El Salvador President Nayib Bukele referred to as consideration to prediction markets amid rising bets that the nation’s Bitcoin holdings will hit $1 billion by year-end.
Bukele took to X on Wednesday to tweet about Kalshi’s prediction market, which exhibits rising betting exercise on El Salvador’s Bitcoin (BTC) holdings hitting $1 billion by late 2025.
“I might do the funniest factor proper now,” Bukele mentioned, as the percentages of El Salvador hitting a $1 billion Bitcoin milestone earlier than November jumped from 20% to 38% on Kalshi.
Quickly after Bukele’s submit, rival platform Polymarket listed the same guess, the place the percentages of a $1 billion Bitcoin milestone by December 2025 stood at 43%.
Kalshi monitoring the percentages since mid-August
Kalshi’s prediction market on El Salvador’s $1 billion Bitcoin holdings has been energetic since mid-August, with the “earlier than December 2025” guess holding close to 24% and “earlier than November 2025” hovering round 18% till the previous few days.
Following the spike to as excessive as 38%, the “earlier than November 2025” guess dropped to 27%, whereas the “earlier than December 2025” guess hovered round 35%.
Whereas Kalshi had been monitoring the percentages of El Salvador’s Bitcoin holdings reaching $1 billion for a number of days, rival platform Polymarket solely launched the same market following Bukele’s tweet.
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“New Polymarket: Will El Salvador maintain $1 billion of Bitcoin by…?” the platform posted on X simply hours after Bukele highlighted Kalshi’s market on Thursday.
Cointelegraph approached Kalshi and Polymarket for feedback relating to the market itemizing insurance policies, however had not obtained any responses by the point of publication.
Controversy round El Salvador’s Bitcoin holdings
Whereas Kalshi and Polymarket are set to capitalize on the rising optimism round El Salvador’s Bitcoin holdings, neither of the platforms created betting markets regarding a earlier controversy.
In July, El Salvador’s central financial institution president, Douglas Pablo Rodríguez Fuentes, and minister of finance, Jerson Rogelio Posada Molina, claimed that El Salvador had stopped shopping for Bitcoin after signing the $1.4 billion mortgage take care of the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) in 2024.
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Regardless of these claims being a part of El Salvador’s official communication with the IMF, Bukele and El Salvador’s Bitcoin Workplace continued tweeting about new Bitcoin purchases, with holdings at the moment being reported at 6,282 Bitcoin ($709 million).
As of now, neither Juan Carlos Reyes, president of El Salvador’s Nationwide Fee on Digital Property, nor some other contacted events have responded to Cointelegraph’s request in July asking them to make clear the controversy.
The information got here amid the prediction markets gaining momentum, with former Polymarket and Kalshi govt Toni Gemayel asserting a $15 million elevate from buyers like Coinbase Ventures for the prediction market platform Clearing Firm.
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