Bitcoin holdings in El Salvador have increased by 50%, the president says. "We won't sell."

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16 Mar 2024

Even though El Salvador has seen a profit of more than 50%, the nation's president has stated he has no intention of selling the massive bitcoin holdings held by the nation.
In 2021, the Central American nation invested public assets in Bitcoin, making it the first in the world to be accepted as legal tender.
El Salvador suffered significant losses during the 2022 crypto market crash, but a robust rebound has led to Bitcoin's recent ascent to an all-time high.
Monday saw the cryptocurrency surpass $65,000 (£51,000), which is less than $4,000 off its all-time high from November 2021.
Approximately 2,380 bitcoins, acquired at an average price of $44,300, are held by El Salvador; consequently, the $105 million investment has increased to almost $155 million.

Bitcoin price history (USD)

The world's leading cryptocurrency has risen more than 10,000% over the last decade

"They wrote thousands of articles about our supposed losses when the price of bitcoin was low," Mr. Bukele wrote on X, the former Twitter, on Thursday, at a time when the price of bitcoin was approximately $60,000. "Now that the price of bitcoin is way up if we were to sell, we would make a profit of over 40% (just from the market purchases), and our main source of BTC is now our citizenship program. "We won't sell, of course; at the end 1 BTC = 1 BTC (this was true when the market price was low and it's true now); but it's very telling that the authors of those hit pieces, the 'analysts', the 'experts', the 'journalists', are silent now. Remember this, the next time they spill lies again about El Salvador.”

To encourage its implementation, El Salvador's Bitcoin Law offered free $30 worth of Bitcoin to every Salvadoran citizen.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that bitcoin be removed from circulation in 2022 after criticizing its adoption as a legal tender. The organization claimed that price volatility and the possibility of illegal exploitation rendered it inappropriate, citing dangers of "financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection."

At the time, El Salvador's Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya downplayed the worries, claiming that Bitcoin allowed people to avoid expensive transfer costs and lessened their dependency on the US dollar.

Read more on X

The approval of the first-ever spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States has been credited with driving up the price of bitcoin, as it has allowed institutional investors to invest billions of dollars in the market.
Analysts have also cited the impending "halving," which will see bitcoin mining profits cut in half, as a contributing factor to the cryptocurrency's recent price surge.

The president of El Salvador said that the country will purchase one Bitcoin every day until it becomes unaffordable with fiat currencies.
Bullish