In early 2025 the IMF Executive Board approved a new 40-month Extended Fund Facility for El Salvador worth about $1.4 billion. In exchange, the country agreed to scale back the bitcoin policy that had made it the world's first nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, including making acceptance voluntary for businesses.
Lawmakers moved quickly to pass the required reforms after the deal was struck.
Ambition meets fiscal reality
The retreat was a sober counterpoint to the triumphalism that surrounded El Salvador's original experiment. It showed that even committed bitcoin advocates must reconcile crypto ambition with the demands of international lenders, a nuance often lost in the louder narratives on both sides.
Adoption, adjusted
Retaining a treasury position while narrowing mandatory acceptance is a pragmatic retreat rather than a reversal, driven by financing needs.
The domestic usage data was always the weak point of the experiment, and it remains the honest measure of whether the policy worked.
