All of this is interesting, of course, but in my opinion, this project looks a lot like a speculative bubble designed to attract money. What actual problems does it solve beyond simply mining coins and selling them on an exchange?
With Ethereum, things were much clearer. It certainly didn't look like a scam because the project had real technical complexity, smart contracts, a multi-layer blockchain architecture, and a clear mechanism for rewarding miners.
But when it comes to Pearl (PRL), I have a lot of questions. As far as I understand, the project positions itself as an "AI project."
Let's take a simple example:
- You buy an RTX 5090.
- You mine 10 PRL per day.
- You sell those coins on an exchange.
- Someone else buys them, hoping the price will go up.
**Where is the actual economic value for an external customer?**
There is none.
The GPU consumed electricity, coins were generated, and someone paid money to buy them.
Even the partnership with Together AI doesn't fully utilize the GPUs' computing power for AI workloads, and there's no guarantee that those GPUs are actually being used for AI at all.
In June 2026, researcher Abhinaba Basu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.04819published a study examining how Pearl's computing resources were actually being used.
The findings were quite concerning for the project:
- The widely used mining software examined in the study did not perform AI inference.
- GPUs were simply multiplying random matrices.
- The network accepted these operations as valid mining work.
- The verification mechanism could not determine whether the computations were actually being used by a real neural network.
This raises several important questions:
- How many GPUs from the Pearl network are actually being used by Together AI?
- How much PRL is mined as a result of real neural network inference requests?
- What percentage of Pearl's total mining activity comes from AI computations paid for by actual customers?
**There is no publicly available data answering these questions!**
P.S. No hate intended. I'm mining PRL myself using my spare hardware, but I have serious concerns about this coin.
Another interesting detail: the founder of Together AI, the company that supposedly receives some of Pearl's mining resources, is also a co-investor in the Pearl project.
And just for reference, approximately 121.7 million PRL — around 34% of all coins — were mined during the first six days after launch, when mining difficulty was extremely low.
Just something worth keeping in mind.
**So what's the bottom line?**
We have a coin with an unclear future, wrapped in a highly technical whitepaper that makes everything sound incredibly sophisticated.
But in practice, it looks like mining for the sake of mining.
This isn't Bitcoin, which has established itself as digital gold and holds value partly because it was the original cryptocurrency.
Instead, Pearl looks like yet another project wrapped in shiny AI branding.
AI is the biggest trend right now. Everyone wants to put AI into everything — AI-powered kettles, AI-powered microwaves, you name it.
And now we have another coin positioning itself as an AI project.
But what actual value does it provide?
Sure, it exists. But what's the point?
As they say, marketing works wonders.
They'll pump up the hype, inflate the bubble, and eventually cash out.
We've seen this happen countless times before, and we'll undoubtedly see it happen again.
