The price of the Pi Network token has likewise plummeted, falling nearly 80% from its peak in February

While giants like Bitcoin are hitting new highs, recently soaring past $93,000, Pi hasn't kept up. It seems stuck, even as the rest of the crypto world moves forward.

The price of the Pi Network token has plummeted, falling nearly 80% from its peak in February. Its co-founders, Chengdiao Fan and Nicolas Kokkalis, are still paper billionaires despite the downturn.

While giants like Bitcoin are hitting new highs, recently soaring past $93,000, Pi hasn’t kept up. It seems to be floundering, even as the rest of the crypto world moves forward.

Yet, in the middle of this drop, something surprising stands out: the Pi Network’s two co-founders, Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan, are still billionaires, at least on paper. Thanks to their early allocation of Pi tokens, they hold massive amounts of digital wealth, despite the token’s falling price.

According to data from Tokenview and PiScan, as of Wednesday, the Pi Network’s token price is $0.66, and its market value is $4.48 billion, down from $19 billion at the beginning of the year. The potential maximum value, if all tokens were circulating, is $66 billion, compared to over $300 billion at the peak of the bull market.

But during this decline, something unexpected jumps out: the Pi Network’s two founders, Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdao Fan, remain billionaires, at least on paper. Because they received Pi tokens early on, they have enormous stores of digital riches, even as the token’s price plunges.

Earlier this year, Fan, the chief executive, and Kokkalis, the chief technology officer, founded the Pi Network Foundation and launched the mainnet for its token. The foundation holds 10 billion tokens, currently worth more than $6.6 billion, which the founders may also control.

The community of "pioneers" has been allocated 65 billion tokens out of the total 100 billion, but most of these tokens are locked and cannot be sold immediately. According to data from PiScan, the network will slowly release the locked tokens over time, completing the process by May 2028.

Each month, around 131 million tokens are unlocked, which, at current prices, would be worth about $87 million. This lock-up schedule means that while the founders appear extremely wealthy on paper, they won’t have full access to that wealth for several years.

In short, even though Pi Network’s token has struggled in the market, its founders remain among the wealthiest in crypto by token value. The true test will come over time, as tokens unlock and the market determines the lasting value of the Pi Network.