Author: Mian Er

As a child, the most terrifying news you can hear from your elders is:

"I have a golden opportunity to make a fortune."

Especially when your elders ask you "Have you heard of Pi coin?", it indicates that everything that follows will move at high speed in an uncontrollable direction.

Most young people’s initial understanding of Pi coin comes from sporadic keywords narrated by their elders:

Virtual currency and mobile phone mining can make huge wealth.

The fanatical stories of getting rich told by their parents are almost a sign of disaster for most children. When the fearful children search online, they find that Pi coin has been questioned by regulators in many countries because it is too similar to a pyramid scheme and a scam. As early as 2023, the Wuxi online police issued a statement saying:

The Pi coin scam specifically preys on the elderly.

Pi coin, precisely hunting the elderly?

Before understanding what Pi coin is, people always start by understanding their parents.

Watching them travel far away to some village and perform a wealth-grabbing dance in front of a stone in a similar ritual to pray for wealth;

Or wearing the same uniform, meeting with similarly dressed peers in the lobby of a five-star hotel in the suburbs of a first-tier city, in a format similar to an annual meeting or team building;

Or perhaps, based on proximity, we could move the activity outdoors to a park, sit on the ground in a handkerchief-dropping formation, and arrange for everyone to perform a talent show...

Judging from the form and content alone, these are all ordinary activities for the elderly.

But if you look at a few details, you'll start to feel something is wrong.

You can't help but ask them what they are busy with recently, and they reveal mysteriously:

I'm mining Pi coins recently.

Before we understand why middle-aged and elderly people are crazy about Pi coins, we must first clarify:

What exactly is Pi coin?

In layman's terms, it is a virtual currency. Pi coin, full name Pi Network, is also known as "π coin" and "Pie coin".

To some extent, you can think of it as a packaged “middle-aged and elderly version of Bitcoin”.

The biggest difference is that PI is not yet listed on most major exchanges, making its price extremely volatile. Its future value is influenced by factors such as market sentiment, supply, and demand. Currently, PI can only be used within the closed ecosystem of the PI Network and cannot be redeemed for any economic value in the external market.

That is to say: it cannot be traded like Bitcoin, nor can it be exchanged for RMB or US dollars.

When searching for Pi coins on social media, common reminder words are:

The Pi coins you bought are just "air coin futures". Once the exchange is closed, your account will be reset to zero.

If you want to understand the potential risks of Pi coins in a more direct way, you will see:

In a CCTV report in 2023, the public security department suspected that Pi coin had fraudulent attributes.

But the same thing, when viewed from the perspective of middle-aged and elderly people, becomes a completely different story.

In the eyes of middle-aged and elderly people:

Pi coin is the only chance for people to get rich in their old age, and it is a new era treasure book for making money left among the people.

Most of the middle-aged and elderly people who can enter the Pi coin circle and become Pi friends have one thing in common:

Plenty of time but nothing to do.

If this continues for too long, free time becomes torture.

By chance, an acquaintance will ask them to help them get rich. The words are roughly as follows:

"I'm free anyway, so why not find something relaxing to do? With zero investment, you can make a lot of money just by playing with your phone."

Initially, these people may be pulled into a Picoin exchange group by old friends, colleagues, or relatives. The group usually has one or more senior teachers to instill awareness and convey the following:

"Pi coin is very valuable now",

"Pi coins can be spent directly in many places abroad."

"1Pi = 2000 USD" and other news...

When we first joined the group, everyone was skeptical about Pi coin.

But the first person's statement that Pi coins are valuable may not be convincing, and the second person's statement that Pi coins can now be exchanged for a Mercedes-Benz is doubtful;

The third Pi user in the group said that he was going to Macau to pick up his car with Pi coins, which made people want to follow the follow-up.

Good news kept coming from the group, mixed with news reports that were difficult to distinguish between true and false. 100 people in the group were shouting that Pi coin was valuable and would continue to appreciate in the future.

Some group members who claim to be settled overseas will tell everyone by casually sharing fragments of their lives:

Pi coins have real value and purchasing power across the sea. Even Trump uses Pi coins to buy a private jet.

When the day comes that the money can be exchanged in China, each of us in the group will be rich enough to rival a country.

Even though this information may sound a bit absurd to you and me, the middle-aged and elderly groups are notoriously willing to believe all outrageous information except their children.

They believe that there is a delay in receiving messages on Apple phones because Americans have to read them first;

I believe what the various "experts" say, that drinking bottled mineral water can easily lead to infertility.

From this perspective, it is not surprising that the same group of people, through a large amount of information in the Pai friends group, firmly believe that they can get rich by mining with mobile phones.

The awareness that “Pi coins can make you rich” has been successfully planted. After all, you don’t need to spend money on mining in the early stages. All you need to do every day is to move your hands and tap your phone to make money.

All that is left is to do our best and wait quietly for the day when Pi coins can be exchanged for cash.

