Technology
Pi Network - The Pi, The Bad and the Ugly
In this episode of the BSE News podcast, we delve into the controversial aspects of the Pi Network, particularly focusing on its KYC requirements and trading restrictions. We discuss the implications ...
Pi Network - The Pi, The Bad and the Ugly
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Hello everyone, welcome to the BSE News podcast, pod5. Thank you very much for tuning in.
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Obviously recently we've been, well, honestly recently, probably the past couple of months
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or so, we've been covering PyToken, PyNetwork quite a bit. However, after diving quite a bit into
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that ecosystem, it's clear that there are flaws. For example, a lot of the community are awaiting
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KYC, which is fine because one of the prerequisites to be on their closed mainnet before it, you know,
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goes public, is to do a KYC with the core team, or not perhaps with the core team, but just with the
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Py project, and then you'll be allowed access to that closed mainnet. However, I don't know any other
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blockchain whatsoever that requires a KYC, and it sort of goes a little bit against the whole sort
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of decentralisation ethos of crypto. Yeah, and it goes massively against ethos of the Bitcoin
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white paper as well. As I'm sure you're aware, if you're in the Py ecosystem at the moment, mining
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Py or whatever, KYC is taking a very, very long time. You know, months, I'm not sure if it's gone on a
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year yet, but it's certainly taking months. And it is strange as well, because you can't just open the
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app and request a KYC. You have to sort of be invited to KYC. So after a mining session, it'll say,
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you know, it's now your time to do a KYC, and then you've got a limited time frame. Under an hour,
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I can't remember exactly what the timing is, but then to KYC. And people who have been mining the
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only way to get your tokens onto the mainnet is to KYC. I don't particularly want my details
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with more people than it needs to be. You know, banks, governments, health services, okay,
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financial services, there has to be a limit. You know, I've given KYC to a number of centralized
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exchanges. Fine. But I don't just want to be giving my private personal details, really,
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to PIE network, to be honest, you know, I've mined all this time, but I am hesitant now just
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essentially to be able to put my tokens into the mainnet, the closed mainnet at the moment,
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just because I don't want to give my personal details away. I don't know how it's going to be used,
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whatsoever. There's no real details online about exactly their sort of date protection policies,
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either. Another fact that needs questioning or an issue that needs bringing up is if you are to
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trade or sell your PIE tokens for Fiat or for a stable token or money, your account will essentially
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be banned. I think it's for the 100 years or something like that. However, on the closed mainnet,
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you can trade your tokens as we all know in something called PIEMAL or PIEMAL, PIEMAL,
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not sure exactly how it's pronounced throughout the world. So there you can trade it for goods
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and services. However, you can't trade it directly for money. It's against their terms and
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conditions. Again, a blockchain chain with terms and conditions. Obviously you're
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operating within a closed ecosystem at the moment, essentially a test net, even though they
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call a closed mainnet. But having these rules where essentially you can't trade it for money,
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it's just bizarre. And then essentially the punishment for that in inverted commas is having your
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account banned just seems wrong to me. Being able to trade PIE tokens for goods and services,
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but strictly not being able to trade it for Fiat or a stable token is just not good in my personal
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opinion. Obviously, there are positive points about PIEMAL, but there are a couple of points that
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do need discussing. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. I'm comment on the post on Twitter,
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perhaps about your thoughts about this. In my opinion as well, the amount of money that they
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must be getting from the adverts must be what a fair amount. I think how many people are using PIEMAL
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each day, essentially logging on seeing an advert, clicking a button and then leaving. That's all they
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do. They open the app, see the advert, click a button and leave. And there will be probably,
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well, tens of thousands. I'm not sure of the exact number, but there will be a lot of people.
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And I sort of Twitter post as well. It's a little bit of a not conspiracy theory, but an idea that
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PIECLE team perhaps are delaying the release of open mainnet because the longer that they have it
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in the closed mainnet with more people mining, the longer that they can generate ad revenue,
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which seems fair enough. I'm not sure how much they're getting an ad revenue, but the longer that
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they keep the closed mainnet, the longer that they can keep on generating ad revenue. So there's a
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little sort of campaign on Twitter at the moment. I'm a hashtag PIEADSOFF, where TURN YOUR PIEADS OFF,
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I think the PIECLE team will have enough money to sustain the ecosystem. I'm not really sure
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where it's going or what, obviously KYC probably costs a bit, but it's taking a long time.
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And what we want to do, we want to get this mainnet out and going. I don't know a project or a
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blockchain that has taken this long to actually come to open mainnet. In a way, I'm not really sure
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what the purpose is of a closed mainnet. Someone said it's to prevent spam and bots and things.
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Well, fine, but if they're not experiencing spam and bots and typical blockchain behaviour
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really on the closed mainnet, when they open it up and bots and spam and scammers and things
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come onto the blockchain, are they going to be ready for it because they haven't experienced that
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in their closed mainnet. Anyway, this is just food for thought, a couple of discussion points.
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Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you very much for tuning in once again
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and speak soon. Bye.