In brief
- U.S. Democratic senators want to investigate El Salvador’s government.
- But Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele mocked the politicians’ bill in a social media post.
- U.S. authorities are concerned about alleged crypto corruption in the Central American country.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele was defending his country’s crypto-friendly policies and taunting foreign leaders again on X this week, with U.S. Democratic senators being his latest target.
In a pithy X post on Tuesday, Bukele mocked a bill submitted by Senators Tim Kaine (Virginia), Chris Van Hollen (Maryland), and Alex Padilla (California) in June to probe his country’s use of cryptocurrency and consider sanctioning him.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA the Dems are just salty,” Bukele wrote.
The “El Salvador Accountability Act of 2025” proposes investigating the Salvadoran government’s cryptocurrency use as a tool for “regime corruption.” It would also require the country’s assets to be frozen.
President Bukele has frequently mocked foreign authorities on social media in the past, including the International Monetary Fund and the Venezuelan government. The eccentric leader’s response comes as he cozies up to President Donald Trump, who has controversially used El Salvador’s mega-prison to hold some people deported from the United States.
Still, despite President Bukele’s budding bromance with Trump, Democrats are pressing for an “assessment of whether Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies have been used in El Salvador as a vector to evade financial sanctions imposed on other countries.”
El Salvador in 2021 made Bitcoin legal tender along with the U.S. dollar. The new law meant that businesses had to accept the cryptocurrency if they had the technological means to do so.
After a tiff with the International Monetary Fund, with whom El Salvador was negotiating a development grant, President Bukele agreed to scale back the law. Now, businesses no longer have to accept the digital asset as payment.
Still, Bukele—a hardcore Bitcoin supporter—has continued buying the cryptocurrency for the country’s coffers, drawing ire from some foreign politicians.
The Salvadoran government was initially opaque about its crypto buys, with blockchain sleuths previously just using Bukele’s cheeky tweets to tally up Bitcoin holdings.
Bukele has since shared a BTC address that currently holds 6,232 BTC, according to Arkham Intelligence data. That’s $690 million worth of orange coins at today’s prices. Bitcoin surged to a new all-time high price above $112,000 on Wednesday, and has currently settled to a mark just north of $111,000 per CoinGecko.
Despite ongoing outside criticism that Bukele has created an authoritarian government, Bukele remains popular. A June poll from a newspaper in the country gave him an approval rating of 8.5 out of 10.
The Salvadoran government’s press department didn’t immediately respond to Decrypt‘s request for comment.
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