The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has praised El Salvador for its strong economic performance while simultaneously pressing the Central American nation to scale back its state-led Bitcoin experiment.

In a statement issued Friday, the IMF said it had approved a $139 million disbursement to El Salvador while seeking to “reduce the state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities.” The announcement came as the fund concluded its second and third reviews under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement with the country. Under such arrangements, the IMF releases financing in installments tied to periodic reviews, with waivers available when performance criteria are missed.

El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 — the first country in the world to do so — to the displeasure of the IMF and other major institutions. At the time, the country was negotiating a development loan with the agency.

“El Salvador’s economy continues to perform strongly”
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) October 1, 2026

The IMF said in September that El Salvador was not buying bitcoin, although the country’s Bitcoin Office has repeatedly stated that it does purchase the cryptocurrency.

“Economic activity has exceeded expectations, supported by sustained improvements in security and investor confidence, as macroeconomic imbalances continue to be addressed,” the IMF said.

It continued: “However, certain performance criteria were not met, including on the Bitcoin accumulation front, for which waivers were granted based on strong corrective measures and renewed commitments.”

The fund added that the Salvadoran state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities is being unwound and that “no further bitcoin accumulation is envisaged beyond the documented donations.”

President Nayib Bukele said in 2022 that the country would buy one bitcoin per day, but it was never clear where the money was coming from — or whether he was actually buying at all. The IMF said in September that El Salvador was — at least for some time — not using public funds to accumulate bitcoin, and had instead received bitcoin from private donations.

El Salvador and the IMF entered a $1.4 billion loan agreement at the end of December, with the fund asking the country to scale back certain aspects of its Bitcoin strategy. Because disbursements under the EFF depend on passing such reviews, the agreement effectively made bitcoin policy a recurring condition of the country’s access to IMF financing.

The Salvadoran state gifted its citizens bitcoin in 2021 and debuted a wallet in the hope of getting more residents to use the cryptocurrency in the dollarized country. President Bukele admitted in 2024 that Salvadorans were not using the cryptocurrency to make purchases as expected, though he consistently boasted that the government was still “stacking sats.”n
Any future reviews under the arrangement would give the fund its next formal checkpoint on El Salvador’s bitcoin-related commitments, while the question of how much bitcoin the state actually holds remains a point of divergence between the IMF’s September assessment and the Bitcoin Office’s statements.

This article, written by Mathew Di Salvo, first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.