Sani, an analyst specializing in on-chain data, has released findings that seem to corroborate the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) claims regarding El Salvador’s alleged bitcoin acquisitions. Despite this, the nation continues to publicly announce each addition of BTC as a purchase through its Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) social media channels.
El Salvador’s Bitcoin Acquisitions Face Investigation: Evidence of ‘Shuffling’ Emerges
As a trailblazer in adopting bitcoin as legal tender and establishing a reserve for it, El Salvador is currently under examination for its supposed bitcoin purchases. President Bukele has asserted that his government will “never cease” buying bitcoin; however, on-chain analytics indicate that the country may be redistributing bitcoins among its wallets.
On September 9, Sani—who founded the Time Chain Index platform—discovered what he termed “bitcoin recycling” activities. He highlighted that an address associated with El Salvador’s purported purchases (3KhF5JyMkTtViu2jnp5rffedQbVjydRYKC) withdrew 63 BTC from Binance, which is linked to these transactions.
Sani explained that there were transfers from this address to Binance followed by withdrawals back to addresses owned by El Salvador. Notably, on September 7—when Bukele announced the acquisition of 21 BTC in celebration of Bitcoin Day—the same address directly sent those 21 BTC to the country’s wallets.
Given these observations, Sani posed an important question:
This prompts us to ask: Is the nation simply moving Bitcoin between wallets while transferring just 1 BTC daily into its Strategic Reserve Wallet? An official statement is required.
The debate surrounding these bitcoin transactions isn’t new. On July 18th during a compliance report presentation, the IMF stated that El Salvador was consolidating bitcoins across multiple governmental wallets—a claim later reiterated by Julie Kozack from IMF’s Communications Department during a press briefing.
Despite this scrutiny and allegations circulating about their practices with bitcoin acquisitions, government representatives—including those managing The National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC)—have not provided any clarifications and continue framing these movements as legitimate purchases.
Read more: One-Two: IMF Reiterates That El Salvador Is Just Shuffling Bitcoin
Read more: Latam Insights Encore: El Salvador Should Clarify Bitcoin Shuffling Allegations