IMF Confirms El Salvador's Bitcoin (BTC) Gains Came From Private Donations, Not Public Funds

Donations, Not Public Funds

The International Monetary Fund has confirmed that El Salvador has not used public funds to accumulate Bitcoin since June 2025, resolving a months-long dispute over how the country's crypto reserve kept growing under an active IMF lending program. In a statement published on September 3, the Fund said the increases recorded in the government's Bitcoin holdings since the first review of the program consist of documented private donations rather than state purchases. The clarification centers on a November 2025 episode, when El Salvador reported adding roughly 1,090 BTC — valued at about $100 million at the time — to its reserves in a single day. The purchase lifted the national total to 7,474 BTC and stood as the largest one-day increase since the country began holding the asset, immediately raising compliance questions: President Nayib Bukele's administration, which in 2021 made El Salvador the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, had committed to the IMF not to direct additional public money into the asset. Documentation subsequently submitted to the Fund attributes the post-review growth to private donors, and the IMF says it does not expect any further accumulation beyond recorded donations. The Fund added that El Salvador's Bitcoin sits across multiple wallets and that work continues on reporting those holdings more transparently — a distinction that matters for anyone tracking a national Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, where the line between state purchases and inbound transfers, including large allocations from crypto whales, determines whether a lending condition has actually been breached. For ongoing coverage of sovereign adoption, the episode is a rare case of a lender of last resort formally auditing a government's Bitcoin book.

$140M IMF Tranche Nears Approval

The statement landed alongside a staff-level agreement on the second and third reviews of El Salvador's 40-month Extended Fund Facility — the IMF's medium-term lending instrument — approved in February 2025 with total financing capacity of roughly $1.4 billion. Subject to Executive Board approval and completion of agreed prior actions, El Salvador can access approximately $140 million in new financing under the arrangement. The Fund did not disclose the cumulative volume of Bitcoin accumulated through donations since June 2025, but El Salvador's official tracker shows holdings at 7,764.37 BTC, with the state's automated purchase of 1 BTC per day still running. That modest daily cadence — a slow-accumulation HODL strategy executed programmatically — survived the negotiations intact and explains why the reserve ticks higher even while the treasury formally refrains from buying. The IMF also reported that the government's role in Chivo, the state-run Bitcoin wallet launched alongside legal-tender adoption, has been substantially reduced: majority ownership and operational control have been transferred to a private operator, while the state retains a minority stake and certain responsibilities over the custody of customer assets. Governance and risk-management rules covering crypto assets held by public institutions are set to be strengthened, with the program's core objective remaining a hard limit on the state's financial exposure to Bitcoin. Markets, meanwhile, were little moved by the statement: Bitcoin traded near $81,000 on September 4 after an intraday push above $82,000 — its highest levels since May — faded back into the $81,000 zone, reversing part of the drop that followed August's US payrolls report. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Sovereign Accumulation Hits Its Ceiling

Taken together, the two threads define the outer limits of sovereign Bitcoin accumulation under international supervision. The IMF's own September 3 statement — the primary record in this story — confirms two hard facts: no public money has bought Bitcoin since the program's first review, and no further state accumulation is expected beyond documented donations. In COINOTAG's assessment, El Salvador keeps its reserve narrative intact while its growth model effectively shifts from treasury buying to private giving, leaving the 1 BTC-per-day routine and donor flows as the only remaining channels through which the state's holdings can rise.