I saw a piece of data yesterday: El Salvador’s government holdings have reached 7,777 BTC, worth $594 million, with an average cost of 55,718 and an unrealized gain of $162 million—an ROI of 37%. For 916 consecutive days, buying 1 BTC every day.
The numbers are very beautiful. But the truly interesting things are hidden in another document.
An IMF review report.
In early September, the IMF reached a staff-level agreement with El Salvador to release a $140 million loan. What are the conditions? El Salvador must prove to the IMF that since June 27, 2025, all newly mined bitcoins have come entirely from private donations, with not a cent of public funds used.
You’re not seeing it wrong. Private donations.
A country donates Bitcoin to another country or organization. They have been donating for almost a year in a row. The amount started at over 7,400 coins in June 2025, and has been donated all the way to the current 7,777 coins.
Think through this logic. What kind of person would donate Bitcoin to a sovereign country? Donate to whom? Why?
The IMF hasn’t published the list of donors, nor the number of donors, nor the amount. The Salvadoran government hasn’t said it either. You can’t find it.
More subtly, there’s the timeline.
In December 2024, El Salvador signed a $1.4 billion loan agreement with the IMF. One of the conditions was to restrict the public sector from increasing its Bitcoin holdings. In March 2025, the IMF officially prohibited the public sector from “voluntarily increasing” its holdings.
Then in November 2025, the Salvadoran officials announced that they bought 1,090 BTC in a single day, worth $100 million. The market blew up—people thought Bukele had torn up the agreement. After the IMF checked, they said: this was also a private donation.
1,090 coins, $100 million, from donations.
Then El Salvador kept buying 1 coin every day—916 days, not a single day off.
Did you notice that?
What the agreement bans is “public funds increasing holdings.” El Salvador didn’t violate the agreement, because the money isn’t public. Someone sent it. The sent money doesn’t count as an increase—it counts as a donation.
The opening of that loophole is so precise—it chills you to the bone.
I’m not saying Bukele is lying. I’m saying the mechanism itself is the ultimate gray area of the sovereign-Bitcoin experiment. You can’t prove it’s violating rules, and you can’t prove it’s compliant. You can only choose to believe or not believe.
The IMF also left a tail for itself.
In the report, there’s a line: It is expected that, beyond the recorded donations, there will be no further accumulation of Bitcoin.
Translate this: for the current 7,777 coins, the IMF admits it. If there are more later, I won’t. But when is “later”? What if another private donation comes tomorrow? What if it comes the day after tomorrow?
The IMF didn’t say.
Why am I paying attention to this?
Because the story of El Salvador is the most real slice in the sovereign-Bitcoin narrative. It isn’t a country buying coins. It’s a country using a mechanism that everyone can’t understand, maintaining a story that everyone wants to believe.
A 37% unrealized gain looks great. But what’s really worth watching isn’t the unrealized gain. It’s the source of those 1,090 coins. It’s why the IMF chose to nod at this point in time. And it’s when the next “private donation” will arrive.
I don’t have a position. Not because of this I opened a short, and not because of this did I go bargain hunting. I’m just keeping track of one thing: in this cycle, the narrative of sovereign buying coins is shifting from “the government is paying” to “someone is sending money.” The former is a story; the latter is a mystery.
Suspense is more entertaining than a story. But it’s also more dangerous than a story.
——Clear Stream Channel