The longer the time goes, the more Pi coin becomes a potential stock with no investment and huge profits in the minds of middle-aged and elderly people. Many people will even prepare several mobile phones to mine day and night.

It doesn't take long to immerse yourself in this kind of atmosphere, and it's enough to impress a new elderly party member and complete the first round of brainwashing.

Due to the large number of communication groups and clubs of all sizes in various regions, there is still no consensus on how much one Pi coin is worth.

According to various unreliable information, some people say that one Pi is worth millions or tens of millions of dollars with no upper limit, and some people say that one Pi can buy a villa by the sea.

The extreme complexity of information will gradually push middle-aged and elderly people to learn about Pi coins and try to verify it themselves.

Friends who were moderately addicted to the platform began to wear reading glasses every day to attend lectures, take notes, and study financial knowledge, and research what "blockchain", "ecology", "transactions" and "empowerment" are.

The process of learning how to mine faster, upgrade computing power, and obtain more Pi coins is equivalent to the second knowledge explosion in the lives of middle-aged and elderly people.

During the long self-study career that lasted for several years, everyone completed the second round of self-brainwashing.

How is Pi coin draining the elderly?

The next step in understanding Pi is to start spending money on Pi.

Before figuring out where the money goes, you must first understand the operational procedures for mining Pi.

This is also the main basis for it to be accused of pyramid scheme and fraud.

Mining on a mobile phone is not difficult, and it is not that complicated if many middle-aged and elderly people can understand it.

As long as you click on a fixed App every day and tap the screen, you will gain the so-called "computing power". The more computing power you have, the faster you mine, and the more Pi coins you can see on the App. The Pi coins obtained through mining will accumulate in the mobile App, and that's all.

Signing in, watching ads, and inviting are all major ways to accelerate computing power.

By inviting others to mine, your own computing power will be doubled. It is not difficult to understand why the Pi coin has split so quickly among the middle-aged and elderly groups.

Mining does not require money, but that does not mean that Pi's branch industries do not require it either.

At this point, anyone who has played puzzle games will understand:

Computing power is similar to physical strength, diamonds, and gold coins in the game.

Although you can play it for free, after playing for a long time you will find yourself gradually spending money at the designed nodes.

In order to obtain more Pi coins and prepare to accelerate computing power, some middle-aged and elderly Pi friends will buy nodes from "industry insiders" as accelerators, which can quickly burn through a family's savings and pension.

Moreover, computing power is not the only way to empty retirement funds.

In the corners of small cities where middle-aged and elderly people gather the most, there are a large number of mysterious "Pi friends" clubs. They usually organize gatherings and grasp most of the Pi friends in the city as "potential customers."

Whenever there is a loading circle when the software is upgraded, or when the software interface keeps showing up, or when there are various problems that middle-aged and elderly people cannot understand, they can go to the club to help upgrade and solve some basic problems, and the fee can range from tens to thousands.

There are even more middle-aged and elderly people who have already fallen into the trap. With an urgent need to get rich, they plunge into a world of wealth that they only have a vague understanding of. They come into contact with bigwigs in the group on a daily basis who claim to have "achieved financial freedom", but they feel that they know too little.

Self-study could no longer meet my needs, so I began to seek out successful teachers in my circle of friends and enroll in their classes.

The first self-improvement expenditure after retirement is to study how to obtain the key to wealth.

Ten online courses cost tens of thousands of yuan, and even the teachers are middle-aged or elderly people, but to some extent, this will make them believe more in the value of the courses.

In the past, Pi coin has always been considered a niche circle. It began to attract the attention of a large number of people. During a period of time, there was news that a large number of middle-aged and elderly Pi friends were going to Shandong to exchange Pi coins.

After all, the value of Pi coin has always been the "elephant in the room" among middle-aged and elderly Pi friends.

Pi friends who have been brainwashed by the exchange formula of "0.2Pi = a Passat" for a long time will also see the news that Pi coins are only worth 5 bowls of jjajangmyeon in South Korea, and often feel confused because of this.

So when they heard that there was a place in China where they could exchange Pi coins, no one could stop Pi friends from going there.

I heard from the local contact that we have to sign a confidentiality agreement before we can make contact. We are not allowed to use mobile phones to communicate with the outside world during the entire process because some people will set their sights on this wealth that can control the world.

After a set of processes, the deceived middle-aged and elderly people were finally deceived again without realizing it:

Burdened with loans or online loans.

From then on, he became a part of a true crime cycle and returned home to continue mining with an lingering dream of getting rich.

Whether it is cheating money or cheating people, cheating a lot or a little, the plot and ending are familiar to us.

Despite repeated official notices reminding people that Pi coin mining is risky, it frequently appears in social news and is on the key list of anti-fraud propaganda.

But nothing can stop the middle-aged and elderly party members, who always believe only what they want to believe.

Pi coin, why is it targeting the elderly?

When the elderly at home who speculate in Pi coins reach the stage of promoting Pi coins to their children, they have basically been poisoned by the five-step snake and have reached the fourth step.

