El Salvador Buys the Dip as Bitcoin Slides Under $66,000, Reserve Nears 7,600 BTC

A Familiar Playbook connected a Red Day

As bitcoin dropped nether $66,000 this week, El Salvador leaned into the descent alternatively than distant from it with President Nayib Bukele treating marketplace weakness arsenic an invitation to adhd to the nationalist stack. The country’s strategical reserve present holds astir 7,600 BTC, worthy much than $510 cardinal astatine existent prices.

Image source: X

Estimates alteration somewhat by reporting date, ranging from astir 7,474 BTC to 7,667 BTC crossed aboriginal June, reflecting the dependable drip of caller purchases alternatively than immoderate azygous ample buy.

That accumulation has been accordant due to the fact that betwixt January and April alone, authorities added more than 1,600 coins, portion of a long-running argumentation of acquiring adjacent to 1 bitcoin per time careless of short-term volatility. The attack has near the treasury sitting connected a important unrealized summation aft the rallies of 2024 and 2025.

Buying Through an IMF Truce

El Salvador’s accumulation is notable due to the fact that it continues contempt unit from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Under a $1.4 cardinal financing deal, the authorities agreed to changes that made accepting bitcoin optional alternatively than mandatory for businesses, softening the legal-tender model Bukele championed erstwhile the state archetypal adopted bitcoin arsenic ineligible tender successful 2021.

Even so, the purchases person not stopped. The IMF has astatine times suggested El Salvador is merely shuffling existing coins betwixt wallets alternatively than buying caller ones, a characterization the Bukele medication disputes. Bitcoin.com News has besides reported that the state passed an IMF review portion continuing to turn its holdings, erstwhile again highlighting the hostility betwixt the lender’s conditions and the government’s onchain ambitions.

In the past, Bukele indicated to the media that El Salvador may clasp more bitcoin than nationalist estimates show, pointing to aggregate gross sources feeding the reserve. The premix of regular buys, dip purchases, and opaque accounting makes the nonstop fig hard to pin down, but the inclination enactment has pointed steadily upward.

What the Reserve Means for the Economy

Beyond its treasury accumulation, El Salvador has tied bitcoin to its broader propulsion to modernize concern and pull investment. In this regard, crypto-linked remittances reached $17.38 million successful the archetypal 4th of 2026, rising astir 50% from the aforesaid play a twelvemonth earlier, though they inactive relationship for good nether 1% of the country’s full remittance flows.

For Bukele, the reserve is arsenic overmuch a governmental connection arsenic a fiscal one, and each dip acquisition reinforces a communicative of condemnation that has made El Salvador a notation constituent for different governments (especially those weighing whether to clasp bitcoin connected their equilibrium sheets). Critics antagonistic that concentrating nationalist funds successful a volatile plus exposes a small, dollarized system to outsized risk.

If bitcoin extends its slide, El Salvador’s stated playbook calls for much buying, deepening a presumption that has already turned the state into 1 of the astir intimately watched sovereign holders of the asset.