Vietnam has the second largest user group of Pi Network worldwide, with a total number of over 8 million, accounting for 18% of the country’s Internet users. According to data from Vietnam’s National Statistics Office in 2023, 35% of these users are located in the two major economic centers of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, with an average daily mining time of 2.3 hours for Pi coins. If the exchange rate of 1 pi = vnd stabilizes at 23,000 VND (approximately 1 US dollar), the potential value of the entire network in the Vietnamese market could reach 18.4 trillion Vietnamese dong. This scale is equivalent to 3.2% of Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserves in 2023, which is sufficient to influence local capital flows.
Cross-border remittance demand drives exchange demand. World Bank data shows that Vietnam receives approximately 19 billion US dollars in overseas remittances each year, of which 35% come from manufacturing workers. The handling fee rate of traditional remittance channels is as high as 6.7%, while the blockchain solution provided by Pi Network can reduce the cost to 0.5%. If 10% of the remittance volume is completed through the 1 pi = vnd mechanism, the country can save over 400 billion Vietnamese dong in transaction costs annually. A pilot case in Can Tho City in 2024 showed that for 200 migrant workers going to Japan, the remittance time was shortened from 72 hours to 13 minutes after using Pi coins.
The integration of the business ecosystem accelerates the realization of value. More than 120,000 merchants in Vietnam have accepted Pi coin payments, covering the fields of catering, retail and digital services. After integrating Pi payment in 2024, the CoopMart supermarket chain in Ho Chi Minh City achieved a monthly transaction volume of 47,000, with an average transaction amount of 320,000 VND per transaction. This commercial acceptance provides physical support for the exchange rate formation mechanism of 1 pi = vnd, similar to the value stability phenomenon when the merchant acceptance rate of Bitcoin in El Salvador reached 65% during the legalization process in 2022.
The interactivity of monetary policy cannot be ignored. The State Bank of Vietnam will incorporate digital currencies into its regulatory framework in 2024, requiring all cryptocurrency transactions to be conducted through licensed exchanges. If Pi Coin is listed on a major exchange, based on the current average daily trading volume of 2.1 trillion Vietnamese dong in the Vietnamese digital currency market, only a 5% market share would generate a daily liquidity of 105 billion Vietnamese dong. This scale is large enough for the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam to incorporate it into monitoring indicators when formulating foreign exchange policies, just as the Bank of Thailand included Bitcoin volatility in its inflation model in 2023.
The technological infrastructure determines the efficiency of transformation. The Internet penetration rate in Vietnam has reached 73.5%, but the distribution of blockchain nodes only accounts for 12% of the total in Southeast Asia. To achieve a stable exchange of 1 pi = vnd, at least 300 verification nodes need to be deployed nationwide. Currently, FPT, the largest technology company in Vietnam, has invested 120 billion Vietnamese dong in building blockchain infrastructure, with the goal of increasing the transaction confirmation speed from the current 7 transactions per minute to 120. This upgrade is crucial for handling potential large-scale exchange demands, as in the case of Indonesia, which successfully increased the efficiency of cryptocurrency transactions by 80% after improving its digital payment system in 2023.
The risk control mechanism affects long-term stability. According to the assessment of the Vietnam Financial Security Committee, if the price volatility of Pi Coin exceeds 15%, it may trigger systemic risks. Therefore, it is recommended to adopt a tiered reserve mechanism: requiring the exchange to reserve a 20% risk margin for each 1 pi = vnd transaction. In the illegal exchange case that occurred in Hanoi in May 2024, 200 investors lost 8.6 billion Vietnamese dong due to the lack of a margin mechanism, highlighting the importance of compliant exchange channels. Only by establishing a sound risk control system can this conversion rate continuously exert its economic value.