El Salvador’s president — who once admitted to buying Bitcoin on his phone while naked — today assured his constituents that the country’s crypto holdings were safe and not on the collapsing exchange FTX, according to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
In a Thursday tweet, the CEO of the world’s largest crypto exchange said he spoke with President Nayib Bukele, who denied the country was using FTX to store its Bitcoin.
Rumors circulated earlier today that the Salvadoran government may have exposure to FTX, a crypto exchange that started a colossal collapse this week – taking the entire crypto market with it.
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz is credited with sparking the rumor after he questioned whether or not the country had exposure to FTX in a CNBC interview.
But Zhao then said on Twitter: “Man, the amount of misinformation is crazy. I exchanged messages with President Nayib a few moments ago. He said ‘We have no Bitcoin in FTX and we have never had any business with them. Thank God!'”
Mike Novogratz, a billionaire technology investor, later apologized for falling for “fake news,” adding that he was “a big fan” of what President Bukele was doing in El Salvador.
FTX was a hugely popular cryptocurrency exchange, but it began to fall apart this week: news broke that it was on the brink of bankruptcy after suffering a liquidity crisis.
Rival Binance then stepped in to say it would buy the exchange – only to drop the deal a day later.
FTX is now trying to plug an $8 billion hole to save the company.
El Salvador last year made Bitcoin legal tender in the Central American country – an experiment that has been criticized by a number of institutions in the US
The nation’s leader has repeatedly announced the purchase of Bitcoin, but information about exactly how many coins the government has – and where they are stored –is opaque.
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