The International Monetary Fund (IMF) declared on Tuesday that “efforts will continue” to ensure that the total amount of bitcoins
Held by the Government of El Salvador does not change.
In March, El Salvador reached an agreement with the IMF to receive a loan package of $ 3.5 billion. Some of the conditions of that agreement referred to Bitcoin: for example, the cryptocurrency officially lost its status as a legal tender, which means that merchants no longer need to accept the currency in a mandatory way.
One of the conditions of the package, according to the IMF, was the prohibition of “voluntary accumulation of Bitcoin by the public sector.” In theory, that should mean that the Bukele government would not be allowed to continue accumulating Bitcoin if I wanted to continue complying with the loan program.
However, El Salvador has continued to buy more bitcoin in apparent contradiction with the terms of the agreement. On March 4, when the conditions of the agreement were announced, the Salvadoran government had 6,101.15 Bitcoin in its official wallet. When writing, that number has increased to 6,189.18 Bitcoin, a sum that is worth approximately $ 678 million.
“No, he does not stop,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele published on March 4 on March 4. “If it did not stop when the world condemned us with the world and most of the ‘bitcoiners’ abandoned us, it will not stop now, and will not stop in the future.”
The IMF did not seem to recognize any contradiction or friction in its note. In fact, he declared that the program’s performance had been strong and that fiscal and key reserve objectives had been met.
“IMF staff thanks the Salvadoran authorities for excellent collaboration and constructive discussions,” the report said.
