Anthony Clarke
El Salvador just added another 500 Bitcoin (BTC) — worth roughly $15.5 million — to its reserves after the world’s most popular cryptocurrency fell to almost $30,000 on May 9.
President Nayib Bukele announced that the country had purchased the dip in a tweet, adding another 500 Bitcoin to the government’s coffers.
El Salvador just bought the dip! 🇸🇻
500 coins at an average USD price of ~$30,744 🥳#Bitcoin
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) May 9, 2022
El Salvador has made the largest BTC purchase since adding Bitcoin to its balance sheet in September 2021, the same month it became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal cash alongside the US dollar.
Bitcoin has dropped more than 8% in the previous 24 hours and is approximately 55% below its all-time high in November 2021.
According to the president’s tweet, El Salvador purchased Bitcoin at an average price of $30,744.
The buy is the latest in a run of BTC purchases by President Bukele, who has staked his political future on the success of the country’s Bitcoin experiment.
The country’s choice to embrace Bitcoin is not without detractors, who have grown in number in recent months.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged El Salvador to ditch Bitcoin as legal tender in a report published in January.
The IMF’s report — published after bilateral talks with El Salvador — stressed that the adoption of cryptocurrency “entails large risks for financial and market integrity, financial stability, and consumer protection. It also can create contingent liabilities.”
Meanwhile, over 75% of the country’s citizens were “skeptical” of Bitcoin, according to a July 2021 survey by Disruptiva. In September 2021, seven out of 10 El Salvador citizens voted to repeal the law that made Bitcoin legal tender.