When children learn that their parents are "playing with Pi coins", they will also receive a request:

"You should also start playing with Pi coins. I'll guide you."

There are countless personal experiences of children and descendants on the Internet that prove that Pi coins will not make people rich overnight, but will only make people crazy.

If I had been mining Pi coins without telling my children and didn't dare tell my family how much money I had spent on it, I still had a shred of rationality.

But when they start to get their children into the Pi coin circle, they really don’t know what the world is.

They really believed all of this, accepted 100% brainwashing, and were prepared to "benefit their children."

Even when persuading people around them to mine Pi, Pi friends use very similar persuasive words:

"I look down upon the hard-earned money I earn after working so hard all year long";

"I despise you for not believing in Pi coin";

"I don't understand how such a wise and powerful man with high-level thinking could raise such a fool with low cognitive ability and financial intelligence."

The parent-child relationship of many years has been transformed by Pi coin into a simple online development of offline.

At this point, we can see that Pi coin itself has a very strong pyramid scheme nature.

This is also one of the reasons why Pi coin itself can become the most hidden and confusing scam.

The exclusivity, circular reasoning, profit promises, repetitiveness, and even symbolization of Pi coin together are basically a brainwashing textbook.

By inviting fission sharing, it is also consistent with the pattern of developing downlines through MLM.

The difference is that the first step of pyramid schemes is brainwashing, recruiting people and the most important thing: investing money.

The initial investment of Pi coin is zero, it is pure brainwashing. After Pi friends spend a lot of time and energy, they are induced to make a series of seemingly "voluntary" financial investments.

The insidiousness of this invisible scam is that even children, after learning that their elderly family members are mining Pi coins, are likely to develop the sentiment of "let them do what they want if they don't have to spend money".

But in principle, Pi coin is a pyramid scheme with the characteristics of a slow burner.

By the time it is discovered, it is often too late.

The most difficult part about Pi coin’s anti-fraud propaganda is based on this principle.

Pi coin itself, as an "air coin" that cannot be put on the main network, is not a scam. To put it bluntly, their main way of making profits is to attract more people to watch advertisements and earn some advertising revenue.

Because of this, Pi coin has become a dream factory that accommodates a large number of scams.

Using a montage of half-truths and half-false lies, they brainwash their friends step by step and then empty their wallets.

So until today, the elderly who have been defrauded of their money still believe that "someone is using the name of Pi coin to do bad things, but this has nothing to do with Pi coin, and I can still make a fortune."

Because from the very beginning, various scams have reached a self-consistent logical chain on the issue of "Pi coin is real, but its value is fake."

Anyone who says that Pi coin is worthless simply has a low level of knowledge. Authoritative figures are not optimistic about Pi coin because they are afraid that ordinary Pi friends will share the capital's wealth pie.

Those who dare to go directly to offline to exchange Pi coins do not care about the risk of privacy leakage.

A classic, cruel truth about scams is that there are always people who believe they are inherently smarter than everyone else.

Every time you delve deeper into a scam, you'll notice some familiar elements.

In fact, all scams are inseparable from several common scam templates.

From the early "original stock" scams to health supplements and miracle drugs, the promise of overnight wealth or healthy longevity has always been a weapon to exploit the elderly.

Every scam targeting the elderly population precisely takes advantage of their unfamiliarity with new technologies and their anxiety about wealth in their later years.

Scams in the Internet age are just refined upgrades of the same framework.

If we go back a few years, the entrepreneurial rhetoric back then was much more obvious than it is now.

In the past, the main ideas for making money through entrepreneurship were “making a fortune easily” and “small investment in the early stage, big rewards in the later stage”, but now it is “mining with mobile phones on a daily basis, which is a bit hard but can make you rich”.

The former is too beautiful, while the latter is relatively closer to reality, giving people a tangible feeling.

What's more, the rumor circulating on the Internet that "Pi coin was created by the Stanford team" is simply a stamp of approval for the potential of Pi coin for middle-aged and elderly people who believe in meritocracy.

In addition, the operation process of Pi coin emphasizes diligent learning, frequent exchanges of industry knowledge, and active participation in the "hard work" of the community, which is destined to attract the generation that most advocates hard work and wealth.

The Pi coin trap never simply exploits greed, but takes the form of a potential opportunity, taking advantage of the anxiety of the middle-aged and elderly groups, their recognition of the "value of labor", and their fear of missing the last train of wealth in the last train of life, to gradually increase the sunk costs of time, energy, and money of the middle-aged and elderly people.

How to save the elderly from the Pi circle is a long-term issue.

Raising awareness, supervising children, and trying to establish effective communication aren't enough to build a foolproof anti-fraud firewall. After all, for middle-aged and elderly people dreaming of getting rich, anyone who tries to dissuade them becomes the biggest stumbling block on their road to prosperity.

For children, the first lesson to prevent the family from going bankrupt can only start with you and me knowing what Pi coin is and increasing regulatory sensitivity.

When I got home today, I first checked whether the elders at home had the Pi coin APP on their phones.