El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that the country would start buying Bitcoin on a daily basis from Nov. 18, and likened the collapse of FTX to a Ponzi scheme.
“We are buying one Bitcoin every day starting tomorrow,” Bukele said in a post on Twitter. Prior to introducing Bitcoin as legal tender last year, El Salvador started putting Bitcoin on its books. The Central American country currently holds about 2,381 Bitcoin. However, at an average purchase price of roughly $43,000, it has accumulated a loss of $54 million.
Bukele Still Bullish on Bitcoin
While the recent events surrounding the FTX collapse have led many to distance themselves from cryptocurrencies, President Bukele felt differently. He used the incident as an opportunity to strengthen his case for Bitcoin adoption.
“FTX is the opposite of Bitcoin,” he said. Bukele then likened FTX to a Ponzi scheme, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried to infamous fraudster Bernie Madoff. “Bitcoin’s protocol was created precisely to prevent… bailouts and wealth reassignments,” he argued.
However, Bukele may see the recent depreciation, due to the effects of the FTX collapse, as a buying opportunity. The price of Bitcoin fell over 20% over the course of events last week, from $21,000 to $17,000.
The Right Time to Buy Bitcoin?
Tron founder and Huobi advisor Justin Sun seemed to share Bukele’s enthusiasm. Shortly after the president’s post, Sun said that Tron DAO reserve would also purchase one Bitcoin per day.
But while larger institutions may feel the time is right to buy more Bitcoin, can the same be said for retail investors? Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao doesn’t seem to think so.
Earlier this week, Zhao advised investors against buying cryptocurrency during this unstable period, but said they should continue to hold. “Unless you’re very experienced, very mature, very confident, and can handle the risk, I would recommend most people just hold for this period of time,” Zhao said.
However, Zhao acknowledged that the depreciation in crypto prices made it easier to support struggling firms with his recovery fund. Earlier, the Binance CEO said it would launch a recovery fund to support quality crypto companies affected by the FTX collapse. “We actually think that this is a pretty good time to do it because most of these projects’ valuations are much more reasonable than they were a year ago,” he said.
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