Source: CNBC
Compiled and organized by: BitpushNews
Bitcoin Family poses for a photo on a ski trip to Mount Nevada in southern Spain. They sold all their possessions in 2017 to bet on Bitcoin and are now "digital nomads" as a family of five traveling around.
In the wake of multiple kidnappings of crypto celebrities, the entire circle is panicking. A number of high-profile figures have quietly upgraded their security systems, including the Bitcoin Family, who swapped all their belongings for Bitcoin.
Didi Taihuttu, the head of the Bitcoin Family, said the family has undergone a complete makeover with a new set of security solutions.
As early as 2017, the family sold all their property such as the house and car, all in about $900 per bitcoin at the time, and has since embarked on the path of extreme crypto faith. They traveled full-time with their three daughters, completely abandoning the traditional banking system.
Over the past eight months, Taihuttu said they have also ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: part analog, part digital, where the seed phrase is encrypted, segmented, stored through a blockchain cryptographic service, or tucked away in physical locations on four continents.
"We changed everything," Taihuttu told CNBC in a telephone interview in Phuket, Thailand. "Even if someone points a gun at me, I can only give out the little assets in my phone wallet, which is not much."
CNBC first reported on this family-specific storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described how hardware wallets were tucked away on multiple continents, from rented homes in Europe to self-storage in South America.
During Halloween, the Taihuttu family dressed up for a photo shoot in Phuket, Thailand. They had recently moved because a YouTube video revealed their address.
As kidnappings against crypto holders become more frequent, even the family is starting to re-examine their online exposure.
This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old man suspected of orchestrating multiple violent kidnappings of crypto executives. One of the victims, the father of a crypto-rich man, was allegedly held in a house south of Paris for days and even had a finger cut off.
In another case, the co-founder of the French wallet company Ledger and his wife were kidnapped from their home, and the extortion ring targeted another Ledger executive.
In New York last month, authorities said a 28-year-old Italian tourist was kidnapped from a Manhattan apartment and subjected to 17 days of torture by kidnappers who had electric shocks with wires, a gun and an Apple AirTag around his neck to obtain his Bitcoin password.
What these events have in common is that in order to obtain a key that can be used to transfer the virtual asset immediately.
"It's really disturbing to see so many kidnappings," said JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet company Exodus. He called on users to strengthen their own security measures, adopt self-custody methods, and store large amounts of assets in hardware wallets; For users who hold large amounts of crypto assets, multisig wallets should also be used, which is usually a setup used by institutions.
Richardson also recommends spreading funds across different types of wallets and avoiding storing large amounts of assets in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility.
This rising sense of insecurity is also driving the need for physical protection, with insurers accelerating the rollout of kidnap and ransom insurance (K&R) for crypto holders.
But Taihuttu can't wait for the enterprise solution to mature. He opted for radical decentralization – not only financially, but also for personal risk management.
The family was preparing to return to Europe from Thailand, and "safety" became a frequent topic at the dinner table.
"Our whole family has been talking a lot about these kinds of things lately," Taihuttu said, "and the kids are watching the news — especially in the case in France, where the CEO's daughter was almost kidnapped on the street."
Now, his daughters are asking tough questions: "What if someone tries to kidnap us?" "What is our plan?"
Taihuttu is struck by hand with a hammer and a letter punch, carving part of the mnemonic phrase on a steel plate. These steel plates are hidden on four continents as part of a decentralized storage system.
Although the daughters only had a small amount of crypto assets in their wallets, the family decided to leave France altogether.
"We were originally a bit of a niche – but it's getting bigger and bigger," Taihuttu said. "I think we're going to see more and more robberies like this. So, yes, we're definitely not going to France."
Even in Thailand, Taihuttu recently stopped travel updates and family shooting. He received harassing messages from strangers who claimed to have found his home address through his YouTube videos.
"We were living in a very nice house for six months – and then I started getting emails saying they recognized what it was. He also warned me to be careful not to leave my children alone," he said. "So we moved, and now we don't shoot videos at all."
