Stop Mining Pi! Here’s Why & Five Mind-Blowing Ways to Get Free Cryptos Today
If, like me, you're in a long-distance relationship with a Gen-Z, you know that the first rule of such “ship” is staying online. To always be available so you can share every moment, tweet, BC, meme, and picture with your partner either on WhatsApp, Twitter, IG or Snapchat. Or so I thought.
My WhatsApp has been a mess recently and I'm sure you'd like to know why. Over the past couple of weeks, my girlfriend has turned herself into a Pi evangelist. Pi this. Pi that. Pi every time. Sometimes, in the middle of intimate talks, she'd send something like this:
Pi is a new digital currency developed by Stanford PhDs, with over 10 million members worldwide. To claim your Pi, follow this link
https://minepi.com/chiefinvestor24
NB: use my username (ChiefInvestor24) as your invitation code coz it require it. And start ur auto mining ⛏️🤓
But for every ment, there's a counter ment. So, I'd always reply with memes and posts like this one
Or this👇
(FYI: the WhatsApp status was "stolen" from an acquaintance's wall & the meme from a trash bin on Reddit)
The truth is, I don't believe in the Pi project. And I find it difficult, at first, to articulate why. So, I decided to do a deep dive into the viral crypto project of the moment and unravel what it is all about.
In this article:
What is the Pi Craze about Anyways?
Textbook Definition of Pi
What Pi Says They're all About and Why It Doesn't Really Matter
Why You Shouldn't Take Pi Too Seriously
Five Mind-Blowing Alternative Ways to Get Free Cryptos
What is the Pi Craze About Anyways?
One fascinating thing I realized about Pi was that it caught the attention of quite a lot of people looking for how to get started with cryptocurrency. With Bitcoin hitting an all-time high of $50k in February, surpassing $67k last month, and predicted by JP Morgan to reach $100k before the end of 2021. It only makes sense that everyone would want a piece of that new money. And not only Bitcoin, but all the other major crypto projects are also doing really well (Ethereum grew x8, Dogecoin x80, BNB x22, from their figures this time last year). So, for the average Nigerian young adult with an annual income of about $2k and a government that antagonizes crypto adoption, two things become apparent:
#1: No betting your little income in crypto because you can lose it when the government comes for it.
#2: Look for ridiculously cheap or free alternatives to get started.
And, with its mobile app and ease of use, Pi does set itself up as beginner-friendly and cheap to use. After all, you only have to spend a couple of seconds on the app every day and get free tokens in exchange. According to Crunchbase, compared to other crypto-savvy countries, Nigeria accounts for 75% of the monthly visits on the Pi mobile app. The United States, the second most popular, only accounts for around 8% of total visits. India, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom have around 1% each in third place. One may be quick to say that Nigeria just has a faster adoption rate, but the truth is that Pi is a San-Francisco-based private company in beta, it only makes sense that people in the United States and the Bay Area adopt it more than others. The only conclusion I could come up with is that, unlikely United States, India, and other markets, Nigeria fulfilled the two “apparent” requirements that foster adoption of a sham platform like Pi.
(Screenshot from Crunchbase profile of Pi)
This is why we need to look deeper into what Pi really is.
Textbook Definition of Pi
Pi is a mobile-first crypto platform. This means, if Bitcoin is the president of decentralized payment systems, Pi is the local representative that promises to bring decentralized payment systems to your front door. In fact, Pi describes itself as the “first digital currency for everyday people, representing a major step forward in the adoption of cryptocurrency worldwide.” And the numbers agree with them, at least, its mobile app has over 10 million downloads on Google PlayStore and claims to serve 25million users as of September 2021.
What Pi Says They're All About and Why it Does Matter or Not🥴
When you read its whitepaper or visit its website, Pi is usually portrayed as:
Environmentally friendly (in terms of mining)
Easy to use and get started
Almost free money
Great team: Stanford Ph.D. co-founders
Better than everybody else, including Bitcoin.
When you mine Bitcoin (check this website if you don't understand what crypto mining is), you consume lots of energy and oftentimes, quite a lot of people that mine bitcoin do so using "dirty" sources of energy like coal.
And it's not bitcoin's fault, since there's no central bank that manages transactions, validates them, and stores them for future reference, Bitcoin runs on what is called a Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol that allows everyone (nodes) in the blockchain to simultaneously validates transaction of others and push forward a generally agreed-upon transaction ledger. But instead of this, mining Pi is based on a Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) that does the same thing the PoW does but without draining power too much from your device. That was its big breakthrough. For context's sake, the amount of electricity used to mine BTC alone is hundreds of times more than what Nigeria as a country uses. But Pi only wants to use less than 1% of your phone's power.
