As bitcoin (BTC) prices fell below the USD 60,000 mark, the El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has doubled down on his bitcoin adoption drive by snapping up BTC 420 (USD 25m).
In a series of tweets, Bukele stated that his government had decided to “buy the dip,” and was “already making a profit [on] the bitcoin” it had bought just hours ago.
When challenged to explain just how this could be possible if the government was keeping, rather than selling its BTC, the self-styled “Emperor” sought to explain.
Critics in the media have been quick to point out that the government has offered nothing in the way of clarity as to how these BTC purchases are being made.
The nation’s biggest newspaper, the left-leaning El Diario de Hoy, wrote that Bukele’s government “still has not disclosed how much it has spent on these cryptoassets and has not stated if it has paid commission fees for each individual purchase.”
It also pointed out that the money used to buy the coins came from “public funds.”
Bukele and his government have made a number of token purchases since September 7, the day when BTC became the country’s legal tender, alongside the United States dollar.
Per its own calculations, the media outlet La Prensa Gráfica claimed that at the time of the Bukele announcement, “the price of bitcoin stood at USD 58,999, so it can be estimated that about USD 23.6m was spent on this latest purchase.”
As no public records of the BTC purchases have been made public, observers have been left with nothing to base their calculations on but Bukele’s tweets. But if these are correct and the state has not sold any of its coins for cash, the Salvadoran Treasury now holds BTC 1,120 (USD 66m).
La Prensa Gráfica’s calculations found that the first 700 tokens likely cost the government some USD 34.4m.
At 07:36 UTC, BTC trades at USD 59,219 and is down by 2% in a day and almost 11% in a week, trimming its monthly gains to 40%.
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Learn more:
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– El Salvador Bitcoin ‘Scalpers’ Force App Turnaround as Chivo Criticism Continues
– Corporations & Countries Watch and Learn From El Salvador’s Bitcoin Experiment
– Buoyant Bukele Blasts Critics as Bitcoin Price Booms and Salvadorans Buy BTC
– El Salvador Gov’t to Mitigate Against Fuel Price Crisis – Using its Bitcoin App
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