Reports from local Salvadoran press are raising questions about President Bukele’s announcement last week, when he transferred 5,690 BTC to a cold wallet, stating that all of these belonged to the country. Moises Alvarado, a Salvadoran journalist, found that 80% of the funds in this wallet came from Bitfinex, an international exchange, while 20% came from Chivo Wallet, the national wallet.
Salvadoran Press Report Raises Questions About Piggy Bank Wallet’s BTC Ownership
A report prepared by Moises Alvarado and published by the Salvadoran local press has raised questions about the true ownership of the BTC transferred by President Nayib Bukele to a cold wallet last week. According to Alvarado, 80% of the 5,690 BTC transferred to El Salvador’s “piggy bank” wallet came from addresses linked to Bitfinex, an international cryptocurrency exchange.
Alvarado states that “multiple indications make it unlikely that these crypto assets belong to the Salvadoran state,” given the strong links that the government has with this cryptocurrency exchange. An investigation revealed that the 4,569 BTC in El Salvador’s cold wallet were deposited in 5 transactions between March 13 and 14.
The remaining 1,121 BTC were transferred to the address from the hot wallet belonging to the Chivo Wallet ecosystem. Alvarado warns about the possible effects of this transaction, stating that part of this bitcoin transacted “could have belonged to citizens and one of the possibilities is that, with this movement, Chivo Wallet has been defunded.”
The report points out that the only bitcoin purchases that could be verified corresponded to operations made with Bitso, a Latam-focused exchange, during 2021 and 2022. Alvarado stresses that there is no way of verifying if Bitfinex was the institution contracted to hold the bitcoin used by El Salvador as an investment vehicle during these years.
Rafael Lemus, a Salvadoran economist, stated:
It is impossible to be certain that those 5,000 bitcoin belong to the Salvadoran State, especially considering that the majority comes from Bitfinex. Perhaps those who left Chivo Wallet are from the State, but not even there we can be sure as we have no way to verify.
Bukele recently doubled down on his bitcoin investments, announcing that El Salvador would keep buying 1 BTC daily until “it becomes unaffordable with fiat currencies.”
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