Did Bukele lie about El Salvador’s bitcoin profits?

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—by Protos Staff

El Salvador president Nayib Bukele recently announced on X that his country’s bitcoin investments “are in the black!” However, the unofficial tracker he relied on was not accurately reporting the holdings.

In the tweet, Bukele includes a picture of a graph from ‘nayibtracker.com,’ an unofficial website that has attempted to track the value of El Salvador’s bitcoin portfolio. This website makes it clear that it is not affiliated with the Salvadoran government and that “the data is based on estimates and probably not 100% correct.”

This was demonstrated when X user Pledditor pointed out that the website was double-counting Bukele’s daily bitcoin purchases. 

Read more: This Bukele lobbyist now works for Tether too

The creator of the tool responded to acknowledge that it was mistaken and corrected it. This sent Bukele’s portfolio briefly back into the red before the continuing increase in bitcoin’s price pushed it back into the black.

The more troubling implication of this reveal is that Bukele apparently doesn’t have access to a more accurate accounting of the quantity and value of bitcoin that El Salvador has purchased and is instead relying on third-party tools like this.

Compounding this problem, Bukele and the Salvadoran government have yet to provide public verification of its bitcoin portfolio. 

Protos has reached out to the office of the Presidency of the Republic of El Salvador to ask why Bukele was relying on this tool and to ask for disclosure of current bitcoin holdings and the acquisition price.

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