El Salvador Acquires 500 Additional Bitcoin Amid Market Drop

President Nayib Bukele tweeted that his country “just bought the dip.”

May 9, 2022 at 9:03 p.m. UTC

Updated May 16, 2022 at 8:12 p.m. UTC

CoinDesk - Unknown — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele (Getty Images)

Andrés Engler is a CoinDesk editor based in Argentina, where he covers the Latin American crypto ecosystem. He holds BTC and ETH.

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The government of El Salvador, which was the first country to make bitcoin (BTC) legal tender last fall, has continued its bitcoin buying spree with the purchase of an additional 500 tokens for roughly $15.3 million, President Bukele tweeted on Monday.

According to Bukele, the average price El Salvador paid for each bitcoin was $30,744. The price of bitcoin has dropped almost 10% to $31,053 over the last 24 hours.

The bitcoin purchase made on Monday appears to be the tenth and the largest made by El Salvador so far.
On Jan. 21, El Salvador made its last bitcoin purchase, acquiring 410 bitcoins at an average price of $36,585 per coin.
El Salvador now appears to hold around 2,301 bitcoins, currently worth just under $71 million.
El Salvador postponed its planned $1 billion bitcoin bond offering in March because of unfavorable market conditions, according to Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya.

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