"It's a strange world right now," he said, "so we're just going to have to do it ourselves — and in terms of wallets, we're not using hardware wallets at all right now."
To prevent hijacking, Taihuttu encrypted some of the words in each set of 24-word seed phrases and then divided them into four groups of six words each, which were hidden around the world
The family's new security measure is to divide a 24-word Bitcoin mnemonic phrase into four groups of 6 words each, stored in different geographic locations. Some are stored digitally through a blockchain encryption platform, while others are hand-engraved on fireproof steel plates and then hidden on four continents.
"Even if someone finds 18 of those words, they can't do anything," Taihuttu explains.
He also added a layer of personal encryption: substitution of specific mnemonic phrases to confuse attackers. It's a simple but effective method.
"You just have to remember what words you changed," he said.
Part of the reason they are deprecating hardware wallets is the growing distrust of third-party devices. Including a controversial update to Ledger in 2023, which raised concerns about backdoors and remote access capabilities, they decided to ditch hardware wallets altogether in favor of paper and steel plate encryption backups.
While they still keep a small amount of crypto in their "hot wallets" for everyday spending and algorithmic trading strategies, this part of the asset is protected by multi-signature approvals, which require multiple signatures to execute transactions.
They use Safe (formerly known as Gnosis Safe) to manage Ethereum and other altcoins; Bitcoin, on the other hand, uses a similar multiple layer of security on centralized platforms such as Bybit.
A recent photo of Taihuttu in Mount Nevada, Spain. The family's lifestyle — unbanked, nomadic life, heavy Bitcoin holdings — is an outlier even in crypto circles
Taihuttu stores about 65% of the household's crypto assets in cold wallets across four continents — a decentralized system that is a better alternative to the centralized vaults used by Coinbase's Xapo in the Swiss Alps, which provide physical protection and legacy services, but which Taihuttu says still require "trusting others."
"What if those companies go bankrupt? Will I still have access to my assets?" He said. "You're putting your capital back into someone else's hands."
As a result, Taihuttu chose to take the key into its own hands – hidden all over the world. He can replenish his wallet balance remotely, but withdrawing those funds will require at least one international trip, depending on the location of the required mnemonic phrase. These assets are considered long-term pensions and are planned to be used when bitcoin rises to $1 million — a time he expects will come in 2033.
Didi, Romaine, and their three daughters spend most of their lives off-grid, managing crypto assets using decentralized trading platforms, algorithmic trading bots, and a globally distributed cold wallet system
This shift to multi-party security extends not only to multisig wallets, but also to MPC (Multi-Party Computation) technology, which is gaining popularity as a more advanced security model.
Instead of keeping the private key in a single location, MPC encrypts it and divides it into multiple "shared fragments" that are distributed to multiple participants. Transactions can only be executed when a set threshold number of signatures is reached, which greatly reduces the risk of theft or unauthorized access.
Unlike traditional multisig wallets, which require multiple entities to approve transactions, MPC takes it a step further by cryptically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single person has the full private key – not even their own fragments can be signed independently.
This trend coincides with renewed scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase, which recently revealed a data breach that affected tens of thousands of users.
Taihuttu says that 80% of his transactions are now done on decentralized exchanges such as Apex. Apex is a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to place buy and sell orders while retaining custody of funds, committed to the original decentralized spirit of cryptocurrency.
While he didn't disclose his total holdings, Taihuttu shared his goal for this bull run: to achieve $100 million in net worth, of which 60% will still hold Bitcoin. The rest of the assets are distributed among L1 tokens such as Ethereum, Solana, LINK, Sui, and a growing number of startups focused on AI and education – including a platform he founded that provides blockchain and life skills lessons for children.
Recently, he has also begun to consider whether to fade out of public view.
"Content creation is really my passion. I enjoy it every day," he said, "but it's no longer safe for my daughters...... I really need to reconsider."
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