IMF Releases $138 Million to El Salvador After Bitcoin (BTC) Accumulation Waiver

Board Clears Two Reviews at Once

The International Monetary Fund unlocked roughly $138 million in immediate financing for El Salvador on Thursday, after its Executive Board completed the second and third reviews under the country’s 40-month Extended Fund Facility, per the fund’s October 1 statement. The disbursement, equal to SDR 101.96 million, comes out of a package worth about $1.4 billion that the Central American nation signed in February 2025. El Salvador is one of the most closely watched sovereign holders of the asset, so every review is read as a verdict on whether the financing program and the coin can coexist. Whatever the Bitcoin (BTC) price does in the coming sessions, this board decision carries more lasting weight, because several performance criteria went unmet, including conditions tied to government accumulation of the coin, and the fund waived them, citing strong corrective measures and renewed commitments from Salvadoran authorities. A waiver under an Extended Fund Facility works as follows: when a member misses a quantitative performance criterion, the Executive Board can still release money if the authorities show corrective steps and renew their program commitments, which is the path taken here. The review credits the government with progress on financial-sector reforms, fiscal transparency, AML/CFT rules and the handover of majority ownership and control of the state-run Chivo wallet to a private operator. On digital assets the language is explicit: “Efforts will continue to reduce the state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities, strengthen crypto-asset regulation and governance, and enhance transparency regarding public-sector crypto-asset holdings.” It adds that “no further Bitcoin (BTC) accumulation is envisaged beyond the documented donations.” The fund had reached a staff-level agreement on the combined reviews on Sept. 3, clearing the texts for the board vote that released the money immediately.

How the Donation Question Got Settled

The waiver closes out a question that has shadowed the program since November 2025, when the government announced it had bought 1,090 BTC, a position worth about $100 million at the time, renewing doubts over its compliance with the IMF arrangement. The fund’s Sept. 3 staff-level statement addresses that gap directly: documents supplied by Salvadoran authorities verified that the post-review accumulation came from private donations, so the growth in holdings did not reflect additional purchases financed with public money. That distinction preserves the letter of an arrangement that was never designed to bankroll a strategic Bitcoin reserve, even as it tolerated one built from outside gifts. The same cycle pushed the state back from the retail side of the market. Majority ownership and operational control of the Chivo wallet have passed to a private operator, with the government keeping a minority stake and custodial duties, and the fund expects the remaining public-sector exposure to be unwound over time. Macro readings in the review are favorable: the economy has performed better than projected, supported by improved security and firmer investor confidence, while reserve and liquidity buffers have strengthened and fiscal consolidation has broadly stayed on track. Work remains elsewhere. Pension and civil service reforms, delayed earlier in the program, are still to advance, and the fund presses for stronger governance across public-sector reporting, beneficial ownership disclosures, asset declarations and anti-money-laundering rules. The state’s long-running Bitcoin (BTC) experiment now operates inside those guardrails. For the coin’s sovereign story, the practical shift is smaller than the headlines suggest: the stack, once the loudest expression of official Bitcoin maximalism outside the corporate treasury wave, sits frozen at documented levels, making the government a whale that has agreed to stop buying and retiring the HODL posture that defined its accumulation phase.

A Hard Cap on State Holdings

In our reading, the operative text is the release, not the surrounding commentary: the EFF conditions bind the Salvadoran government for the remaining life of the arrangement, and the waivers show the fund chose continuity over confrontation while hard-coding a single cap. The clause on no further accumulation is program language that takes effect now, not a proposal under consultation, and it constrains the treasury directly. It also sets El Salvador on a divergent path from the United States, where a Senate Clarity Act vote failed 49-50, leaving federal Bitcoin (BTC) rules unresolved even as one nation trims its own exposure. Watch the next review cycle for enforcement detail, not renewed accumulation: the line has been drawn.