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El Salvador acquired over 13 BTC since March 1, despite IMF deal
El Salvador acquired 13 Bitcoin (BTC) since March 1, despite International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressure on the country’s public sector to stop accumulating the decentralized store of value asset.
According to the El Salvador Bitcoin Office, the country’s Bitcoin treasury holds a total of over 6,105 BTC, valued at more than $527 million at current prices.
The Central American country typically acquires BTC at a steady pace of 1 coin every 24 hours. However, on March 3, El Salvador purchased 5 BTC in a single day.
El Salvador struck a deal with the IMF in December 2024 for a $1.4 billion loan from the organization. As part of that deal, the government of El Salvador agreed to rescind the status of BTC as legal tender in the country and scale back public sector involvement with Bitcoin.
El Salvador Bitcoin holdings. Source: El Salvador Bitcoin Office
Related: How can Bukele still stack Bitcoin after IMF loan agreement?
El Salvador continues stacking despite IMF pressure
El Salvador’s Congress amended its Bitcoin laws in January 2025 to comply with the IMF loan agreement. Lawmakers repealed the previous version of the law in a 55-2 vote.
Despite the repeal, the government continued stacking Bitcoin, purchasing two BTC in a single day on Feb. 1 and continuing its daily accumulation of the digital currency.
On March 3, the IMF issued a new request pressuring El Salvador to stop accumulating BTC and stipulated that the country could not issue debt or tokenized securities tied to Bitcoin.
President Nayib Bukele responded to the IMF pressure and said that El Salvador will continue buying BTC — characterizing the IMF’s continued pressure as “whining.”
Source: Nayib Bukele
“If it didn’t stop when the world ostracized us and most ‘bitcoiners’ abandoned us, it won’t stop now, and it won’t stop in the future,” Bukele emphatically stated.
The government of El Salvador’s unapologetic pro-Bitcoin stance caused several major crypto firms to announce that they are relocating to the Central American country.
On Jan. 7, Bitfinex Derivatives announced it was relocating from Seychelles to El Salvador. Stablecoin issuer Tether followed suit on Jan. 13 by announcing it was moving its headquarters to El Salvador.
Magazine: El Salvador’s national Bitcoin chief has been orange-pilling Argentina
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is considering a major capital raise ahead of a potential initial public offering (IPO) early next year, Bloomberg reported on March 24. Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg said Kraken is exploring a debt package worth anywhere between $200 million and $1 billion. The exchange is reportedly in preliminary talks with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase about facilitating the transaction. The source reportedly told Bloomberg that the funds would be used to support Kraken’s growth and not for operational expenses. Bloomberg has been reporting about Kraken’s IPO ambitions for the better part of a year. Talks of going public have intensified following the election of US President Donald Trump, with Bloomberg claiming that Kraken’s IPO could come in the first quarter of 2026. Cointelegraph contacted a Kraken representative about the potential debt package and IPO, but they declined to comment. Kraken is one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, facilitating more than $1.1 billion in trading volume over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data. The exchange grew rapidly in 2024, with year-end financial statements showing $1.5 billion in revenue — a gain of 128% compared to 2023. The company’s adjusted earnings reached $380 million for the year. Kraken’s year-end financial statements show significant growth in revenue, funded accounts and assets. Source: Kraken Related: Kraken secures MiFID license to offer derivatives in Europe Kraken is expanding its footprint in the derivatives market with the $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader, a popular brokerage service specializing in futures contracts. The acquisition is part of the exchange’s broader push into multi-asset services, including equities and payments. NinjaTrader was founded in 2003 and is registered with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Source: Arjun Sethi The acquisition suggests crypto companies are growing their business with confidence following the election of a pro-crypto Republican administration. As Cointelegraph reported, Kraken was one of several crypto exchanges to be freed from enforcement action by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. A positive regulatory climate may have contributed to Kraken’s decision to resume crypto staking services for US clients after a nearly two-year hiatus. Clients in 37 states can now access staking services across 17 cryptocurrencies, including Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL). Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom Decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platform dYdX announced its first-ever token buyback program on March 24, aiming to reinvest in its ecosystem to enhance security and governance. According to the announcement, 25% of the protocol’s net fees will be dedicated to monthly buybacks of its native dYdY (DYDX) token on the open market. Following the announcement, DYDX surged over 10% and was trading at approximately $0.731 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko. The token has gained more than 21% over the past two weeks. DYDX spikes on buyback news. Source: CoinGecko Related: dYdX explores sale of derivatives trading arm Previously, dYdX distributed 100% of its platform revenue to ecosystem participants. Under the new allocation model, 25% will be used for token buybacks, another 25% will fund its USDC liquidity provision program, MegaVault, 10% will be directed to its treasury, and the remaining 40% will continue as staking rewards. dYdX noted that the current allocation of 25% to token buybacks could increase, with ongoing community discussions potentially pushing this percentage to as high as 100% over time. Related: DeFi market stages a comeback as derivatives surge The platform currently holds a total value locked (TVL) of $279 million, according to DefiLlama. It generated $1.29 million in revenue from fees in February and $1.09 million so far in March. Token buybacks get 25% of revenue, which has been dropping. Source: DefiLlama The DeFi industry commonly references the DeFi summer of 2020 as a benchmark, characterized by rapid user growth driven by yield farming and decentralized applications. In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, dYdX Foundation CEO Charles d’Haussy predicted that the next significant DeFi boom would occur shortly after summer, potentially beginning as early as September and lasting “months and months.” dYdX existed in mid-2020 primarily as a DeFi platform for spot trading, lending, borrowing, and margin trading. Its popularity popped in 2021 following the launch of its layer-2 perpetual futures exchange and the introduction of its native DYDX token. In its 2024 ecosystem report, dYdX projected that the decentralized derivatives market would expand to $3.48 trillion by 2025, up from $1.5 trillion in derivatives volume processed by decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in 2024. Magazine: Memecoins are ded — But Solana ‘100x better’ despite revenue plunge An idea to tokenize or track US gold reserves to make their movements transparent on a blockchain won’t work in the same trustless way as Bitcoin does, but doing so could help the cryptocurrency, says a research analyst. Greg Cipolaro, global head of research at New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), said in a March 21 note that Trump administration officials, including Elon Musk, have floated using a blockchain to track US gold and government spending — an idea supported by crypto executives. “Here’s the thing about blockchains. They’re not very smart,” Cipolaro said. “They’re limited in the information they convey. For example, Bitcoin has no idea what the price of Bitcoin is or even the current time.” He said the tokenization or tracking of gold reserves on a blockchain could help with audits and transparency but would still “rely on trust and coordination with central entities” compared to Bitcoin, which “was designed to explicitly remove centralized entities.” Cipolaro added that tokenization and blockchain-tracking ideas aren’t competitive with the crypto market and might help to increase awareness of it, which “could ultimately benefit Bitcoin.” It comes amid calls from some for an independent audit of the United States’ gold reserves. Republican Senator Rand Paul last month seemingly called on Musk’s federal cost-cutting project to investigate the US government’s gold stash at the Bullion Depository in Fort Knox, which the US Mint says holds around half of the country’s gold. The Treasury audits and publishes reports on gold holdings at Fort Knox and other locations across the US every month, but President Donald Trump and Musk have both parrotted decades-old conspiracy theories about the gold and questioned whether it’s all still there. Source: Elon Musk Related: Who’s running in Trump’s race to make US a ‘Bitcoin superpower?’ They have both pushed for an independent audit of Fort Knox. The vaults were last opened in 2017 for Trump’s then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to view the gold and before that, in 1974 to a congressional delegation and a group of journalists. The Mint’s website says that no gold has gone in or out of Fort Knox “for many years,” except for “very small quantities” used to test the gold’s purity during audits. 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