Pi Network is approaching a significant supply event in January 2026, with approximately 134 million PI tokens scheduled to unlock. This event typically raises concerns about short-term selling pressure on the token's price. However, community supporters are shifting the narrative, emphasizing the network's expanding utility and ecosystem growth as a potential counterbalance to the incoming supply.
Backers point to key metrics, including more than 215 live applications across payments, commerce, and tools, and around 15.8 million users migrated to the Pi Mainnet. The argument is that this growing real-world usage can help absorb the new tokens as they circulate through apps for payments and services, rather than being immediately sold on exchanges. Community figures have framed the unlock as a "test of our ecosystem's economic gravity."
This focus on utility comes as the PI token price has remained subdued. Despite recent network innovations like the Fast Track KYC feature—which uses AI to speed up identity verification—and ecosystem events like the Pi2Day hackathon, the token has struggled to gain momentum. Technically, PI is in a downtrend, failing to reclaim the key $0.215 resistance level. Moving averages provide additional overhead resistance, with the 20-day at $0.205 and the 50-day at $0.221.
Trading strategies suggest waiting for a clear breakout above $0.218 or a breakdown below the $0.20 support level before entering positions. The overall market reaction to Pi Network's strong developmental progress has been slow, with price action muted even as Bitcoin traded between $85,000 and $90,000.
