If it's private investments they have used, then it's not El Salvador buying it and most likely not owning it. This would mean that there's no countries in the world that have ever bought bitcoins. They are only holding coins that they have confiscated and there's no way of knowing if they are going to hodl it. I think this is good news, as to me BTC has always been coin of the people, not countries.

But it doesn't seem like a good news to anyone who were waiting for US and other countries to start buying it for their reserves.

What is this private investment? Does it mean that the state is buying 1 bitcoin a day and storing it on behalf of someone else called "private investor"? Does Bukele believe himself that the IMF with other institutions adopts his story of private investment? I don't know how they agreed to give him another loan while he still spends money to buy bitcoin on an everyday basis.

The IMF is using this lending institution because El Salvador is a legal tender. However, the IMF knows very well that if they hold Bitcoin for the future, no one will take a loan from them, so they hesitate to lend to countries that buy Bitcoin and impose various conditions on them. El Salvador is starting to become self-sufficient,
so in such a situation they do not want to lend because if they lend, they will buy more Bitcoin and hold it for the future. Holding Bitcoin and keeping it for a long time for the future is something that the IMF does not tolerate.

IIRC, the IMF forced Bukele to demand _taxes_ be paid in USD and not in BTC.  Bukele was successfully 'encouraged' to comply with their wishes apparently.

Legal Tender traditionally (always?) has to do with the settlement of debts.  As I have stated before, even if BTC was legal tender, it doesn't mean that vendors would necessarily have to accept it.  They could refuse the terms of a sale (e.g., 'settle in BTC') and no debt is ever produced.

By the same token, Bukele could, if he could get it through the branches of government, still require that all vendors must accept  BTC if the customer wished to pay in that form.  This is a policy matter of governing a society including national security.

In other words, Legal Tender and Use Mandates are two different things with as much or as little correlation as the government decides.  People have a say too; it's common for me to refuse a purchase if it isn't settled in BTC.  The law and policy shifts have not changed that at all.  All they did was to force me to pay my their taxes in USD which would be an odd priority for a president to have so it's a fair assumption that there was more than a little pressure brought to bear.

As far as I can tell, BTC is better supported by vendors now than when the IMF did whatever they did to force El Salvador to modify their legal tender laws.  The (presumably separate) policy mandating BTC support as a guiding hand toward a more robust economy never was effective against the established money in the country.  Car dealers, banks, etc.  Perhaps they would have been encouraged sufficiently had global powers not stepped in.  Hard to know.

My estimate is that the monied classes in the country are far more chummy with the IMF than they are with the elected leaders.  That's the usual state of affairs in every 'democracy' I've studied first-hand...and it's rarely a winning bet to side against and established oligarchy.

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Honestly people, Bitcoin isn't right for a majority of the peeps in El Salvador or in almost any country, and the so-called 'web-3' dumpster fire is even worse.  My advice is and has been for some time now to try to keep cash an option, and I'm guessing that that itself will be a Herculean/Sisyphean task as 'the Beast' closes in.  If cash dies, I predict that Bitcoin all semi-real cryptos are shortly to follow.  If cash lives, Bitcoin itself may persist for the use of the tiny minority who even wants it.  Maybe.

we have heard about a fantastic improvement in tourism for the last years.
for other things, i do not know;
i suppose that salvador debts come mainly from pre-bukele era, when the country was in a very precarious position.
who can confirm this ?

IMF see Bitcoin as financial threat, this is the reason why they heavily discourage El Salvador to HODL Bitcoin.

Actually this is the reason why they made this counteractions before.


That information came from this news posted last September https://www.elsalvadornow.org/2026/09/05/bukele-yields-to-the-imf-halts-bitcoin-purchases-and-hands-over-current-holdings-to-a-private-operator-bukele-cede-ante-el-fmi-frena-la-compra-de-bitcoin-y-entrega-las-reservas-actuales-a

Bukele is indeed a smart man, because even if he made that transfer. Still for sure they have control of the funds which they hand to a  private operator.