El Salvador’s Bukele says Bitcoin buys will continue amid IMF pressure

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said his authorities won’t halt buying Bitcoin contempt a caller petition from the International Monetary Fund to stop.

The IMF issued a caller request connected March 3 for an extended statement nether its $1.4 cardinal money installation to El Salvador, which called connected the country’s nationalist assemblage to halt voluntarily accumulating Bitcoin (BTC).

“No, it’s not stopping,” Bukele said successful a March 4 X post, confirming El Salvador wouldn’t comply with the IMF’s request.

“If it didn’t halt erstwhile the satellite ostracized america and astir ‘bitcoiners’ abandoned us, it won’t halt now, and it won’t halt successful the future,” helium added.

Source: Nayib Bukele

El Salvador continued its purchase of astatine slightest 1 Bitcoin per time connected March 4 arsenic portion of the Central American country’s treasury strategy.

The IMF’s March 3 memorandum besides requested El Salvador to halt Bitcoin mining activities and to restrict nationalist assemblage issuance of indebtedness oregon tokenized instruments that are denominated oregon indexed successful Bitcoin.

While Bukele made it wide that El Salvador volition proceed stacking Bitcoin, it isn’t wide whether the state would comply with different requests.

El Salvador’s National Bitcoin Office did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Related: Bitcoin, crypto firms determination to El Salvador, but occurrence rides connected banking access

The country initially secured a $1.4 cardinal backing deal from the IMF successful December 2024 successful speech for scaling backmost its Bitcoin-related initiatives, among different things.

Some of those measures included making Bitcoin payments voluntarily and making taxation payments successful US dollars.

El Salvador presently holds 6,101 Bitcoin worthy $534.5 million, according to information from The National Bitcoin Office of El Salvador.

The state has the sixth-largest Bitcoin stash of immoderate nation-state, trailing lone the US, China, the UK, Ukraine and Bhutan, BitBo’s Bitcoin Treasuries data shows.

El Salvador started purchasing Bitcoin successful September 2021, erstwhile Bitcoin was made ineligible tender — making it the archetypal state to bash so.

Bitcoin’s presumption arsenic ineligible tender was narrowed successful January erstwhile El Salvador passed a law successful January to marque BTC acceptance voluntary for backstage assemblage merchants.

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