El Salvador's Bitcoin Blitz: Buying BTC Despite IMF Deal

Defiance in the Face of Debt

Hold onto your hats, crypto fans! El Salvador isn't slowing down its Bitcoin buying spree, even after inking a hefty $1.4 billion deal with the IMF that supposedly put the brakes on their crypto splurge. That's right, the Central American nation is still gobbling up BTC like it's going out of style!

According to El Salvador's economy minister, Maria Luisa Hayem, the Bitcoin Office is still on a mission to stack sats, despite the IMF's demands. In a jaw-dropping interview with Bloomberg, Hayem dropped this bombshell: "There's a commitment of President Bukele to keep accumulating assets as a way to do precisely that. Bitcoin keeps being an important project. There is an asset accumulation that we're seeing from the government perspective, from the private sector perspective."

Bitcoin Stash: Over Half a Billion and Counting!

Get this: El Salvador's currently sitting on a cool 6,162 BTC, worth a staggering $580 million! That's some serious coin! But hold up, they're not even the biggest government player in the Bitcoin game. Little old Bhutan, tucked away in the Himalayas, is holding a whopping 7,486 BTC. But don't get too excited about Bhutan's stash; they've been offloading their BTC since the last quarter of 2024.

Crypto Chaos: 90% of Registered Firms Not Operating

Now, here's where things get a bit messy. El Salvador's been getting some serious side-eye over how it's rolling out its Bitcoin Law. A report from El Mundo spilled the beans that a whopping 90% of the crypto firms registered in the country are basically ghost towns. Out of 181 registered providers, only 20 are actually doing business, while the rest are chilling in the "non-operating" zone, according to the Central Reserve Bank.

And get this: at least 22 of these inactive companies might have flunked the regulatory test under Article 4 of the Bitcoin Law Regulation. They're supposed to be playing by the rules, maintaining high standards of integrity and honesty, keeping their AML programs in check, and beefing up their cybersecurity systems. But it looks like some of them just couldn't cut it.