Didi Taihuttu is the father of the so-called Bitcoin Family who decided to sell everything including his house and start living solely on cryptocurrencies. We have great opportunity to ask him few questions and to better understand his life steps.
Didi, thank you for joining our blockchainterview. How do you like your digital nomad-like style of living? Is it always fun, or you go through a tough time also?
Hi, thanks for asking. I, but more important, the whole family loves the life we are living at the moment. Its a great way to combine all our passions. Travel, bitcoin/blockchain and helping others. We have the same up and downs like the normal not traveling families have but it is a bit easier to cope with downs for example on a beautiful beach in Thailand, hahaha. As a family you are together 24/7 many days of the year what ofcourse is amazing but when you travel 6 months in a 20 m2 mobile home it can get a bit crowded and I am the only guy so that is not always easy.
When exactly you decided to move your life this way? Was it difficult? Did your wife supported you with this decision, or was she more skeptical?
I lost my mother when I was 24 and she was 48 at that time. I couldn’t face the emotions so I became a workaholic and started to build my own company. I Became a very materialistic guy that wanted to have everything and in a way neglected the family life because of this. When my father called me around Christmas 2014 and told me he was diagnosed with cancer and had one more year to live my world crashed. I decided to spend as much as possible time in 2015 with my family and father so I hired a manager to run the companies. My father died in January 2016 and after organizing the inheritance and funeral etc I got a burn out. I decided to take a break with the family and travel for a few months. Those few months changed in the life we are living now. When a friend called me in Bali in jan 2017 to check my bitcoins and dogecoins I realized that the revolution was starting and my entrepreneurship told me I wanted to be part of this huge change in the world.
I asked my wife what she thought of going all-in BTC. At first it was a shock and she didn’t believe me but when I sold my cars online and bought BTC for that she started to believe me. We both agreed that we had been living a crazy too materialistic life and spoiled our kids too much. We needed to change life and teach our kids that money is not the most important thing in life. Living and doing what makes you happy is the most important thing. We decide the only way to teach our kids this is to show it. You can tell it your kids but they will only understand it when you do it yourself as well. So we decided to go for it, flew home, sold the house etc and went all-in.
I think I know the answer, but still I need to ask. Do you believe more in crypto and decentralization, or your decision was also quite speculative?
I believe blockchain and crypto will change the world in a way we can’t even predict at the moment. In my opinion it’s a (r)evolution that will bring back financial control and power to people. Ofcourse we also hoped that BTC would increase in value so that we could live a decentral life supporting the ones that need it and educate as much as possible people world wide in de fundamentals of blockchain and bitcoin.
To help countries in for example Africa we must understand that giving money, food etc doesn’t help them in the long term. Ofcourse if people are in trouble you help them in the short term but in the longterm you need to include them in the monetary system by educating them in how to start a business and make money them selfs. If western countries keep giving fish to the poor countries they will never learn to fish themselves and more important those in that country that do fish can’t compete with the free fish we keep giving the people in that country. We need to rethink the way we help people and I think blockchain and bitcoin are amazing tools to start including the people that need it to the monetary system.
You believe in Bitcoin so strong, that you sold everything for bitcoin. But do you plan to settle down one day again? When it will be? Do you wait for some specific bitcoin price? 1 million?
I do believe bitcoin will go much higher and we will se a few hundred thousand till 1 million but I also believe that we will be able to use BTC to pay for our needs in the future. I don’t think we will settle down soon because we are on a mission hahaha. We want to contribute our little part in changing the world. At the moment we are very happy with a simple life, traveling the world and helping others. As both my parents died young at the ages of 48 and 61 years old I try to live day by day and just enjoy every day. I will see what the future will bring. We don’t need much so if bitcoin goes to a million or not, we will be happy as a family.
How is it with education of your children? Do you teach them yourself or they attend some school abroad? Was this the real reason you left Netherlands?
We want to prepare our kids for the future and not for the past and in our opinion we think the current education system in the Netherlands is doing the opposite. We un/home school our kids in a practical way. We won’t show the kids a elephant in a book but we will visit it and feed/wash the elephant etc. Then we ask the kids to write a short story about it.
