Pi Network in September 2026: millions of users, a price in decline
PI trades at around $0.088 on 23 September 2026. That leaves the token roughly 97 percent below its all-time high of $2.98, set on 26 February 2025 – two weeks after trading began. Over twelve months it is down about 72 percent, and the all-time low of $0.0707 dates from 14 July 2026. Even so, a market capitalisation of some $977 million is enough for rank 58 on CoinMarketCap.
What sets Pi apart from other layer-1 projects
Pi launched through a mobile app rather than an investor sale: users confirm their activity daily on a smartphone and must pass a KYC check before balances migrate to mainnet. That produces a reach almost no other crypto project can match – and at the same time the central problem for the price. Of a maximum 100 billion tokens, only about 11.1 billion are in circulation, a good 11 percent. Since the start of 2026 alone the circulating supply has grown from 8.38 to 11.09 billion tokens, an increase of roughly 32 percent. Every further migration wave brings supply to a market where comparable demand growth is still missing.
The crypto market right now
Total value and sentiment of the market from our own charts. While the page is open, the values refresh at the pace of their source.
What actually moves the Pi price
For Pi, chart technicals matter less than the ratio between two figures: how many tokens become tradable through KYC and migration – and how much buying interest meets them on exchanges. As long as the first grows faster than the second, every release acts as predictable selling pressure. That pattern sits behind the slide from $0.149 in late May to $0.088 in late August 2026.
On the other side stands a roadmap that visibly advanced in 2026. By 11 August 2026 every mainnet node operator had to upgrade to Protocol 26 or lose connectivity; the update addresses smart contract safety, state management and interoperability. In mid-August, Node 0.6.2 followed with improvements to SoloHost, the groundwork for a planned distributed computing marketplace. Protocol v27 is described as the final planned upgrade ahead of a possible transition to an open mainnet.
The metrics we watch on Pi
- Circulating supply against maximum supply: 11.1 of 100 billion tokens are in circulation. The pace of migration is the single most important supply factor.
- Exchange liquidity, not app numbers: around $19 million in daily turnover spreads across more than 70 markets, with depth concentrated on OKX, Gate and Bitget. Thin books amplify moves in both directions.
- Roadmap progress: protocol upgrades and the path to an open mainnet are the only dates that can be planned for in advance.
- Actual use of the ecosystem apps: what counts is whether applications such as SoloHost, Pi Sign-in or PiVerify generate payment flows – not how many users tried them once.
Why large user numbers do not carry a price
Pi shares an experience with other projects that reached millions of people through an app: reach and willingness to pay are two different things. For how quickly a large mobile user base turns into supply pressure after listing, our Hamster Kombat forecast is the comparable case. And for how hard it is for a project that makes identity verification the basis of its token distribution, the parallels are in our Worldcoin forecast. In both cases the problem was never the user count, but the ratio of unlocking supply to paying demand.
Where this forecast can fail
Our scenarios assume that migration keeps releasing supply and that the ecosystem generates paying usage only slowly. A credible transition to an open mainnet, a listing on a major US exchange or an ecosystem service with real revenue could accelerate the recovery considerably. Conversely, a setback in KYC, regulation or node decentralisation would undercut even the bearish scenario.
