El Salvador's 2021 Bitcoin Law made it the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender; the January 2025 amendments, enacted to satisfy the IMF's $1.4 billion program, walked the experiment back to voluntary status. Private acceptance is now optional, taxes are paid in dollars, and public-sector participation in bitcoin activity was confined, though the government's Bitcoin Office has continued adding to the national bitcoin holdings, a point of running friction in IMF reviews. The Chivo wallet's public role has been unwound.
What remains is a full digital asset framework built for issuance: the 2023 Digital Assets Issuance Law created the National Commission of Digital Assets (CNAD), licensing digital asset service providers and registering public offerings, with tax exemptions designed to attract issuers, and a companion volcano-bond architecture that has produced tokenized instruments. El Salvador today is less a legal-tender story than a small, permissive issuance jurisdiction with a sovereign bitcoin position.
The instruments
Bitcoin Law, as amended
Originally mandated bitcoin acceptance as legal tender; the 2025 amendments make acceptance voluntary, require tax payment in US dollars, and limit public-sector bitcoin activity, aligning the law with El Salvador's IMF program.
Digital Assets Issuance Law
Creates CNAD as regulator, licenses digital asset service providers, registers public digital asset offerings, and grants tax exemptions on digital asset issuance and transfers to attract issuers, including the sovereign tokenized-bond program.