Community Trust ScoreVerified
El Salvador’s Bitcoin stash keeps growing. The International Monetary Fund has confirmed the country’s reserve now sits at roughly 7,764 bitcoins — and the new coins came from private donations, not the national budget.
That’s the key detail here. For months, there’s been real uncertainty about how El Salvador was adding to its holdings while technically bound by a deal with the IMF to limit public sector exposure to Bitcoin. The answer, per the IMF’s own review process completed in June 2025, is that private contributors footed the bill. The government didn’t dip into state funds. The IMF examined the transactions, ran through the numbers, and said the additions were clean under the terms of the existing agreement. Back in June 2025, the reserve stood at 7,687 bitcoins. Public tracking data shows the country was adding close to one bitcoin per day at points, and a batch of over 1,000 bitcoins landed in official wallets in November. President Nayib Bukele had said in March 2025 that acquisitions would keep going — and they did, just not in the way critics assumed.
Who Donated and Why Nobody Knows
Here’s the murky part. The IMF hasn’t disclosed who the donors are. No names, no terms, no breakdown of conditions attached to the contributions. That’s a pretty significant gap. You’ve got a government building a sovereign Bitcoin reserve using money from unnamed private parties, and the institution that’s supposed to be watching the whole thing says the mechanism is fine but won’t say who’s behind it. It’s not illegal under the agreement — but it’s not exactly transparent either.
The motivations could be anything. Bitcoin advocates with ideological skin in the game. Businesses that benefit from El Salvador’s crypto-friendly posture. Wealthy individuals who want a friendly jurisdiction and see the donations as a kind of goodwill investment. Unclear. The source didn’t specify, and the IMF isn’t saying.
What’s clear is that the donated bitcoins are now part of the official reserve. They count. The government treats them the same as any other holding, which means El Salvador’s strategic Bitcoin position keeps expanding even as the formal rules say public funds can’t be used to buy more.
Chivo Wallet Handed Off, Bitcoin No Longer Mandatory
The reserve isn’t the only thing that’s changed. El Salvador has also overhauled how the Chivo wallet operates. Most of the operational responsibilities — and most of the capital — have been transferred to a private operator. The state kept a minority stake and some custodial duties, but it’s basically no longer running the show day-to-day.
That’s a big shift from where things started. When El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021, Chivo was the government’s flagship tool for pushing adoption. It was state-run, state-funded, and central to the whole experiment. Now it’s mostly private. And Bitcoin itself isn’t mandatory anymore — businesses can choose whether to accept it. Tax payments have to be made in U.S. dollars. So the economy hasn’t dollarized in the traditional sense, but the mandatory Bitcoin layer has been stripped away.
It’s a quieter version of the original vision. Bitcoin is still there, still officially held, still part of the national reserve — but the compulsory element is gone, and the government’s direct operational footprint in the crypto space has shrunk.
The IMF Deal and What’s Next
Relations between El Salvador and the IMF seem to be warming up, probably because El Salvador has bent enough to satisfy the fund’s core demands. The two sides have completed the service level agreement for the second and third reviews of a $1.4 billion financing program. If the IMF board signs off, that could unlock another $140 million.
That’s real money for a small country trying to manage its fiscal position. And it probably explains why El Salvador has been willing to make the operational changes it has — the Chivo handoff, the voluntary Bitcoin acceptance, the dollar-denominated taxes. The IMF wants reduced public exposure to crypto risk. El Salvador wants the cash. They found a middle ground.
El Salvador is also reportedly working toward integrating its financial system with investment banks that can operate with Bitcoin. No specific names or timelines were given, but the direction seems to be toward a more structured financial environment — one where Bitcoin isn’t a wild experiment but a regulated asset class with institutional infrastructure around it.
Whether that actually happens depends on a lot of things that aren’t settled yet. The donor identities are still unknown. The IMF board hasn’t voted. And the broader question of whether a country can build a credible sovereign Bitcoin reserve on private donations — without knowing who those donors are or what they want — probably won’t get answered cleanly anytime soon.
The reserve stands at 7,764 bitcoins.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did El Salvador grow its Bitcoin reserve without using public funds?
The IMF confirmed that the growth in El Salvador’s reserve — from 7,687 bitcoins in June 2025 to roughly 7,764 bitcoins — came from private donations, not state budget allocations, keeping the country in compliance with its agreement to limit public sector Bitcoin exposure.
What happened to El Salvador’s Chivo wallet?
El Salvador transferred most of the Chivo wallet’s capital and operational responsibilities to a private operator, with the government retaining only a minority stake and certain custodial duties.
Why It Matters
This development underscores the ongoing tension between El Salvador's efforts to position itself as a leader in Bitcoin adoption and the constraints imposed by international financial institutions like the IMF. By clarifying that the recent increase in Bitcoin reserves stems from private donations rather than public funds, the IMF's endorsement may provide a semblance of legitimacy to El Salvador's controversial Bitcoin strategy, potentially influencing other countries' approaches to cryptocurrency integration and investment.
