The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, must truly believe in bitcoin. Undeterred by the hefty losses incurred by his controversial strategy of using public money to invest in bitcoin, Bukele told his constituents late Wednesday that the tiny Central American country will begin accumulating the benchmark cryptocurrency at a pace of 1 BTC per day.
The strategy of purchasing 1 BTC on a daily basis will be replicated by another optimistic long-term bitcoin investor Justin Sun — Tron founder and the ambassador of the Caribbean island of Grenada.
1 BTC Per Day
El Salvador and Justin Sun are adding to their bitcoin coffers amid crypto’s latest mayhem.
In a Nov. 16 tweet, President Nayib Bukele announced that El Salvador would start purchasing one bitcoin every day from Nov. 17. The announcement comes roughly three and a half months after the nation scooped up its last bitcoin in July 2022, buying 80 BTC at $19,000 per coin.
El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognize bitcoin as a legal tender in September 2021. Since then, President Bukele has frequently acquired bitcoin, often taking advantage of sharp market retraces despite his country’s plummeting economic growth.
To date, the country has spent around $103 million on 2,381 BTC at an average price of $43,357 per unit. The crypto asset’s rocky price performance in recent months means the country’s holdings are worth circa $39 million, giving an unrealized loss of over $64 million.
Bukele, who once admitted he buys bitcoin on his phone while naked, has been slammed by everyone from the U.S. lawmakers — who called the Bitcoin Law a “careless gamble”— to large international monetary institutions like the World Bank and the IMF.
Justin Sun To Take A Leaf Out Of El Salvador’s Book
Like Bukele, Tron’s Justin Sun doesn’t seem too concerned about BTC’s short-term price fluctuations. Shortly after the Salvadoran president’s announcement, Sun stated that “we will also buy one bitcoin every day starting tomorrow.”
The Chinese entrepreneur’s Tron DAO Reserve, a community-oriented body that has managed the Tron ecosystem since Sun resigned as CEO in December 2021, has accumulated millions in BTC, Tron’s token TRX, and popular stablecoins USDT and USDC as collateral backing the USDD stablecoin. USDD is currently overcollateralized with a collateral ratio of 206.28%, meaning the reserve has enough to buoy USDD in case of a sell-off.
After Bukele promised investors a geothermal-powered Bitcoin City and bitcoin-backed billion-dollar bonds, he is now promising to acquire 1 bitcoin every day. The first two did not happen.
Time will tell whether Sun follows through on his BTC promise amid fears that FTX’s epic collapse could likely lead to an extended crypto winter.
Read the full article here
Discussion about this post