El Salvador’s finance minister Alejandro Zelaya responded to the recent media attacks on the country’s bitcoin (BTC) investment strategy by calling tax risk claims “extremely superficial.”
During a press conference on Monday, Zelaya answered a reporter’s question about the government’s reaction to the sharp decline of bitcoin in an emotional way:
“There is therefore a clear criticism of bitcoin, not El Salvador’s strategy. El Salvador is the least they are interested in, them [l’organe de presse] they do not care what happens to our economy, they do not care what happens to our people, what happens to inflation ”.
The improper claims claim that the fall in cryptocurrency rates from the highest point at which El Salvador bought its first share for $ 60,300 per BTC in a month was about $ 40 million lost from the country’s budget. October 2021. Zelaya mentioned on. the hypothetical possibility of a BTC rebound:
“I have often said: An estimated loss of $ 40 million did not occur because we did not sell the bitcoins.”
Zelaya also rejected assumptions about high tax risk, calling them laughing and ignorant, calling the risk “very small”.
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El Salvador currently has 2,301 bitcoins, that’s about $ 50 million as of this writing. In fiat equivalent, this is less than half of the money the nation has invested in bitcoin through its purchases in October 2021 and May 2022, when it was worth $ 30,700 BTC.
Like the broader cryptocurrency market, BTC has been declining since it peaked in November 2021 (around $ 69,000), with the downturn accelerating over the past month and a half following a series of shocks as Terra failed. and fiasco of. DeFi’s major lender, Celsius, as well as the rise in global inflation.