At present, there is no officially recognized exchange rate standard of 1 Pie to PKR (Pakistani rupee) because Pi Network is still in the mainnet closed stage and its token has not been listed on mainstream exchanges. According to data from a local cryptocurrency forum in Pakistan in July 2024, the quote range of Pi in the over-the-counter (OTC) market is extremely wide, with the price of a single PI ranging from 80 to 350 Pakistani rupees (approximately 0.29 to 1.26 US dollars), and the spread is as high as 337%, reflecting the high uncertainty of the market. This fluctuation mainly stems from extremely low trading volume – the average daily OTC trading volume is only equivalent to 50,000 to 80,000 Pakistani rupees, which is less than 0.01% of the local daily trading volume of Bitcoin.
In terms of compliant trading channels, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has not yet approved any fiat currency trading pairs of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, local exchanges such as Pakcoin only offer USDT trading pairs. If investors want to obtain the 1 pie to pkr reference value, they need to go through two conversion steps: First, take the Pi/USDT IOU price (as shown by CoinGecko, the average price in the second quarter of 2024 is 0.95 US dollars) as the benchmark, and then multiply it by the USD/PKR exchange rate (the Central Bank of Pakistan maintained that 1 US dollar ≈278 Pakistani rupees in July 2024). The theoretical median price calculated based on this is approximately 264 Pakistani rupees, but the actual OTC trading price deviates from this value by ±30%.
Risk control is particularly important. A warning issued by the State Bank of Pakistan in 2023 shows that fraud cases involving cryptocurrencies have increased by 200% year-on-year, with 45% of them related to false exchange quotations. For instance, a certain OTC platform in Lahore once fabricated a 200% premium scam, resulting in a loss of 2.3 million Pakistani rupees for investors. It is recommended that investors give priority to referring to the data of international aggregation platforms. For instance, the Pi/USDT IOU chart of CoinMarketCap is updated once every minute, but its data only comes from three small exchanges, with a liquidity depth of less than 100,000 US dollars.
Long-term value assessment needs to be combined with ecological progress. According to official data from Pi Network, there are approximately 1.8 million active users in Pakistan, but the proportion of those who have completed KYC verification is only 42%. If the mainnet is fully open, based on the local per capita income level (median monthly income of 35,000 Pakistani rupees) and the user base, the potential local liquidity pool size may reach 630 million Pakistani rupees. However, this is still insignificant compared to the average daily size of 14 billion Pakistani rupees in the country’s gold trading market. Investors should view the maturity of the price discovery mechanism with caution.