5 years in the past yesterday, El Salvador’s Congress voted 62-to-22 to go the world’s first Bitcoin Legislation, making the small Central American nation the primary nation on earth to grant bitcoin authorized tender standing.
The date was June 8, 2021. Half a decade later, the federal government holds 7,677 BTC value roughly $480 million — and it’s nonetheless accumulating.
The nation has run a dollar-cost averaging technique since President Nayib Bukele introduced a coverage of buying one bitcoin per day in November 2022. Within the 12 months since June 2025, El Salvador added greater than 1,600 BTC to its stack, together with a tactical buy of over 1,000 BTC in a single week throughout a November market dip.
At the beginning of 2026, the Bitcoin Workplace declared the nation was going “all in” on each bitcoin and synthetic intelligence.
That conviction survived a serious coverage reversal. In January 2025, Bukele’s administration stripped bitcoin of its necessary authorized tender standing as a situation of a $1.4 billion IMF mortgage bundle. Companies are now not legally required to simply accept it, and the government-issued Chivo pockets — the centerpiece of Bukele’s authentic pitch — is being phased out.
However the authorities has not offered a single coin from its treasury and BTC continues to be ready for use as a forex for individuals who want to use it.
El Salvador: No taxes on bitcoin
El Salvador presents no capital beneficial properties tax on bitcoin or cryptocurrency transactions, a coverage the federal government doubled down on in early 2026 to court docket international traders. The nation can also be creating plans for a “Volcano Bond” backed by bitcoin and a proposed Bitcoin Metropolis powered by geothermal power.
The remittance case that Bukele used to promote the legislation to the general public has but to materialize at scale. El Salvador is likely one of the most remittance-dependent economies on the planet — private transfers from overseas equal roughly 24 p.c of GDP, with Q1 2026 totaling $2.43 billion. Crypto accounted for simply $17.38 million of that determine, or 0.71 p.c of the entire.