Yes one of the reasons to leave the Netherlands was because it’s illegal to homeschool kids but we love the sun and sea as well.
What are the most crypto-friendly countries you visited?
Every country has a town or region that is very crypto friendly so I can’t really say which one is the most friendly. Thailand is very crypto minded, but for example in the town Rovereto in Italy has more than 60 shops that accept crypto. You can buy your food, clothes, driving license, toys, motor etc directly with BTC. In Switzerland you can buy bitcoins at the ticket machine in train stations and in spain for example you can buy bitcoin in more than 9000 carrefour grocery stores. Man, I could talk ours about what we discovered all over the world.
How do you pay your cost in your travels? Just by crypto or do you use fiat also? Or do you use some special crypto-fiat card like Wirex or Revolut?
We try to pay all cost with crypto directly so we often go and live at places where we can really spend crypto directly. Spending bitcoin online is very simple of course so we use travel platforms like for example Travala or Locktrip and at all places that don’t accept crypto directly we use our Wirex card. I am always looking to new ways to spend crypto. It’s like a game to me and even the kids always look if they can find a “WE ACCEPT BITCOIN” sign on stores or websites. Shit I think we are brainwashing them to crypto kids hahaha.
Do you think one day we will have to chance to decide, if we want to pay in fiat (USD, EUR) or crypto? When do you think this time will come? Or do you see „only crypto“ future, maybe after some fiat collapse?
In the beginning I thought BTC would totally replace fiat but now I think that BTC and a few other cryptos will exists next to the digital fiat currencies. I do think cash as we know it will disappear in many countries. Sweden, China and South Korea are great examples of countries that almost don’t use cash anymore. It is upon to ourselves if we are able to decide wether we can use crypto in the future or not. We need to realize that we all need to support this monetary revolution to get financial power back to the people. We need to stop acting childish by bashings each others crypto and work together.
Do you plan to visit the Czech Republic one day?
Yes the Czech Republic is definitely on our agenda. I have been there twice in my life. The first time I was in Czech was around 1996 when I went skiing in spindleruv mlyn. The second time I proposed to my wife in the royal gardens of Prague so nothing than good memories over there. I hear so many amazing things about crypto community in Prague that I need to go there soon. Will you offer us a bed? Hahaha
What are your plans for nearest future?
In the 3 years of traveling till now we discovered that owning less makes us very happy. Ofcourse we need bitcoin to travel, eat and live but we don’t need to be millionaires for that lifestyle. We found out that we get more happy when we share, give or help people to be included in the monetary system. As I said, In our opinion blockchain and bitcoin are an amazing tools to include people and that is what we will focus on the next couple of years. We also discovered that there are many people in the blockchain/crypto space with a lambo/moon mentality and thats why we need to educate people in the real fundamentals of Bitcoin.
We will embark an adventure that will combine film, educating and providing donations & impact investments to the ones that really need it our world. We will drive around the world in a 4x4 jeep with 2 rooftop tents, screen our film (created by an award winning team) on blockchain/crypto/company events followed by a Q&A. At the same time we will create Bitcoin challenges for other people and families in a very fun way and at last we will organize treasure hunt all over the world where people will be able to find 1 BTC. The whole tour will be shared in a decentral p2p way and most important, all proceeds from this tour will be donated or used for impact investments in the country where the event takes place. We want to show people that you can live a different life as a family and that life is not always about accumulating more wealth and luxury goods, but also about helping people that are in need. At the same time we will live in a decentral way, using the share economy, which in the future in our opinion will be the way for many people. Let’s call them Digital Bitcoin Nomads, hahaha.
We already have many supporting influencers and media partners for this tour, with a following of more than 1.5 million people, that will help us to spread the word on how we will support charity etc. We are still searching for sponsors that want to support this tour so if you contact me [obfuscate_1_|94|100|96|96|56|115|104|95|93|99|111|95|102|97|109|102|91|104|99|103|117|37|91|110|109] I will send you the promo video and webpage with information.
Check also the official promo video of the Sharing is Caring tour of The Bitcoin Family
