IMF Insists El Salvador Isn’t Buying Any More Bitcoin—So What’s Going On?

Bitcoin advocates world wide are enamored with the financial insurance policies of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, and his embrace of the digital asset. However when taking a look at his authorities’s crypto buys, one thing does not fairly add up. 

Again in 2022, the millennial chief stated he’d purchase one Bitcoin per day. At at the moment’s costs, that is over $114,000 in so-called digital gold each 24 hours. 

Generally, Bukele says he buys much more: The chief over the weekend introduced he’d purchased 21 BTC to have a good time the fourth anniversary of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Regulation. That is one other $2.3 million price of Bitcoin he stated he put within the authorities’s new, clear blockchain coffers, which now maintain over $700 million in BTC.

However the IMF says in any other case. Below a deal to get a improvement grant with the Worldwide Financial Fund, the nation was compelled to reduce its Bitcoin experiment in December 2024. The IMF now says the Bitcoin purchase bulletins are all bunk.

“We are able to verify that the overall quantity of government-owned Bitcoin has not elevated and that the rise within the Bitcoin Reserve Fund corresponds to actions throughout authorities wallets,” IMF Communications Officer Meera Louis instructed Decrypt in an e-mail. 

The establishment would not reply additional questions. 

So, if the IMF says President Bukele is not shopping for extra Bitcoin, why is he frequently saying new buys? And the way is El Salvador persevering with so as to add to its Bitcoin Reserve at a fee of 1 BTC per day, as blockchain knowledge reveals?

The Salvadoran authorities’s communications division instructed Decrypt that the president is, certainly, nonetheless shopping for Bitcoin, however would not reply to extra questions.

Blockchain knowledge reveals El Salvador’s Bitcoin wallets, grouped collectively and tracked by analytics agency Arkham, are rising by 1 Bitcoin per day, with deposits from cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Bitfinex—and some different random addresses within the combine. 

The buys are new then? Perhaps—however possibly not. 

Earlier than the Bukele Administration introduced authorities wallets for everybody to see, there was little transparency in regard to the buys. The purchases had been solely traceable by way of Bukele’s tweets and even then, he would irreverently boast about his buys—even saying he’d purchased BTC on his telephone “whereas in the bathroom.” 

It is doable the Salvadoran president’s earlier buys, or different procurement of Bitcoin via taxes or funds made to state-run entities previous to the latest settlement with the IMF, are at present funding transfers to the Bitcoin Reserve.

Crypto analytics agency Bubblemaps instructed Decrypt there is not any option to know for sure primarily based on public blockchain knowledge when the Bitcoin being transferred at the moment was really bought. It is doable the Bitcoin was gained a while in the past, earlier than the settlement with the IMF in late 2024, and the BTC sat dormant in a crypto change account earlier than arriving to publicly disclosed wallets.

Bubblemaps additionally stated the latest authorities transactions may have been routed via exchanges, making it appear like they had been certainly recent purchases. An analyst for the agency stated it is not possible to know for certain since third events can’t entry an change’s ledger of transactions with out the change releasing the information themselves.

James Bosworth, founder and CEO of Washington D.C.-based threat evaluation consultancy Hxagon, instructed Decrypt that whether or not or not the Bitcoin buys are new, there ought to have been extra transparency with the buys from the outset. 

“There are good causes to imagine that he’s not buying all of it on the open market, as a substitute shifting funds and cash round as a kind of government-backed wash commerce,” he stated. 

He added: “Bukele’s unprofessional administration of cryptocurrency continues to obscure the funds state of affairs. This needs to be the Salvadoran authorities’s and other people’s assets, not the president’s private wallets that he can play buying and selling video games with.”

The crypto exchanges El Salvador has used—Binance, Bitfinex, and Coinbase—declined to reply Decrypt‘s questions. 

Cherished by libertarians for being an anti-establishment maverick who’d insult establishments on social media, Bukele needed to scrap a few of his beloved Bitcoin experiment to get a $1.4 billion prolonged fund facility from the IMF. 

Nonetheless, he claims he is doing what he desires, and in defiance of the IMF. “No, it isn’t stopping,” Bukele stated on X in March, relating to the federal government’s Bitcoin buys.

“If it did not cease when the world ostracized us and most ‘Bitcoiners’ deserted us, it will not cease now, and it will not cease sooner or later.”