By doing this, Pi Network is positioning itself as the sustainable-energy alternative to OG blockchain platforms like Bitcoin and Ether. You get to mine on your phone, with no stress, and quicker than uploading a Snap. All that sounds great, doesn't it?
Well, the problem is that, first, the SCP protocol that's got Pi Network superpowers isn't even a technology owned by them. The patent was filed in 2015 by Lance Kasper (that diesn’t have anything to do with Pi). Quite a lot of other crypto projects make use of consensus protocol and are mobile-first, so, the whole “get started early, it's the next Bitcoin” vibe may not really be true for Pi Network. In fact, there are crypto projects that have completely done away with mining. And why it's perfectly OK for a company to use others' technology, what I find more sketchy is that since its inception in 2018, the company that claims to have groundbreaking technology and two Stanford PhDs on its team (or professors, whatever) doesn't even have a single patent to their name. I thought I wasn't thorough enough in my search, but it seems like not only does the company (actually the real, legal name of Pi Network is SocialChain Inc., sorry) lack patents, its legal website has the worst homepage I've seen in the history of terrible landing pages.
FYI, when you try to sign in, the website redirects you to Facebook like one of those shady sites that collect user’s data illegally back in the day by asking you to find your soulmate or predict your dream job from Facebook.
So, if you ask me, is pi mining legit? I probably wouldn't bother answering you, because until its official launch everything is just wild speculation.
Why You Shouldn't Take Pi Too Seriously
At this point, you've read a thousand words about Pi. So, it's rather ironic that I'm telling you not to take Pi seriously. But seriously, don't take Pi seriously.
Whatever coin you make referring your friends and loved ones to the platform has zero cash value. And until the founders decide to properly launch this project, you're working in vain. Wouldn't you rather put that energy into something else? More so, the way its referral works is too similar to a Ponzi pyramid scheme. There are four layers of users with those in the inner circle enjoying potentially more benefits than those outside. Please, there's nothing innovative about that. It's just a confusing way to carry out a scam (I should also point out that, at this point, no one has lost money to Pi, because there's zero money involved) through ads.
Lastly, with 20+ million users, any serious investor would be willing to put money into that, but so far, there's been no news that the project has raised any money. If that's not a big red flag I don't know what is. Especially in this age when anything crypto + fintech gets VC money no matter how weak their project may seem. So, if money-mongering Silicon Valley VCs wouldn't put their money into Pi, why should you put your time and effort?
5 Legit Alternatives to Make Money on Crypto
Now that you've deleted your Pi app, let's get into the real side of crypto. While there are lots of ways to make money on crypto, I will be sharing five that I believe are the easiest to use for absolute beginners.
#1. Change your phone's Default Browser to Brave to get BAT coin
Download Brave, a browser built on Chromium by one of the co-founders of Mozilla Firefox. Go to Settings, Rewards, and setup. Every time you see an ad on Brave, you get paid a fraction of Brave's token called BAT in your built-in wallet.
You also get to set how many ads you want to see within an hour or every four hours by visiting this link on your Brave browser. chrome://rewards/ads-settings
#2 Play games that give NFTs and tokens
Quite a lot of games gift NFTs and tokens to winners. One of my favourites is Nanolooker, it's a web-based game that allows you to get free tokens.
Besides its game, Nanolooker also gives free tokens to users in a super-easy way. First, you download its wallet for Android or iPhone. And set it up. Next, you visit this page to see where people are dropping free NANO tokens and claim them.
#3 Instead of Google Search, use the Presearch decentralized search engine.
But you make the most tokens when you install Docker on your computer. After installation, register your node and code here. Run the node start commands and that's it. Your PC will serve as a node for as many as 2000 tokens and you get incentives for hosting them.
#4 Fill Surveys and Get Free Litecoin
When Bitcoin first started, some quizzes and surveys gave out hundreds of BTCs to participants. That tradition is still very much in existence. Of course, no one is going to give you free BTC anymore. But you can still get fractions of other cryptos. EarnCrypto is a great place to start if you're interested in this.
#5 Walk
Yeah, you read that right. There's a crypto project that pays you for just starting up and walking. Like a normal pedometer, it calculates your steps and once you reach a set goal, you get free coins. You can get the app on PlayStore here. If you're using an iPhone, you're on your own, sorry.
So, here's the best advice for you, next time you feel lazy, spend your time surfing the web, walk around aimlessly, and play random games.
Disclaimer: You probably won’t make quite a lot of money using these free methods of earning cryptocurrency, but it's a nice place to start.
I write about emerging technologies, startups, and share insights about the biggest tech news. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter or shoot me an email. New posts are available every weekend.