IMF waives El Salvador's Bitcoin breach: why it's not the bullish signal it looks like

The useful part

IMF waives El Salvador's Bitcoin breach, but that's no bid for Bitcoin The International Monetary Fund has released $139 million to El Salvador after waiving the country's breach of limits on its Bitcoin holdings. The headline sounds friendly to Bitcoin, but I think it points the other way. According to Bloomberg, the IMF Executive Board completed the combined second and third reviews of El Salvador's $1.4 billion Extended Fund Facility on 1 October.

How it works

• The board acknowledged that El Salvador missed some programme performance criteria, including those tied to its Bitcoin holdings, which grew beyond agreed limits after the first review.
• The board's wording is sharper: it formally recorded a breach and chose to forgive it.
• September has been that no further accumulation is expected beyond the documented donations.
• El Salvador's additions have also been small and steady, a rounding error next to Bitcoin ETF flows, which can run into hundreds of millions of dollars in a single session.

What to take from it

September, the coverage read as the fund being satisfied on Bitcoin.

Details worth keeping

The decision made the $139 million available immediately. That distinction matters, but not in the way the headlines suggest. Even at its old pace, the country would not move the market.