El Salvador president Bukele down 15% on Bitcoin, despite buying the dip
El Salvador president Nayib Bukele keeps “buying the Bitcoin dip,” but so far it hasn’t paid off.
Bukele began acquiring Bitcoin earlier this month — just before El Salvador ratified the cryptocurrency as legal tender on September 7.
Bitcoin tanked a pearl-clutching 15% that day, despite the crypto community’s pledge to spend $30 on BTC in solidarity with El Salvadorans (who could unlock that amount by signing up to Bukele’s Chivo app).
Protos calculates Bukele spent around $28.5 million on his first three buys, which amounted to 550 BTC.
Bukele disclosed those purchases in quick succession from the evening of September 6 through to the following afternoon.
The self-styled “coolest dictator in the world” was then likely to have spent a touch under $6.6 million on another 150 BTC on Monday.
Altogether, we estimate Bukele bought El Salvador’s 700 BTC for around $35.1 million.
That works out to be an average price of $50,150 per Bitcoin.
But Bitcoin, under pressure from wider market jitters attributed to collapsing Chinese property developer Evergrande, currently trades at $43,000.
Bukele hasn’t disclosed the exact prices at which he bought. Still, it’s likely El Salvador is currently underwater by 15% on their Bitcoin (now worth $30 million).
So, Bukele is down $5 million in his first two weeks of Bitcoin investing at press time.
Read more: [Read this before criticizing El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender]
Of course, as always with crypto, anything could happen at any time.
But if Bitcoin continues to fall and enters bear market territory — Bukele’s penchant for “buying the dip” could become a very public tutorial in Dollar-Cost Averaging.
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