{"id":1141,"date":"2025-12-23T09:32:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T09:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/?p=1141"},"modified":"2025-12-23T10:30:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T10:30:47","slug":"el-salvador-and-imf-edge-closer-to-a-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/el-salvador-and-imf-edge-closer-to-a-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"El Salvador and IMF Edge Closer to a Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"coinyec-live-price-widget\" data-id=\"bitcoin\">Loading price for bitcoin...<\/div>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>As of December 22, 2025, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/en\/news\/articles\/2025\/12\/22\/pr25440-el-salvador-imf-staff-statement-on-el-salvador\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/en\/news\/articles\/2025\/12\/22\/pr25440-el-salvador-imf-staff-statement-on-el-salvador\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">IMF and El Salvador<\/a> are in &#8220;advanced negotiations&#8221; regarding the second review of their $1.4 billion loan program.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Discussions are centered on the <strong>sale of the government-run &#8220;Chivo&#8221; wallet<\/strong>, signaling a move to privatize or unwind the state&#8217;s direct role in crypto infrastructure.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>While the IMF pushes for &#8220;mitigating risks,&#8221; reports indicate El Salvador continues to buy 1 Bitcoin daily, with treasury holdings exceeding 7,500 BTC.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The talks aim to finalize a staff-level agreement that balances President Bukele\u2019s Bitcoin adoption with the fiscal discipline required for international financing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The IMF and President Nayib Bukele have been playing diplomatic poker for a long time, and it has reached a crucial new level. On December 22, 2025, the IMF said talks are &#8220;well advanced&#8221; to sell Chivo, the state-sponsored Bitcoin wallet that was the country&#8217;s crypto experiment flagship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IMF has warned for years that government exposure to Bitcoin price changes threatens financial stability. By considering selling or privatizing Chivo infrastructure, El Salvador appears to be making a strategic move. This would legalize Bitcoin without government interference in the &#8220;casino floor.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">&#8220;Mitigating Risks&#8221; vs. &#8220;Buying the Dip&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the progress on the Chivo wallet, the ideological chasm remains wide. The IMF&#8217;s statement highlighted that discussions are still ongoing regarding the broader &#8220;Bitcoin project,&#8221; specifically focusing on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Transparency:<\/strong> Demanding clear accounting of government Bitcoin trades (which have often been opaque).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Risk Mitigation:<\/strong> Limiting the public sector&#8217;s exposure to crypto assets.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Voluntariness:<\/strong> Ensuring that the &#8220;mandatory&#8221; acceptance clause of the original Bitcoin Law remains effectively voluntary in practice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But what happens on the ground tells a different story. Just days before the IMF statement, news broke that <a href=\"https:\/\/moss.sh\/news\/el-salvador-doubles-down-on-bitcoin-buys-another-1000-btc\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/moss.sh\/news\/el-salvador-doubles-down-on-bitcoin-buys-another-1000-btc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">El Salvador had bought another 1,000 BTC,<\/a> and the National Bitcoin Office is still running its &#8220;1 Bitcoin a day&#8221; program. This makes things tense because Bukele is trying to get a traditional fiat lifeline ($1.4 billion loan) while also doubling down on the asset class that the lender is most afraid of. The IMF wasn&#8217;t all bad news, which is interesting. The fund praised El Salvador&#8217;s economy, saying that it is growing &#8220;faster than expected&#8221; and that real GDP is expected to grow by 4% by 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coinpub.net\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=1706&amp;action=edit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The IMF and President Nayib Bukele have been playing diplomatic poker for a long time, and it has reached a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crypto-legal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1144,"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions\/1144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starlavinia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}