President of El Salvador, Bitcoin, Ethereum and NFTs

Bukele’s Bitcoin purchases have cost El Salvador about $12 million in public funds. Ricardo Castaneda, an economist at El Salvador’s Central America Fiscal Studies Institute, told Bloomberg, “there’s no official information about the amount of Bitcoin the government has purchased, the price they paid or how much is in reserve.” 

This news comes amid an already long line of controversies surrounding the Salvadoran president’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. 

El Salvador’s Bitcoin growing pains 

Castaneda is not the only one concerned about the lack of transparency involved in El Salvador’s Bitcoin policy. 

Last year, BlockBank’s head of operations, Nolvia Serrano, told Decrypt there are “so many things that are not being disclosed” about El Salvador’s approach to purchasing Bitcoin. 

“For example, who’s holding the private keys to these Bitcoin? Also, what’s the criteria for saying, ‘Oh, today, we’re going to buy more Bitcoin, or we’re going to wait until next month.’ We don’t know that,” said Serrano. 

The only point of transparency offered by Bukele so far is that he purchases El Salvador’s Bitcoin using his phone. 

However, that’s not enough for Serrano. 

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