{"id":52548,"date":"2026-06-09T10:32:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/?p=52548"},"modified":"2026-06-09T10:32:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:32:25","slug":"five-years-on-el-salvador-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/news\/five-years-on-el-salvador-bitcoin","title":{"rendered":"Five Years On, El Salvador Is Still Buying Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Five years ago yesterday, El Salvador&#8217;s Congress voted 62-to-22 to pass the world&#8217;s first Bitcoin Law, making the small Central American nation the first country on earth to grant bitcoin legal tender status.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The date was June 8, 2021. Half a decade later, the government <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcointreasuries.net\/governments\/el-salvador\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">holds<\/a> 7,677 BTC worth approximately $480 million \u2014 and it is still accumulating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The country has run a dollar-cost averaging strategy since President Nayib Bukele <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/el-salvador-bitcoin-news\/beyond-bukele-sustaining-el-salvadors-orange-wave-of-freedom\">announced<\/a> a policy of purchasing one bitcoin per day in November 2022. In the 12 months since June 2025, El Salvador added more than 1,600 BTC to its stack, <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/el-salvador-bitcoin-news\/el-salvador-buys-more\">including<\/a> a tactical purchase of over 1,000 BTC in a single week during a November market dip.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the start of 2026, the Bitcoin Office declared the country was going &#8220;all in&#8221; on both bitcoin and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That conviction survived a major policy reversal. In January 2025, Bukele&#8217;s administration <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c20e3l3xllwo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stripped<\/a> bitcoin of its mandatory legal tender status as a condition of a $1.4 billion IMF loan package. Businesses are no longer legally required to accept it, and the government-issued Chivo wallet \u2014 the centerpiece of Bukele&#8217;s original pitch \u2014 is being phased out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the government has not sold a single coin from its treasury and BTC is still able to be used as a currency for those who wish to use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-x wp-block-embed-x\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">5 years ago, El Salvador passed the first &#39;Bitcoin Law&#39; that regulated BTC as legal tender \ud83c\uddf8\ud83c\uddfb<br><br>Today, they now own 7,677 BTC worth $480 million. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/RA7HUmwLvO\">pic.twitter.com\/RA7HUmwLvO<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BitcoinMagazine\/status\/2064331484136182130?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 9, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">El Salvador: No taxes on bitcoin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">El Salvador offers no capital gains tax on bitcoin or cryptocurrency transactions, a policy the government doubled down on in early 2026 to court foreign investors. The country is also developing plans for a &#8220;Volcano Bond&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2021\/11\/22\/el-salvador-cryptocurrency-bitcoin-bonds-volcano-powered-tax-free-city-nayib-bukele\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">backed<\/a> by bitcoin and a proposed Bitcoin City powered by geothermal energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The remittance case that Bukele used to sell the law to the public has yet to materialize at scale. El Salvador is one of the most remittance-dependent economies in the world \u2014 personal transfers from abroad equal <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/nayib-bukele-says-bought-other-223115983.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">roughly<\/a> 24 percent of GDP, with Q1 2026 totaling $2.43 billion. Crypto accounted for just $17.38 million of that figure, or 0.71 percent of the total.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five years ago yesterday, El Salvador&#8217;s Congress voted 62-to-22 to pass the world&#8217;s first Bitcoin Law, making the small Central American nation the first country on earth to grant bitcoin legal tender status.&nbsp; The date was June 8, 2021. Half a decade later, the government holds 7,677 BTC worth approximately $480 million \u2014 and it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3817,"featured_media":52551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4378],"tags":[76,6203,238,257],"class_list":["post-52548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-bitcoin","tag-bukele","tag-el-salvador","tag-nayib-bukele"],"author_data":{"id":3817,"name":"Micah Zimmerman","nicename":"micahzimmerman","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Micah_Zimmerman_Author_Image.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Five-Years-On-El-Salvador-Is-Still-Buying-Bitcoin.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}