Let me take you back to early 2024. Bitcoin spot ETFs finally launched after a decade of rejections, and suddenly every crypto Twitter account was convinced the floodgates were open. “Next up: Solana ETF! Cardano ETF! Even Dogecoin ETF!” people shouted. Fast forward to the end of 2025, and we’re having the exact same conversation about Pi Network. Only this time the gap between hype and reality feels even wider.
I’ve watched this movie before. And honestly? A Pi Network ETF right now would be the crypto equivalent of letting a 14-year-old drive a Formula 1 car. Possible in theory, catastrophic in practice.
The Four Unbreakable Rules Every Crypto ETF Must Pass
Before a single share of a spot crypto ETF can trade on Nasdaq or NYSE, four non-negotiable conditions have to be met. Miss even one, and the SEC laughs the filing straight into the trash. Pi Network currently fails all four. Badly.
1. Real, Manipulable-Resistant Price Discovery
The SEC doesn’t care what CoinMarketCap says the price is. They want a regulated futures market or at least several large, surveilled spot exchanges that can prove the price isn’t being jerked around by a handful of whales.
Bitcoin had CME futures since 2017. Ethereum got them in 2021. Both had years of trading history before spot ETFs were even considered. Pi Network? The token only became transferable in early 2025, and the vast majority of volume still happens on a handful of smaller exchanges with questionable wash-trading checks.
Think about it this way: if tomorrow someone with 5% of all Pi decided to dump, would the price drop 10% or 80%? Nobody knows. That uncertainty alone is a death sentence for any ETF application.
“You can’t build an ETF on a price that exists mostly in people’s imaginations.”
Former SEC senior advisor, 2024
2. Institutional-Grade Liquidity (And No, $70M Daily Isn’t It)
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF regularly trades billions per day. Even the smaller Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF does hundreds of millions. Why does that matter? Because authorized participants (the big banks that create and redeem ETF shares) need to be able to buy or sell hundreds of millions worth of the underlying asset without moving the price more than a few basis points.
Pi’s entire 24-hour volume right now hovers around $70–100 million on a good day. That’s less than what Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust alone used to do before converting to an ETF. If JP Morgan tried to create a million shares of a hypothetical Pi ETF tomorrow, they’d eat the entire order book for breakfast.
- Bitcoin daily spot volume: $25–50 billion
- Ethereum daily spot volume: $10–20 billion
- Solana daily spot volume: $3–7 billion
- Pi Network daily spot volume: $70–120 million
See the problem?
3. Regulated Custody That Actually Exists
Every single approved crypto ETF uses either Coinbase Custody or Fidelity Digital Assets (sometimes both). These are New York-licensed trust companies with billions in insurance, regular audits, and cold storage setups that make Fort Knox look casual.
Now ask yourself: which regulated, insured, institutional custodian currently offers Pi Network custody? The answer, as of November 2025, is exactly none. Zero. Zilch.
Some people point to “self-custody” or “community nodes” as a solution. Cute, but the SEC made it crystal clear in the Ethereum ETF orders: if the custodian isn’t a regulated entity under U.S. banking law, the application is dead on arrival.
4. Regulatory Clarity (Or At Least Regulatory Tolerance)
Bitcoin is unambiguously a commodity. Ethereum fought a multi-year war and finally won commodity status in 2025. Every other token lives in the gray zone of “possibly a security.”
Pi Network’s history doesn’t help. Early marketing talked about “mining on your phone” and “everyone gets free coins,” language that makes SEC lawyers reach for the Howey test faster than you can say “lawsuit.” Even if the current team has cleaned up messaging, that legacy still hangs like smoke.
So when people share screenshots of “PI ETF filed!!” on Telegram, what they’re actually seeing is usually one of three things:
- A fake screenshot (happens weekly)
- A Canadian or European ETP that holds IOUs, not actual tokens
- A leveraged futures product on a crypto exchange masquerading as an ETF
None of these move the needle for U.S. regulated spot exposure.
What About the Rumored OKX Europe MiCA Listing?
Yes, a proper MiCA-compliant listing on a major European exchange would be huge for Pi. It would bring real KYC’d volume, better price transparency, and maybe even attract European ETP issuers. But Europe =/= United States.
Even if Pi gets listed on OKX Europe tomorrow, it would still need 12–24 months of stable, high-volume trading before anyone like 21Shares or VanEck would even think about filing in the U.S. And they’d still need a U.S. custodian partner who’s willing to touch the asset. We’re talking 2027–2028 at the earliest, and that’s the optimistic scenario.
The Grayscale Pathway – Pi’s Only Realistic Shot?
Grayscale famously converted its Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts into ETFs after years of building AUM. They currently have a “Digital Large Cap” fund that includes many altcoins, but notably not Pi.
If Grayscale (or someone similar) launched a private Pi trust, let it run for two years, built up a few billion in AUM, and then sued the SEC for unfair treatment (the Bitcoin/Ethereum playbook), that’s probably Pi’s fastest route. But even that timeline puts us in 2028 or later.
What Pi Holders Should Actually Focus On
Instead of refreshing SEC filings every five minutes, the community would get way more mileage from:
- Pushing for listings on Tier-1 global exchanges (Binance, Coinbase International, etc.)
- Encouraging real utility development (payments, dApps, merchant adoption)
- Supporting transparent on-chain metrics and third-party audits
- Building bridges to DeFi protocols on Ethereum, Solana, etc.
Those steps create actual value. Dreaming about an ETF before the basics are there is just burning energy.
“ETFs are the dessert, not the main course. First you build a healthy, functioning asset.”
Crypto fund manager, anonymous, 2025
Look, I actually like Pi’s long-term story. A mobile-first, truly distributed network with hundreds of millions of users is powerful. But powerful doesn’t equal ETF-ready. Not yet.
The Bitcoin ETF took 10 years. Ethereum took 8. Anyone telling you Pi gets there in 2 is either doesn’t understand the process or is selling something.
So keep building, keep holding if you believe, but please — let’s kill the ETF hopium until the actual prerequisites are met. When that day comes, the celebration will be worth the wait.
Until then? The glass vault stays locked.
