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- A family that poured all its money into crypto in 2017 says it's stashed its holdings in secret locations.
- Didi Taihuttu told CNBC he stored the holdings in hardware wallets across four continents.
- In summer 2017, bitcoin traded at an average of $3,500 – now, the price is more than $45,000.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
A Dutch family that claims they sold all of their assets to buy bitcoin in 2017, when the cryptocurrency was trading at a fraction of its current price, says they have stashed most of their holdings in secret locations around the world.
Father of the family Didi Taihuttu told CNBC in an interview that he had stored almost three-quarters of the family's crypto holdings in hardware wallets – small USB devices – in six spots: two in Europe, two in Asia, one in Australia, and one in South America.
A bitcoin token was worth more than $45,000 on Thursday, according to Coindesk data.
Taihuttu previously told Insider that him and his wife sold their family's assets in the summer of 2017 – the coin's value climbed from over $2,400 on June 1 that year to more than $4,600 by August 31, per Coindesk data.
Taihuttu told CNBC that 74% of his crypto holdings, which also included ethereum and some litecoin, are in "cold" storage. These are hardware devices with passwords stored in computers that are not connected to the internet, so he would need to fly to each location to retrieve his holdings.
"I have hidden the hardware wallets across several countries so that I never have to fly very far if I need to access my cold wallet, in order to jump out of the market," Taihuttu told CNBC.
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The family of five have hidden some of these wallets in rental properties, friends' houses, and self-storage facilities, Taihuttu told CNBC.
The rest of the family's crypto is stored in devices hooked up to the internet - so-called "hot" wallets - which Taihuttu can more easily access for day trading, he told CNBC.
Taihuttu told Insider in 2017 that the family had sold its home for around $350,000 (300,000 euros), as well as three cars, a motorbike, his children's toys, and other possessions to buy bitcoin, and had moved onto a campsite near Venlo, in The Netherlands.
He declined to tell CNBC how much the family holds in crypto.
The price of bitcoin, the world's most valuable cryptocurrency, has shot up in recent years, although its value has swung wildly in recent months.
Taihuttu told CNBC in December 2020 that the family, which has traveled to 40 countries since 2017, still didn't have a house.
Taihuttu did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.