Bukele Holds 6494 Bitcoin as IMF Deal Ends Compulsory Acceptance

Finance · El Salvador
El Salvador entered 2026 still calling itself Bitcoin country, yet the legal architecture that forced merchants to accept the cryptocurrency has been dismantled. The remaining story is a sovereign balance sheet holding bitcoin while the IMF watches, and a population that mostly uses dollars.
The IMF programme that rewired the reform
El Salvador reached a $1.4 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund in December 2024, set to run over 40 months. The deal conditioned financing on changes to how the public sector could use bitcoin.
IMF staff later stated that since programme approval, the government had not voluntarily accumulated bitcoin. The commitment covered no new public-sector purchases and no issuance of bitcoin-indexed or bitcoin-denominated debt.
A continuous quantitative performance criterion, known as a QPC, now measures compliance. It prohibits voluntary bitcoin accumulation by the public sector and bars tokenized instruments that would create government liability.
The IMF also required Chivo, the state digital wallet launched in 2021, to be phased out of public-sector operation by end-July 2025. That deadline became one of the clearest operational tests of the agreement.
What the Bitcoin Law reform changed
On January 29, 2025, Legislative Decree No. 199 reformed the original June 8, 2021 Bitcoin Law. The new rules became effective roughly 90 days after publication, around April 30 to May 1, 2025.
Merchants are no longer compelled to accept bitcoin for goods and services. Acceptance by private parties is now voluntary, reversing a core element of the 2021 legal tender framework.
Tax obligations must now be paid in US dollars. The previous allowance for bitcoin tax payments was repealed, and the state obligation to automatically convert bitcoin to dollars at a fixed rate was also removed.
The law no longer characterises bitcoin as currency in the legal text. It is instead treated as a voluntary payment method, though the phrase curso legal still appears in some consolidated texts, leaving technical ambiguity.
Legal tender in practice during 2026
By mid-2026, most analysts treat bitcoin as voluntary tender rather than a second official currency. The US dollar remains the dominant day-to-day currency for wages, prices and tax payments.
The Blockchain History and crypto regulation trackers note that the compulsory legal-tender label was effectively rescinded because the obligation to accept was removed. What remains is an optional payment mechanism.
Bit-News reported in July 2026 that the legal label of bitcoin as curso legal still exists in some texts. Yet the practical mechanisms that made legal tender meaningful have been dismantled.
Businesses are no longer required to express prices in bitcoin, though conversion remains possible. Authorities have clarified repeatedly that dollar payment remains the baseline for tax and public obligations.
Government holdings around the IMF start
Multiple trackers placed El Salvador’s government-linked bitcoin holdings at approximately 5,968 BTC in December 2024, when the IMF programme was formalised. This figure became the baseline for compliance discussions.
The 99Bitcoins analysis and Blockchain History both cited reserves around 5,968 BTC at that point. Intellinews also reported official reserve data showing 5,968 BTC in December 2024.
That baseline sat against the IMF commitment that total bitcoin in all government-owned wallets should remain stable. Later statements in May 2025 repeated the requirement for holdings to stay unchanged in line with programme commitments.
The tension between that commitment and independently tracked accumulation became one of the defining features of the programme’s first year.
Reported accumulation despite IMF limits
Independent trackers and media reports showed continued accumulation after the IMF deal. A Dzilla analysis noted that the Bitcoin Office kept acquiring roughly 1 BTC per day.
The Dzilla report tracked reserves rising from 6,101.15 BTC on March 4, 2025, to approximately 6,189.18 BTC by late May 2025. Bitcoin Treasuries data valued those holdings at about $678 million in late May 2025.
The implied unrealized profit was approximately $386 million, or a 132 percent gain, since initial purchases began in mid-2021. That calculation used a bitcoin price of around $109,000 per coin.
The IMF’s own press language in May 2025 said efforts must ensure the total quantity of bitcoin in government-owned wallets remains stable. Independent trackers suggested the opposite was occurring.
Reserve values by May 2026
Intellinews reported on May 15, 2026 that El Salvador’s bitcoin reserve had topped $600 million. The same report questioned IMF compliance even as holdings rose in dollar terms.
The reserve figure reflected roughly 6,494 BTC, a meaningful increase from the December 2024 baseline of about 5,968 BTC. That increase came despite the stated IMF prohibition on voluntary accumulation.
