Remember when everyone was talking about Pi Network finally hitting real exchanges and mooning straight past a dollar? Yeah, me too. That hype felt unstoppable for a minute. But right now, if you’re still holding bags and ignoring the order book, you might want to zoom out and look again.
The price action over the past ten days has been whispering something very different from what the Telegram groups are shouting. And honestly, those whispers are starting to sound a lot like a warning bell.
The One Chart Pattern Nobody Wants to Talk About
Let’s be brutally honest for a second. Pi Network has been trading in a pretty well-defined range between roughly $0.20 and $0.28 since it got real liquidity. The point of control — that level where the most volume has traded — sits right around $0.22. For weeks, every single time price kissed that zone, buyers showed up in force and pushed it right back up. Clean bounces, higher lows, the whole “healthy accumulation” story.
Except the last two retests have looked… different. Weaker. The volume bars that used to be bright green and tall are now barely visible. It’s like someone turned down the buying pressure from an eight to a three.
In my experience watching altcoins for years, this is usually the first sign that the smart money is quietly hitting the bid and heading for the exits. Retail keeps buying the dip because “it’s the POC, it’s always held before,” while the big orders are already gone.
What Fading Volume Actually Means in Practice
Volume doesn’t lie. Price can fake out, whales can spoof, but volume is the footprint of real money moving.
When you see price holding a key level but the buying volume collapsing on each defense, you’re not looking at strength — you’re looking at distribution disguised as support.
- First defense of $0.22: massive green volume bar, instant rejection of lows
- Second defense: respectable but clearly smaller volume
- Third defense (current): barely any buying at all, just wicked down and slow grind back
That’s textbook exhaustion. The buyers who were aggressively defending this level have either taken profits or simply run out of dry powder. And nature hates a vacuum — if buyers step away, sellers are more than happy to fill it.
The Liquidity Magnet Below $0.22
Here’s where it gets interesting. If you pull up the order book depth or look at the volume profile, there’s a disturbing amount of resting liquidity just beneath the current range — all clustered between $0.205 and $0.21.
Markets love to hunt liquidity. It’s almost eerie how often price will wicked down to grab stop-losses and resting buy orders before doing anything meaningful in either direction.
Smart money doesn’t fight the trend — they create the conditions for stops to get triggered, liquidity to get taken, and then step in on the other side.
With buying volume fading hard and all that juicy liquidity sitting right below, the path of least resistance is starting to look pretty obvious. A quick sweep of the lows to tag $0.20 wouldn’t surprise me at all at this point.
190 Million Tokens Waiting in the Wings
Oh, and did I mention there’s a massive token unlock coming up? Because there is. Roughly 190 million new PI tokens are scheduled to hit the market soon — that’s real selling pressure that can’t be prayed away.
Even if only a fraction of those get dumped immediately, it’s another headwind for a coin that’s already struggling to find bids at current levels. The timing couldn’t be worse.
I’ve watched unlocks destroy price action in projects with much stronger fundamentals than this. When you combine fading organic demand with forced selling from unlocks, you often get violent moves down that surprise everyone still holding through “diamond hands.”
What $0.20 Actually Represents
Now $0.20 isn’t just some random round number. It’s the value area low of the entire range that’s been building since listing. In volume profile terms, this is where the “fair value” zone ends and undervaluation begins.
A drop to $0.20 would:
- Shake out virtually all the weak hands who bought the breakout hype
- Collect all the resting liquidity and stop-losses below the range
- Reset the order book for a potential new leg up (if buyers actually step in)
- Probably trigger a wave of panic selling from people who “can’t handle another -30%”
In other words, it’s exactly the kind of move the market loves to make before any real trend continuation.
The Bull Case (Because It Still Exists)
Look, I’m not saying Pi Network is dead. Far from it. If $0.20 holds as support and we see aggressive buying come in on that sweep, the setup for a monster squeeze back through $0.25+ would actually be perfect.
All those shorts who pile in expecting a breakdown would get absolutely wrecked. The rage fuel from everyone who sold the bottom would be nuclear. I’ve seen this movie before — it often ends with price ripping faces off on the way back up.
But — and this is a big but — that recovery only happens if real volume shows up at $0.20. If we just grind lower on pathetic volume with no defense, then yeah… lower prices are probably coming.
What I’m Watching Right Now
Three things will tell us everything we need to know in the next few days:
- Can buyers produce even one decent green volume bar on this current test of $0.22? If not, the level is done.
- Does the daily close below $0.218 or so? That’s the line in the sand for me.
- When (not if) we sweep the lows, does anyone actually buy with size at $0.20-$0.21?
Right now, the honest answer to all three questions is leaning toward “probably not.” Which is why I’m personally staying on the sidelines until we either get that $0.20 flush and reversal… or we don’t.
Crypto moves fast, and sentiment changes even faster. A week ago everyone was calling for $0.50. Today the charts are warning about $0.20. Tomorrow? Who knows. But ignoring weakening volume while there’s a cliff of liquidity right below your key support is how people turn paper gains into real losses.
Stay sharp out there.
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