El Salvador adds 162 Bitcoins to national holdings

A cold wallet reportedly owned by the Salvadoran government has been buying one Bitcoin everyday since March 16, adding 162 coins to the country’s Bitcoin holdings.

Data from blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence shows that the address, marked as El Salvador government cold wallet, currently holds 5,851 Bitcoin (BTC) with a market value of $356.4 million. 

The wallet’s inflow chart shows that it has been adding a single Bitcoin every day since March 16. The latest installment was made several hours ago at a cost of $60,500. However, there were several days when the wallet made miniscule BTC purchases of less than $100.

According to crypto analyst EmberCN, the average cost of El Salvador’s BTC holdings is about $44,835, giving the country a floating profit of $93.45 million.

The purchases are part of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s promise to buy one Bitcoin every day until the cryptocurrency becomes “unaffordable.” On the day the purchases started, El Salvador moved 5,689 BTC into the cold storage wallet, with the holdings then valued at $386 million. Bukele described the wallet as the country’s first “Bitcoin piggy bank.”

To create greater transparency around its Bitcoin ownership, the South American nation created a mempool space enabling the public to audit its crypto holdings.

Furthermore, Bukele’s government recently proposed the use of crypto for trade with Russia. El Salvador floated the idea as a way of bypassing sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. and its allies over Russia’s continued war with Ukraine. 

El Salvador recognizes the U.S. dollar as a national currency, making it difficult to trade with Russia, whose access to the USD has been severely limited by the sanctions. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is up 0.8% in the last 24 hours, and 5.1% over seven days. It now has a market capitalization north of $1.2 trillion, which is more than 53% of the entire crypto market’s value.