With the price of bitcoin (BTC) hovering around USD 95,000, unrealized profits from bitcoin held by the government of El Salvador are estimated at more than 108%, according to statistics presented on the Nayib Bukele Portfolio Tracker site. .
The data of the tracker -and that confirm in the Bitcoin Mempool – keep track of all purchases made by the government since the end of 2021, indicating that this week the government reached a new milestone upon reaching 6,000 BTCvalued, at the time of writing this article, at USD 568 million.
The purchases of 1 BTC daily that the government has been making since November 2022 are among those that have given higher performance. With this strategy, which was launched in November 2022, 773 bitcoins have already been acquired, with gains of 108.6% at the time of this writing.
However, the purchases that register the highest percentage of unrealized profits are those that were made during the period of greatest decline in BTC. About 80 bitcoin were purchased in July 2022 at an average of USD 19,000 per unit and are now showing gains of 398.7%.
In that sense, only the most recent purchases record unrealized losses. These are 11 BTC that the Bukele government acquired on December 19, after signing the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This, in the middle of the fall that the digital currency has experienced after having exceeded USD 100,000.
This period of gains comes after a season of losses due to the crypto winter that hit the market throughout 2022 and much of 2023.
In this scenario, Bukele’s strategy of buying BTC was harshly criticized by his opponents, while the president defended his plan and defined it as buying “the dip.” All this, knowing that in the long term the digital currency would increase in price.
And indeed, the positive balance came at the beginning of this year. The investment recovery began to become evident at the end of 2023, once the cryptocurrency exceeded USD 42,000 per unit.
As the average price of BTC purchased by the Salvadoran government is USD 45,465, investments made in those years would only fall into unrealized losses again if BTC falls below that range.
In this way, Bukele remains firm in his project of maintaining bitcoin as a strategic reserve, despite the demands of the IMF.
As CriptoNoticias reported, last March the president revealed the address of the wallet where El Salvador keeps its bitcoin reserve, showing that the country own more BTC than many estimated.
According to data from Bitcoin Treasuriesthe Central American country is the sixth with the most BTC stored, surpassed by the government of Bhutan, which has more than 11,688 bitcoins. This in a list led by the United States with 198,000 BTC.
All of this occurs amid the bitcoin reserve craze, a phenomenon that has broken out with dozens of companies and some nations considering creating their own bitcoin treasuries. The case of the United States has aroused interest, due to President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to carry out this plan, following in Bukele’s footsteps.
