El Salvador, which adopted bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, has decided to transfer part of its bitcoins to a cold wallet.
El Salvador will set aside thousands of bitcoins worth $407 million, while the cryptocurrency is near its record levels, President Nayib Bukele announced Thursday on his X account (ex-Twitter). “We have decided to transfer a large portion of our bitcoins to a cold wallet and store this cold wallet in a physical vault on our national territory,” the president said.
“You can call it our first bitcoin piggy bank,” he added. A cold wallet protects cryptocurrency investments by keeping them offline to prevent hacks.
Nayib Bukele shared a screenshot of the investment showing a total of 5,689.7 bitcoins, with a valuation of $406.6 million. “It’s not much, but it’s honest work,” he said, while bitcoin exceeded $73,000 on Thursday before falling again since then, still buoyed by the fallout from the launch of a new investment product indexed to its price on the American markets.
In September 2021, El Salvador was the first country in the world to adopt it as one of its legal currencies. But cryptocurrency has not convinced the entire population: according to a survey by the University of Central America (UCA), 88% of Salvadorans did not use it in their transactions in 2023.
Source: https://www.bfmtv.com/crypto/bitcoin/le-salvador-va-mettre-de-cote-plus-de-400-millions-de-dollars-en-bitcoins_AV-202403150355.html
