El Salvador’s national Bitcoin reserve has moved past 7,800 coins. By October 16, holdings stood at 7,807 BTC, worth approximately $640–$650 million with Bitcoin trading around $82,000.
That milestone lands in an odd spot. The country signed a $1.4 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund that was supposed to curb exactly this kind of accumulation. The reserve kept growing anyway.
The numbers behind the stack
The growth traces back to a simple rule. El Salvador’s government has followed a policy of acquiring one BTC per day, a practice that began in September 2021.
The more telling figure is what happened after the IMF arrived. When the IMF program started in early 2025, the reserve sat at roughly 6,070 BTC.
Since then, holdings have grown by more than 1,700 BTC.
Anyone can check these numbers. El Salvador’s National Bitcoin Office publishes the wallet addresses that hold the reserve, which makes the country one of the most open sovereign holders of the asset.
That matters more than it sounds. Most governments that hold Bitcoin, often from seizures, do not offer a live view of their balances. El Salvador effectively runs its treasury with the curtains open.
The IMF puzzle
The $1.4 billion IMF Extended Fund Facility came with strings. Chief among them: limits on public sector Bitcoin purchases.
The agreement also required El Salvador to drop Bitcoin’s legal-tender status. The government did rescind it, ending the experiment that put the country on the crypto map in 2021.
So how is the reserve still growing? The IMF’s answer is that recent additions are private donations, not purchases made with government resources.
In the IMF’s framing, public money is not flowing into the reserve. The Fund has indicated it does not expect growth beyond those private contributions.
Bukele’s administration, meanwhile, has continued to present the reserve-accumulation strategy as ongoing.
Background: from legal tender to reserve asset
El Salvador’s Bitcoin story started as a bold monetary bet. In September 2021, the country adopted Bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar and began buying coins for the national treasury.
The legal-tender piece is now gone, traded away as part of the IMF deal. What survives is the reserve itself, which has shifted from a symbol of everyday currency use to something closer to a strategic holding.
What this means
For sovereign finance watchers, the main takeaway is that the reserve and the IMF program are coexisting, at least for now. The country receives its financing, the Fund attributes the inflows to private donors, and the published wallets keep showing higher balances.
The risk lies in how long that arrangement holds. If the IMF were to conclude that public resources were involved after all, the classification of those additions could become a sticking point in future program reviews.
At around $82,000 per BTC, the reserve looks healthy on paper. Because the stash is fully exposed to Bitcoin’s swings, its dollar value can move sharply in either direction, which is exactly the volatility the IMF has historically flagged when assessing the country’s finances.
For now, the 7,807 BTC figure tells a clear story about intent. El Salvador gave up Bitcoin’s legal-tender status to secure its loan, but it did not give up the reserve, and the public ledger shows that stack still getting taller.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.