El Salvador President Nayib Bukele rejected a report that his government transferred the country’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to a private operator under a new understanding with the IMF (International Monetary Fund), saying the report confused Chivo’s ownership with sovereign Bitcoin holdings. The dispute followed IMF press release no. 26/285 on September 3, 2026, which described a staff-level agreement on the combined second and third reviews of El Salvador’s 40-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF), an IMF lending program for countries with medium-term balance-of-payments needs. Board approval would release around $140 million, or SDR 101.96 million. The IMF said majority ownership and operational control of the Chivo e-wallet had been transferred to an unnamed private operator, while the government retained a minority stake and custody of customer assets. Separately, it said authorities had documented that Bitcoin accumulated since the first review came from private donations, with no public resources used, and that no further accumulation beyond those donations was expected. El País interpreted the ownership language as applying to more than 7,763 government-held cryptocurrencies worth more than $632 million. Bukele called that interpretation totally false and said it referred only to Chivo shares, not the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Government tracker figures put the reserve at about 7,764 BTC on September 4, 2026, up from roughly 5,968 BTC when the EFF was formalized in late 2024. The IMF agreement requires voluntary private-sector Bitcoin acceptance, dollar tax payments, limits on voluntary public-sector accumulation and the wind-down of public participation in Chivo. The staff-level deal remains subject to Executive Board approval and agreed prior actions; a forthcoming staff report is expected to provide further documentation.