Hackathon received 215 mainnet application submissions covering social, gaming, and commercial sectors
• Commercial Partnerships: During the holiday season, over 220 global merchants participated in trading scenarios, with more than 125,000 merchants involved in business plans

These figures look promising, but the key question is: can these applications and merchants generate enough transaction demand to offset the selling pressure caused by token unlocks?

Hidden risks: security incidents undermine confidence

Worse still, Pi Network recently faced serious security incidents. According to the latest news, over 4.4 million PI tokens were stolen, with scammers exploiting blockchain transparency to lock wallets holding large amounts of PI, disguising payment requests to deceive users into granting authorization. Since July 2025, related scam wallets have received between 700,000 and 800,000 PI tokens, with a noticeable acceleration in fund inflows in December.

This not only results in direct asset loss but also damages user confidence in the project’s security. At this critical stage of mainnet migration, such incidents reveal governance vulnerabilities.

Diverging market expectations: the real source of risk

Community fantasies vs. market reality

The most telling indicator is the huge gap between community discussions and market expectations. According to the latest news, discussions about whether Pi Network can reach a $1 trillion market cap by 2026 are heating up in the community, requiring PI to increase by over 70,000% from its current price.

But what does the market think? The general investor expectation is that PI’s price in 2026 will be between $0.15 and $0.22. In other words, the market anticipates PI to fluctuate within the $0.15–$0.22 range, not to grow exponentially.

What does this expectation gap reflect? It indicates a significant divergence in how market participants perceive PI’s true value amid a lack of sufficient external liquidity and mainstream exchange support. On one side are community optimism and fantasies; on the other, investors’ cautious realism.

Summary

PI’s short-term rebound exists but is limited, reflecting technical adjustments rather than fundamental improvements. More importantly, the upcoming large-scale unlock of 134 million tokens—despite the project team pushing ecological applications and commercial collaborations—still needs time to verify whether these efforts can truly absorb the new supply.

Coupled with recent security incidents and the stark contrast between community fantasies and market expectations, PI faces a complex balancing act: short-term absorption of token selling pressure, medium-term demonstration of application value, and long-term narrowing of expectation gaps. Whether the $0.20 support level can hold depends largely on whether ecological implementation can keep pace with the unlock schedule.