El Salvador Gets $138M IMF Tranche After Bitcoin Waiver

The International Monetary Fund released $138 million to El Salvador on October 1, 2026, after waiving a loan condition the country had breached by continuing to add Bitcoin to its reserves. The money is part of a $1.4 billion, 40-month lending program that requires El Salvador to keep shrinking the government's direct role in cryptocurrency.

What the IMF actually approved

The IMF's Executive Board completed the combined Second and Third Reviews of El Salvador's Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement, the lender said in its own release. Completion of these reviews allows for an immediate disbursement of SDR 101.96 million (about US$138 million). An SDR, or Special Drawing Right, is the IMF's internal accounting unit based on a basket of major currencies, which is why the dollar figure is described as approximate rather than exact.

The International Monetary Fund approved the immediate disbursement of about $138 million to El Salvador under the country's $1.4 billion financing program, despite some performance criteria being missed, Cointelegraph reported. Bloomberg's coverage of the same board decision put the number slightly higher: the International Monetary Fund approved a $139 million disbursement to El Salvador after granting a waiver for the government's breach of a condition limiting further Bitcoin accumulation. The one-million-dollar gap is not a factual dispute so much as a rounding difference in how each outlet converted the IMF's own SDR figure into dollars; the Fund's press release itself cites $138 million as the approximate value of the SDR 101.96 million disbursed.

The underlying program is sizable relative to El Salvador's economy. Approved on February 26, 2025, the Extended Fund Facility spans 40 months and offers total access of roughly $1.4 billion, according to Cryptonomist's review of the arrangement's terms. This disbursement is the latest tranche released under that facility, not a new or separate loan.

Why a performance target was missed, and what the waiver covers

IMF reviews check whether a borrowing country has hit specific numerical and structural targets, called performance criteria, before releasing the next slice of money. This time, El Salvador fell short on at least one of them. Certain performance criteria were not met, including on the Bitcoin accumulation front, for which waivers were granted based on strong corrective measures and renewed commitments, the IMF said. A waiver does not erase the missed target; it is the Fund's decision to keep disbursing funds anyway because it judges the country's corrective steps sufficient.

Those corrective steps, per the IMF, include winding down state control of crypto infrastructure. Important progress has been achieved in financial sector reforms, fiscal transparency, AML/CFT reforms, and the transfer of majority ownership and control of the government e-wallet Chivo to a private operator. Chivo is the government-built digital wallet El Salvador launched alongside its 2021 Bitcoin legal-tender law; moving majority ownership to a private operator reduces the state's direct footprint in the app that holds citizens' Bitcoin and dollars.

Going forward, the IMF says it expects the government's Bitcoin-buying to be essentially over. Efforts will continue to reduce the state's involvement in Bitcoin-related activities, strengthen crypto-asset regulation and governance, and enhance transparency regarding public-sector crypto-asset holdings. No further Bitcoin accumulation is envisaged beyond the documented donations.

An unresolved contradiction about who is buying Bitcoin

There is a gap between what the IMF has said about the source of El Salvador's added Bitcoin and what the country's own crypto office has claimed. The IMF in September said that El Salvador wasn't buying bitcoin; the country's Bitcoin Office has repeatedly said that it does buy the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Magazine reported. Cointelegraph's earlier reporting sheds light on the IMF's side of that claim: Cointelegraph reported on Sept. 4 that El Salvador used no public resources to accumulate Bitcoin after the first review of its IMF financing program in June 2025, according to the lender. The IMF said documents supplied by Salvadoran authorities verified that the accumulation came from private donations. According to the lender, the increase in El Salvador's holdings therefore did not reflect additional Bitcoin purchases financed with government resources. Neither side's full accounting of transactions is public, so readers cannot independently verify which characterization is more complete; it remains a real disagreement between the IMF's verification process and the Bitcoin Office's public statements, not a resolved fact.

One separate data point on the size of the reserve comes from Bitcoin.com's reporting, which should be read as a single-source figure rather than an IMF-confirmed total: El Salvador expanded its reserve to 7,792 BTC via private donations, continuing to test IMF limits.

What this means for readers following El Salvador's Bitcoin policy

For anyone tracking El Salvador as a test case for government Bitcoin adoption, the practical takeaway is that the experiment is being narrowed rather than reversed or expanded. The IMF is not forcing El Salvador to sell its existing Bitcoin or abandon the 2021 legal-tender law; it is pressing the government to stop adding to its holdings with public money and to move operational crypto infrastructure like Chivo out of direct state hands. Whether that satisfies the IMF in future reviews will depend on verification the Fund has not yet published in detail.

This disbursement also says little about Bitcoin's price or demand. The waiver forgives a past rule breach tied to donated coins; it does not create new institutional buying, and nothing in the IMF's statement or the reporting reviewed here ties the release of funds to any change in Bitcoin's market price.