People are buying 1 PI for more than $1.5 at the moment in OTC deals, but I have a feeling that such people are going to lose a lot of money.

they are speculate the price of pi, even though pi looks like a crap investment.
we know all pi pioner expect the price of pi more than 100$ or couple thousand usd.
so when people buy pi for 1.5$ it's actually it help the price goes down below 1,5 usd because the IOU price is more than 50$ each.