 El Salvador buys another 12 Bitcoin for country’s reserve despite IMF deal 
2025-01-21
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El Salvador has bought 12 Bitcoin for its reserve in the past day, despite an earlier deal with the International Monetary Fund to dial back some of the country’s crypto policies.
In a Jan. 19 X post, the country’s National Bitcoin Office said it bought another 11 Bitcoin BTCUSD for its Strategic Bitcoin Reserve worth over $1 million. It also purchased 1 Bitcoin on Jan. 20 for $106,000.
The Bitcoin Office’s portfolio tracker shows El Salvador’s holdings stand at 6,044 BTC, worth nearly $610 million with the cryptocurrency trading at around $101,000, according to CoinGecko.
Bitcoin briefly surged above $109,000 on Jan. 20, breaking its previous all-time high of $108,000, which it hit on Dec. 17.
Bitcoin’s new high came hours before Trump was sworn in as the 47th US president at 4:00 pm UTC.
President Nayib Bukele’s government struck a $1.4 billion financing agreement with the IMF last month in which it agreed to wind down some of its Bitcoin activities as part of the deal.
Some of the changes made by the country included making private sector acceptance of Bitcoin voluntary and unwinding government involvement in the Chivo crypto wallet.
However, the day after making that deal, El Salvador bought $1 million worth of Bitcoin. National Bitcoin Office Director Stacy Herbert said in an X post that the country’s Bitcoin plans had not changed.
In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, following the announcement of the Bitcoin law.
According to the Nayib Bukele portfolio tracker, El Salvador’s Bitcoin stockpile had a profit of $179 million as of Jan. 20.
An October survey of Salvadorans found that 92% don’t make transactions using Bitcoin, an increase from a 2023 survey that found 88% didn’t use crypto for transactions.
El Salvador isn’t the only country that has made serious moves to accumulate more Bitcoin.
The South Asian country of Bhutan has been quietly mining Bitcoin for years. 
In September, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence revealed that Bhutan held about $780 million in digital assets.