163 sats \ 5 replies \ @kr 24 Jan 2023 \ on: Someone bought $800M of El Salvador's debt bitcoin
looks like they paid off $800m of debt, rather than issuing $800m of debt.
Surely they issued 800m of new debt to pay off the old loan? I'm wondering who put up the cash for the new debt
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Not necessarily. $800 million is $130/person, out of a GDP of $4600/person×year. Plausible they actually paid off that debt.
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I'm pretty sure they took a loan from a more local institution, the interamerican bank for development or something like that for about $450M. They had also bought back some $200M of their debt since late last year so the repayment today was closer to $600M plus interest. Combined with the loan and just regular government revenues, it seems entirely possible that they haven't issued bonds of any kind
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This article says they got a loan from "Central American Bank for Economic Integration": https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/bukele-says-el-salvador-repaid-maturing-bond-dodging-default
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Thanks! No idea who they are, but almost certainly a better setup than the IMF.
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