President Nayib Bukele revealed a new bitcoin purchase for a total amount of 21 BTC. BitGo and Bitso would become main El Salvador’s BTC providers, but it is not officially confirmed.
In what appears to be its last bitcoin (BTC) purchase for the year 2021, El Salvador received at least 21 new coins on Tuesday, December 21. The new move would skyrocket the BTC reserves accumulated by the Central American country to 1,391 units.
The announcement came from Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who used his account on the social network Twitter to reveal official purchases of BTC since the cryptocurrency has been legally in use in the country.
The accumulated amount came from eight tweets posted by Bukele between September 6 and December 21 of this year since no data on the operations appeared on the official websites of the government of El Salvador.
On this occasion, the president framed the transaction in the occurrence of a numerological phenomenon, in concordance with the last day 21 of the year 2021, in the 21st century, 9:21 p.m., which would be good luck for believers.
Bukele described the 21 BTC purchase process through various tweets and alluded to the fact that, coincidentally, El Salvador has a vast land region. The purchase took effect for at least 1,033,587.87 dollars, at a rate of USD 49,218.57 for each BTC.
The president of El Salvador highlighted purchases of up to 550 BTC in the first week of September 2021, coinciding with the entry into force of the Bitcoin Law. Subsequently, at least two in December got announced, the largest being the one that took place last October 27, in the order of 420 coins.
There is a Bit of Secrecy about the Management of Bitcoins in El Salvador
The information available on the management of bitcoin reserves in El Salvador’s possession is scarce and comes from non-governmental sources. This September, Forbes highlighted that BitGo, an institutional digital asset custody platform, would become the main liquidity provider for the official Chivo wallet.
On the other hand, the cryptocurrency exchange Bitso also revealed that it would be the first provider of Chivo wallet and that it would support operations in both BTC and dollars. This information did not get denied or confirmed by any Salvadoran government representative.
Further details about the country’s operations are also unclear, such as whether the State delegated custody of the official BTC to another party, whether it keeps its reserves in cold wallets, or whether it has total control of private keys.
This information acquired relevance since BitGo is a company with operations in the United States of America, a nation with which Nayib Bukele has had some differences during his period as president. This situation implies that, in a hypothetical conflictive environment, there would be a serious risk of confiscation on the BTC saved in BitGo.
By: Jenson Nuñez
