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El Salvador Defies IMF Deal, Quietly Keeps Buying Bitcoin
- Despite a US$1.4B loan agreement with the IMF requiring reduced Bitcoin activity, El Salvador continues accumulating BTC, confirmed by Economy Minister Maria Luisa Hayem.
- The Bitcoin Office and President Bukele have doubled down on the pro-Bitcoin stance, with Bukele stating earlier this year that no external pressure will halt the country’s crypto plans.
- Hayem argued the continued purchases don’t violate the IMF deal, framing them as part of El Salvador’s broader asset accumulation strategy involving both the public and private sectors.
The story is straightforward: El Salvador struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which included a clear condition to stop Bitcoin (BTC) purchases—yet the country has continued to accumulate more BTC regardless.
Anyway, Nayib Bukele’s government has been quietly buying BTC, despite locking in a US$1.4B (AU$2.19B) deal with the IMF that included commitments to scale back Bitcoin activity. Economy Minister Maria Luisa Hayem confirmed it directly in an interview with Bloomberg at Web Summit in Rio:
There’s a commitment of President Bukele to keep accumulating assets as a way to do precisely that.
Maria Luisa Hayem The IMF agreement, finalised late last year, was supposed to be the end of Bukele’s headline-chasing crypto policy.
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In return for emergency financing, El Salvador agreed to clean up its fiscal books and ease off the Bitcoin push that made it a case study in sovereign crypto exposure. Part of that agreement also included softening the legal pressure on businesses to accept BTC —a move aimed at reassuring bondholders and international lenders.
This is not the first time they have gone against the IMF, as back in March of this year, Bukele not only confirmed an additional purchase, he reaffirmed his pro-Bitcoin stance and stated that no one, not even the international organisation, would deter the country’s BTC activities. “It won’t stop now, and it won’t stop in the future”, Bukele added.
Not a Violation, Says Hayem
Well, at the end of the day, they’re not so quiet about it.
The Bitcoin Office —a government entity specifically created to accumulate the asset— has continued flaunting purchases on social media, but also stating that El Salvador is “Bitcoin Country”:
So… is this a violation of the terms and agreements of the IMF deal? Well, according to Hayem, the answer is no. It’s rather part of the broader economic vision:
Bitcoin keeps being an important project. There is an asset accumulation that we’re seeing from the government perspective, from the private sector perspective.
Maria Luisa Hayem Related: Strategy’s ‘Synthetic Halving’ of Bitcoin Could Send Prices Soaring, Analyst Adam Livingston Warns
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Author
José Oramas
José is a journalist and translator with a keen interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
