El Salvador’s finance minister, Alejandro Zelaya, has responded to recent criticism from the media regarding the small Central American country’s investments in Bitcoin (BTC). Zelaya describes the allegations as “extremely superficial”.
The corresponding statements were made by the Minister of Finance on Monday at a press conference. In response to a question about the ongoing weakness of the market-leading cryptocurrency, Zelaya responds:
“There are legitimate criticisms of Bitcoin as such, but not of El Salvador’s strategy. El Salvador is of no interest to the media. You are not interested in our economy, you are not interested in our population, you are not interested in what inflation means for us.“
Accordingly, the minister also defends himself against the accusations that almost 40 million US dollars were destroyed from the state budget of El Salvador due to the drop in the price of Bitcoin, because the country started its investment strategy in October 2021, when the Bitcoin price was still at a whopping 60,300 US dollars. Rather, Zelaya points to the possibility that things could go up again for the crypto market leader in the long term:
“I have said it many times: a possible loss of 40 million US dollars has never occurred, because we have never sold our Bitcoin.“
At the same time, the government member finds the allegations regarding the financial risk posed by the crypto investment strategy “ignorant and ridiculous”, because the risk of this strategy would actually be “extremely low”.
El Salvador currently holds 2,301 Bitcoin, which at the time of writing correspond to an equivalent of 50 million US dollars. Thus, the previous investments are now worth only half as much as at the prices in October 2021 and May 2022, when the large purchases were made in each case.
