El Salvador's Bitcoin Reserve: One Address, Then Fourteen
El Salvador — National Bitcoin Office (ONBTC) Reserve
3°
this address's ancestry traces 3 degrees to the earliest coins
In March 2024 El Salvador became the first state to publish the on-chain address holding its bitcoin reserve, making the position auditable by anyone. In August 2025 its National Bitcoin Office broke that single address into fourteen, citing long-run quantum risk from address reuse.
El Salvador's Bitcoin Law was approved by the Legislative Assembly by 62 of 84 votes in an overnight session on 8-9 June 2021, and took effect on 7 September 2021. Article 7 obliged every economic agent to accept bitcoin when offered; Article 14 required a trust at the state development bank BANDESAL to guarantee automatic and instantaneous convertibility of bitcoin to dollars. Notably, the law said nothing about the state itself accumulating bitcoin. The reserve that followed was a matter of executive practice, not statute.
The institution that now curates it came later. The Oficina Nacional del Bitcoin (ONBTC) was created by Executive Decree No. 49, published in the Official Gazette on 17 November 2022 and signed by President Nayib Bukele and the Minister of Tourism, as a specialised administrative unit with functional and technical autonomy inside the office of the president. Stacy Herbert directs it. On 16 November 2022 Bukele announced the country would begin buying one bitcoin per day; holdings were reported at 2,381 BTC.
For its first years the reserve was unauditable: there were figures, but no address. That changed on 15 March 2024, when Bukele published 32ixEdVJWo3kmvJGMTZq5jAQVZZeuwnqzo and said 5,689 BTC had been moved into cold storage held in a physical vault within national territory, what he called the country's "first Bitcoin piggy bank." On-chain, that address took its first deposit, 1,120.99980025 BTC, in block 834,426, mined 13 March 2024, two days before the announcement. In May 2024 the ONBTC put up bitcoin.gob.sv, a self-hosted mempool explorer, making the position watchable in real time.
Transparency then met the IMF. On 18 December 2024 staff reached agreement on a 40-month, $1.4bn Extended Fund Facility; on 29 January 2025 the Assembly amended the Bitcoin Law by 55 votes to 2, modifying six articles and repealing three. Acceptance became voluntary, bitcoin could no longer settle taxes, and the state withdrew from the Chivo wallet. The Executive Board approved the programme on 26 February 2025 with an initial disbursement of roughly $113m. A condition barred voluntary accumulation of bitcoin by the public sector. The ONBTC kept announcing purchases anyway; on 4 March 2025 Bukele posted that it was "not stopping." Reported holdings moved from 6,101.15 BTC on 4 March 2025 to 6,189.18 BTC by late May, when the Fund said "efforts will continue" to hold the position flat. Whether that growth reflects new buying is genuinely contested. IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack has attributed the on-chain increase to consolidation across government-owned wallets, "notably from a BANDESAL cold-storage address," maintaining that total state-controlled holdings were unchanged. The ONBTC has continued to present the same movements as accumulation. Both accounts can be true of the same transactions, which is part of why the disagreement has proved durable.
Transparency also carried a technical cost, and in 2025 the office named it. A reused address publishes its public keys the moment it spends. On 29 August 2025, in block 912,321, a single transaction took 41 inputs from the published vault address and paid out fourteen fresh P2SH outputs: twelve of exactly 500 BTC, one of 282.68984412 BTC and one of 0.49303156 BTC, 6,283.18287568 BTC in all, for a fee of 21,337 satoshis. The ONBTC said the move aligned with best practice and "prepares for potential developments in quantum computing," reasoning that capping funds per address limits exposure because an unused address with only a hashed public key on chain stays protected. The dashboard was adapted to follow many addresses at once, keeping the audit trail while retiring address reuse.
Timeline
Details
The split, on-chain
Transaction fc4985f0b4127283b92b6235c54b6ff22b42595b3c2e6d88a648d105ea96fc1e, in block 912,321, consumed 41 inputs (all from the published vault address) and produced exactly 14 P2SH outputs: twelve of precisely 500.00000000 BTC, one of 282.68984412 BTC and one of 0.49303156 BTC. 6,283.18287568 BTC moved for a fee of 21,337 satoshis on a 7,603.5 vbyte transaction.
First deposit to the published vault
The address Bukele revealed received its opening deposit of 1,120.99980025 BTC in block 834,426, mined 13 March 2024 at 00:06 UTC, two days before the public announcement on 15 March.
The reserve has no statutory basis
The 2021 Bitcoin Law made bitcoin legal tender and required a BANDESAL trust guaranteeing convertibility to dollars, but contains no provision requiring or authorising the state to hold a bitcoin reserve. The reserve is executive practice.
The IMF's zero-accumulation condition
The Extended Fund Facility bars voluntary bitcoin accumulation by the public sector. The Fund said in May 2025 that "efforts will continue" to keep the position flat; reported holdings nonetheless rose from 6,101.15 BTC on 4 March 2025 to 6,189.18 BTC by late May.
Transparency created the quantum exposure
Publishing one address meant reusing it, and every spend from a reused address puts its public keys on chain. The ONBTC's stated fix was fresh, unused addresses capped at 500 BTC each, with the dashboard tracking all of them. Analysts quoted at the time called any practical quantum threat decades away.
What is and is not established. The 29 August 2025 split was verified directly against the transaction: block height, 41 inputs, 14 P2SH outputs, every output value, the 6,283.18287568 BTC total, the 21,337 satoshi fee and the 7,603.5 vbyte size all match the chain, as does the sole input address. The first deposit of 1,120.99980025 BTC in block 834,426 was confirmed as the earliest payment to that address.
Four points are genuinely uncertain or contested and are written as such. First, the date of the Bitcoin Law vote: the session ran past midnight and sources split between 8 and 9 June 2021 (Wikipedia says 9 June, the FREOPP full-text edition says 8 June), so the timeline gives both. Second, whether El Salvador has continued to buy bitcoin under the IMF programme: the IMF, through spokesperson Julie Kozack, attributes the rise in visible on-chain holdings to consolidation across government-owned wallets, notably from a BANDESAL cold-storage address, while the ONBTC presents the same movements as accumulation; no public evidence settles it. Third, the quantum rationale for the split is the ONBTC's stated reasoning, not an established technical necessity: no quantum attack on ECDSA is known to be feasible today, and Bernstein analysts quoted by The Block put any practical threat decades away. Fourth, the exact launch date of bitcoin.gob.sv is not pinned down; contemporaneous reports on 13 May 2024 describe it as newly announced, so "May 2024" is the safe claim.
A correction applied during checking: an earlier draft placed Bukele's "not stopping" remark as a reply to the IMF's May 2025 statement. It was posted on 4 March 2025 and has been re-dated. Attribution of the address 32ixEdVJWo3kmvJGMTZq5jAQVZZeuwnqzo rests on the government's own disclosure plus corroborating on-chain behaviour, not on independent proof of key control. Holdings figures are third-party reports at named dates and are not current; no address balance is stated.