San Salvador (EFE) — El Salvador’s strategic bitcoin reserve grew to 7,672 coins as of Thursday, valued at more than $487.5 million, according to official records on the government’s bitcoin.gob.sv portal — just days before the five-year anniversary of the law that made the country the first in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.
Government holdings rose from 7,517 bitcoins in December 2025 to 7,669 by May 2026, adding 152 coins this year as part of President Nayib Bukele’s “one bitcoin per day” acquisition strategy. Three additional coins purchased between Monday and Wednesday brought the total to 7,672.
The Bitcoin Law was approved by El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly on June 8, 2021, and took effect 90 days later. On September 7 of that year, El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognize bitcoin as legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar — the centerpiece of Bukele’s economic agenda.
The experiment has since been scaled back under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which conditioned a 2024 financing agreement on limiting the government’s role in bitcoin. In January 2025, the Salvadoran Congress eliminated the requirement for businesses to accept bitcoin as payment and reduced the state’s involvement in its use. That agreement has yet to be fully implemented.
It remains unclear whether Bukele’s administration plans to deploy the reserve for any specific project in the near or medium term.
Despite the president’s high approval ratings, bitcoin’s adoption among ordinary Salvadorans has been minimal. Surveys show that 92% of the population did not use bitcoin in 2024 — the lowest usage rate recorded since the law took effect in 2021.
