At current prices, the country's investment in Bitcoin two years ago is now worth more than $100 million.
The meteoric rise of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin has delighted many investors. But perhaps few are as happy as Mr. Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who publicly announced that his country was buying Bitcoin from 2021 and was also one of the few countries to recognize this cryptocurrency.
According to data from SpotOnChain, the country currently holds nearly 6,000 Bitcoin tokens. At the current price of around $87,000, the country’s cryptocurrency holdings are worth around $516 million – equivalent to a profit of $100 million. Of course, that figure is not yet realized as Mr. Bukele said he has not sold yet.
When Mr. Bukele publicly announced El Salvador’s Bitcoin purchase, many international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned that Bitcoin could destabilize the country’s economy. That same year, Bloomberg declared the country’s Bitcoin experiment a failure.
So, when witnessing Bitcoin set a new, unprecedented high price, Mr. Bukele did not miss this opportunity to mock his critics. On his X account, Mr. Bukele said: "I told you so."
In fact, despite bringing in $100 million in profits, the $500 million in Bitcoin that El Salvador is holding only accounts for about 1.5% of the country's GDP.
It turns out that another country holds more Bitcoin than El Salvador: Bhutan, a small Asian country with a population of just 800,000. According to data from Arkham Intelligence, the country holds around 12,574 Bitcoin tokens, which at current prices is worth $1.1 billion.
More importantly, this value represents more than a third of Bhutan’s GDP, which is less than $3 billion a year. The country’s cryptocurrency holdings come not only from purchases but also from Bitcoin mining, given the country’s abundance of hydropower. According to Arkham data, Bhutan is the fourth largest holder of Bitcoin in the world.
