El Salvador made history in 2021 by becoming the first country to make the world’s largest and oldest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), legal tender — a move that triggered both skepticism and fascination from observers around the world. Some critics deemed President Nayib Bukele’s decision to gamble his country’s economic future on the orange coin as risky.
However, as BTC hits new all-time highs after new all-time highs, El Salvador has reaped huge benefits — and Bukele is taking a victory lap.
El Salvador’s Bitcoin Stash Is $108 Million In Profit
El Salvador’s foray into the Bitcoin market, led by President Nayib Bukele, has yielded a massive windfall, silencing skeptics and raking in significant profits.
The tiny Latin American nation has been dollar-cost-averaging into Bitcoin since 2021, purchasing one Bitcoin every day as part of its adoption plans. Data from SpotOnChain shows El Salvador’s Bitcoin stack at just 5,932 tokens. With the current BTC price of $89,544, that’s worth approximately $526 million. The country is sitting on over $108 million worth of profit, thanks to Bitcoin’s face-melting rally.
“I told you so,” the millennial leader asserted on the X platform.
Notably, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned Bukele in late 2022 that Bitcoin could destabilize the country’s economy. The international body has repeatedly pressured El Salvador to reverse its 2021 Bitcoin Law. Later in 2022, Bloomberg argued that El Salvador’s Bitcoin gamble had failed terribly.
The huge profit made Bukele’s decision net positive in economic terms despite the initial harsh criticism.
Sluggish Bitcoin Adoption
Besides adopting Bitcoin as a legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar and acquiring over $530 million worth of it, the country also introduced a Bitcoin mining operation that utilizes geothermal energy. Moreover, El Salvador has launched a “Freedom Visa” initiative, which aims to grant residency and citizenship rights to crypto investors willing to invest $1 million in BTC or Tether’s USDT in the country.
Impressive as El Salvador’s Bitcoin bet might be, the adoption of the flagship crypto among Salvadorans has been rather sluggish. President Bukele has admitted that fewer Salvadorans were using the cryptocurrency than expected. “Bitcoin hasn’t had the widespread adoption we hoped for,” he said in an August interview with TIME.
Meanwhile, crypto enthusiasts still anticipate a wave of countries following El Salvador’s bold decision to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.