The International Monetary Fund has drawn a sharp line under the latest bout of speculation over El Salvador’s Bitcoin strategy, telling reporters that the Central American nation has not added to its sovereign stash. Apparent increases in the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Fund (SBRF), the IMF said, merely reflect “movements across various government-owned wallets” and leave the country’s overall position unchanged.
Yet the IMF insists those numbers are an accounting mirage. While the SBRF’s wallet address can show incremental inflows, an equivalent amount is typically debited from other state-controlled wallets—most notably a treasury cold-storage address used by the fiscal agency BANDESAL—leaving the republic’s consolidated position unchanged. “Risks from Bitcoin continue to be mitigated,” Kozack emphasized, praising “solid” overall programme performance, including fiscal and reserve targets “met with margins.”
Under the EFF’s technical memorandum of understanding, El Salvador must cap net crypto purchases by the non-financial public sector at the level in place when the program was approved last February. The objective is to prevent further volatility on a public balance sheet that already carries Bitcoin exposure equivalent to about 2 percent of GDP. Reuters reported in March that the IMF had already warned San Salvador against “adding to government cryptocurrency exposure,” even as officials trumpeted periodic buys.
At press time, BTC traded at $