The rise in dollar value combined purchases and price appreciation, making the reserve a source of unrealized profit. It also created a compliance problem that analysts continued to flag into 2026.
The government-linked holdings therefore show two stories at once: a public commitment to non-accumulation for the IMF, and a growing bitcoin treasury that supporters present as a national asset.
The dollar becomes the only practical tax currency
Under the reform, tax obligations must be paid in US dollars. The 2021 allowance for settling taxes in bitcoin was repealed as part of the IMF-linked changes.
This means that while a merchant might choose to accept bitcoin from a customer, that merchant still settles income, value-added and other tax liabilities in dollars. The dollar is the settlement layer for the state.
The repeal also removed the state convertibility guarantee, which had promised automatic conversion of bitcoin to dollars at a fixed rate. Citizens and businesses now bear conversion risk individually.
The practical result is that bitcoin functions as a voluntary spending option for those who hold it, not as a parallel currency for public obligations. That distinction shapes daily economic behaviour.
Chivo and the public-sector retreat
Chivo was the state-created digital wallet launched as part of the original bitcoin experiment. It allowed citizens to hold bitcoin and dollars, with government incentives for downloading the app.
The IMF programme required the public-sector role in Chivo to be phased out by end-July 2025. That meant the state could no longer operate or subsidise the wallet as a public bitcoin service.
Public-sector bitcoin activity more broadly was to be confined under the programme. This included limits on new purchases, bitcoin-linked debt and state involvement in wallet operations.
The retreat from Chivo was a central concession in the December 2024 IMF agreement. It moved bitcoin promotion out of direct state operations and left private platforms to serve those still using the cryptocurrency.
Citizen usage remains low
Surveys and reports cited in the research show citizen usage of bitcoin remained limited even after the 2021 legal tender declaration. Most Salvadorans continued to use dollars for wages, rent and everyday purchases.
The 2025 reform did not eliminate that usage pattern; it codified it. With acceptance voluntary and taxes in dollars, there was less pressure for day-to-day adoption than in the original law.
Chivo downloads were initially widespread due to a state incentive, but active usage did not match the policy ambition. Public-sector retreat from the wallet further reduced state-led onboarding.
In 2026, the population’s practical relationship with bitcoin is mostly indirect, through government reserves and occasional merchant acceptance, rather than as a replacement for dollar cash or bank payments.
Security gains and an economic dividend
El Salvador’s security transformation under Bukele is widely credited with lowering homicide rates and shifting daily economic confidence. That security gain has economic consequences for investment and consumption.
The research block does not provide a dated homicide or murder rate figure for 2026, so no specific crime statistic can be attributed here. The IMF-linked reporting focuses on fiscal and bitcoin compliance rather than crime data.
The security improvement is relevant to the bitcoin story because it supports tourism, foreign investment interest and domestic commerce. That effect operates separately from bitcoin policy but shapes perceptions of the country.
A safer operating environment can make dollar-based business and property investment more attractive, even as the bitcoin experiment has been legally downgraded. Investors frequently treat the two narratives as connected.
What foreign investors should watch now
The IMF programme remains the binding constraint on bitcoin policy. Compliance reviews and loan tranche disbursements will signal whether the government faces pressure to halt or explain continued accumulation.
The $1.4 billion programme over 40 months provides external financing, but the continuous QPC on bitcoin accumulation is a monitored condition. A breach could complicate future tranches.
The dollar remains the operating currency for contracts, taxes and most business. That reduces currency risk for foreign investors, even as the government holds a volatile bitcoin reserve on its balance sheet.
The unrealized profit on government bitcoin holdings is significant, but it is paper gain until sold. Any future sale or pledge of those reserves would be a major policy event under IMF scrutiny.
The five-year arc of the experiment
El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender on September 7, 2021, after a June 8, 2021 Legislative Assembly vote. The original law passed with 62 votes out of 84 and required merchant acceptance.
By June 2026, the five-year arc showed a policy that began as compulsory legal tender and ended as a voluntary payment method inside an IMF programme. The label survived in part, but the legal obligations did not.
The experiment produced a government bitcoin treasury with substantial unrealized profit, a reformed legal framework, and limited citizen adoption. Those outcomes coexist in the same national story.
For foreign investors, the lesson is that El Salvador’s dollar economy remains the practical baseline, while bitcoin policy is now a constrained sovereign reserve experiment rather than a mandatory payments regime.