El Salvador's Nayib Bukele Buys Nation's Largest BTC Dip of 500 Coins

Nayib Bukele, the pro-crypto president of El Salvador, did not miss the opportunity of using the ongoing Bitcoin dip to the advantage of his country. Marking El Salvador's largest BTC dip purchase so far, Bukele purchased 500 Bitcoins at an average price of $30,744 (roughly Rs. 24 lakh) per BTC. Bukele, who legalised BTC as a payment option in El Salvador last September, is known to purchase Bitcoins for the national treasury every time the crypto asset dwindles in value.

In total, Bukele purchased 500 BTC for around $15.3 million (roughly Rs. 118 crore).

The 40-year-old Salvadoran President, customarily, published an update on this purchase on Twitter.

As per a report by Bitcoin.com, the national treasury of El Salvador currently holds 1,620 BTC, which currently amounts to $49.5 million (roughly Rs. 382 crore) now that BTC values are witnessing a four-month-low.

Registering a dip of up to 8.80 percent, BTC values dropped to $30,698 (roughly Rs. 23 lakh) on exchanges such as Binance, CoinMarketCap, and Coinbase on Tuesday, May 10.

Bukele last bought a pool of 400 BTC in January this year. At the time, Bitcoin prices had fallen to $35,000 (roughly Rs. 25 lakh) from $42,270 (roughly Rs. 30 lakh).

Despite warnings from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) against using BTC as a legal tender, Bukele continues to support the crypto asset.

From establishing Bitcoin ATMs to creating a government-backed Bitcoin wallet called Chivo for Salvadorans, Bukele has been bringing initiatives focussed on expanding crypto acceptances and use cases in his country.

It appears that El Salvador has more BTC-related plans in the pipeline.

In March this year, Bukele met with Binance CEO Chengpeng Zhao who was visiting the central American nation at the time.

While the details of this meeting remained undisclosed, Zhao and Bukele reportedly discussed about the issuance of Bitcoin Bonds from Binance in order to stabilise El Salvador's BTC adoption aftermath.

While Bukele believes that BTC is the future of digital payments, El Salvador's long-term foreign-currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR), that was previously at B- grade, downgraded into the ‘junk grade', according to Fitch Ratings as a result of BTC adoption.