The International Monetary Fund has praised El Salvador’s economic performance while continuing to press the government to reduce its involvement in Bitcoin-related activities. The dual message underlines how bitcoin policy has become a recurring sticking point between the country and international lenders since it adopted the cryptocurrency as legal tender.

In a statement Friday, the IMF said it had approved a $139 million disbursement to the Central American country. At the same time, it said efforts were underway to “reduce the state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities.” The fund releasing while restating its concerns captures that dual track in practice.

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

El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021, becoming the first country in the world to do so, a move that drew criticism from the IMF and other major institutions. The country was negotiating a development loan with the IMF at the time, and the cryptocurrency has remained entangled in its financing negotiations ever since.

The IMF said economic activity had exceeded expectations, citing “sustained improvements in security and investor confidence” as macroeconomic imbalances continued to be addressed.

“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 IMF said. Waivers are a standard mechanism in IMF lending programs, allowing a country to keep drawing on a facility despite missing agreed targets.

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

The statement follows an IMF comment in September that El Salvador was not buying Bitcoin. The country’s Bitcoin Office has repeatedly said that it does purchase the cryptocurrency. The IMF said in September that, at least for a period, El Salvador had not been using public funds to accumulate Bitcoin and had instead received Bitcoin through private donations. The dueling public accounts have left the extent of the state’s bitcoin purchases an open question.

In 2022, President Nayib Bukele said El Salvador would purchase one Bitcoin per day. However, it was never clear where the funding came from or whether the purchases were actually taking place.

El Salvador and the IMF entered into a $1.4 billion loan agreement at the end of December. Under the agreement, the fund asked the country to scale back certain elements of its Bitcoin strategy, formally tying bitcoin policy to the country’s access to international financing. How the country’s bitcoin commitments are judged in future program reviews is likely to remain a focal point as the loan proceeds.

In 2021, the Salvadoran state gave Bitcoin to citizens and launched a wallet in an effort to encourage cryptocurrency use in the dollarized economy. Bukele acknowledged in 2024 that Salvadorans were not using Bitcoin to make purchases as much as expected, while continuing to say that the government was accumulating satoshis — a practice that sits in tension with the Fund’s push to wind down state involvement.

This article first appeared in Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Mathew Di Salvo: IMF Praises El Salvador — But Still Tries To Scale Back Its Bitcoin Project.