The Taihuttus’ Bitcoin Chronicles: The story of $900 in Bitcoin
CNBC’s recent edition of Crypto Decoded featured an interesting (real life) story of an (early adopting) Bitcoin Family. Didi Taihuttu and family’s (wife and three kids) investment plans took an usual (revolutionary) turn in 2017. When (in 2017) Bitcoin was trading at around $900, Taihuttu and family decided to liquidate all their assets to purchase Bitcoin. The family of five with a Dutch origin is today holding their Bitcoin assets in secured safe vaults on four continents.
Opting for cold wallet storage to safeguard their assets against any unexpected theft risk. The Taihuttu (Bitcoin) family have hid hardware wallets in various countries to enable ease of access. Should they decide to opt out of the market due to unforeseen circumstances. They still would not need to fly far away to access their hardware wallet.
Per Taihuttus, Europe and Asia are said to have two hiding destinations; South America and Australia host the remaining two. Rental apartments, residences of their friends, and self-storage sites are some hiding venues the Taihuttus have chosen.
Cryptocurrency Storage: Hot & Cold Wallets
Hot (internet connected) and cold wallets differ in meaning and the security offered.
Famous hot wallets are:
- Electrum and Armory (Desktop Wallets)
- Edge and Trust Wallet (Mobile Wallets)
- BTCPay (Hybrid Wallets)
Famous cold wallets are:
- Trezor, SafePal, Ledger (Hardware Wallets)
Those who use crypto on a daily basis might want to consider using hot wallets. Whereas the ones who want to HODL their crypto for long, can go for (secured) cold wallets.
The Taihuttus opted for the cold wallet solution to safeguard their crypto assets. Cold wallets connect to the Internet only when a transaction is to be initiated. Meaning their passwords (private keys) are not stored on the Internet.
The Bitcoin Storage Scenario
The CNBC news piece also reports that per a Chainalysis report:
- 11.8 million Bitcoin are held by long-term investors
- 3.7 million are lost
- 3.2 million are circulating among traders
- 2.4 million are pending for mining
The Taihuttus’ Bitcoin Storage
The Taihuttus (Bitcoin Family) have stored their crypto in hot wallets (as a risk capital) to the tune of 26%. 74% of their crypto assets are in cold storage (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin). While Didi strongly believes in decentralized storage for crypto. They still find a couple of centralized storage settings lucrative and convincing—especially those offering inheritance services.