El Salvador becomes a big BTC whale and closes 2021 with 1,400 BTC

Among the many news for the cryptocurrency market in 2021 is the recognition of the BTC as legal tender in El Salvador. Furthermore, the Central American nation has become a veritable BTC whale accumulating many Bitcoin in the nation’s reserves.

El Salvador BTC whale

And, in what could be its last BTC purchase (BTC) for the year 2021, El Salvador acquired another 21 Bitcoins on Tuesday (21).

The new operation raised the BTC reserves accumulated by the Central American country to 1,391 units.

THE announcement it was made by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who used his Twitter account to communicate BTC’s official purchases.

The approximately 1,391 BTCs owned by the country are derived from the cumulative number of 8 tweets posted by Bukele between September 6th and December 21st of this year.

However, the value can be higher or lower as no information about the operations was found on the official websites of the government of El Salvador, nor a public BTC wallet with the values.

Got the receipt. https://t.co/WONLH85KIy pic.twitter.com/BDq076JNKa

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) December 22, 2021

Little transparency

Although the blockchain is a transparency mechanism, the same cannot be said of El Salvador that does not make public information about the management of BTC reserves in its possession.

Therefore, given the limited information, the forbes pointed that the company BitGo, an institutional platform for the custody of digital assets, would be the “exclusive provider” of liquidity for the official Chivo portfolio.

At the same time, the Bitso cryptocurrency exchange also said it would be the main provider of the Chivo portfolio, and that it would support operations in both BTC and dollars.

None of the information has been denied or confirmed by any Salvadoran government spokesperson.

Furthermore, other details about the El Salvador operation are also unknown. This includes whether the State has delegated custody of the official BTC to a third party, whether it keeps its reserves in cool wallets, or whether it has control of private keys.

The information is relevant because BitGo is headquartered in the United States, a country with which Bukele had some differences during his tenure.

This implies that, in a hypothetical conflict scenario, there would be a risk of confiscation of the El Salvador BTC that are in BitGo.