"Bitcoin Family" abandoned hard wallets due to kidnapping threats, hiding keys in four continents around the world: We want to protect our daughter

Source:CNBC

Compiled and edited by: BitpushNews

The Bitcoin Family poses during a ski trip in Sierra Nevada, southern Spain. They sold all their possessions in 2017 to bet on Bitcoin, and now they are a family of five, traveling around as "digital nomads."

After several kidnappings of crypto celebrities, the entire community is in a state of panic. Many celebrities have quietly upgraded their security systems, including the "Bitcoin Family" who exchanged all their belongings for Bitcoin.

Didi Taihuttu, the patriarch of the Bitcoin Family, said his family had completely transformed themselves and had developed a new security plan.

As early as 2017, the family sold all their property including their house and car, and went all in on Bitcoin, which was worth about $900 per coin at the time, and has since embarked on an extreme path of crypto belief. They travel full-time with their three daughters and completely abandon the traditional banking system.

In the past eight months, Taihuttu said they have also abandoned hardware wallets and switched to a hybrid system: part analog, part digital, encrypting and splitting the mnemonic words, and usingBlockchainThe encrypted service is stored or hidden in physical locations on four continents around the world.

“We changed everything,” Taihuttu told CNBC in a phone interview from Phuket, Thailand. “Even if someone pointed a gun at me, I could only give what I had in my mobile wallet, which was not much.”

CNBC first reported on the family’s peculiar storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described how the hardware wallets were hidden across multiple continents in locations ranging from rented homes in Europe to self-storage facilities in South America.

The Taihuttu family dresses up for a photo shoot in Phuket, Thailand, during Halloween. They recently moved after a YouTube video revealed their address.

As kidnappings of crypto holders increase in frequency, even this family is re-evaluating their online exposure.

This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old man suspected of planning several violent kidnappings of crypto executives. One of the victims, the father of a crypto tycoon, was allegedly held captive in a house south of Paris for several days and even had a finger cut off.

In another case, the co-founder of French wallet company Ledger and his wife were kidnapped from their home, and the extortion gang also targeted another Ledger executive.

Last month in New York, authorities said a 28-year-old Italian tourist was abducted and tortured for 17 days in a Manhattan apartment, shocked with electric wires, beaten with guns and given an Apple AirTag tied around his neck for tracking purposes in an effort to get his Bitcoin password.

What these events have in common is that they seek to obtain keys that can immediately transfer virtual assets.

"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 ownSafetyMeasures include adopting self-custody and storing large assets in hardware wallets; for users holding a large amount of crypto assets, multi-signature wallets should also be used, which is usually a setting used by institutions.

Richardson also recommends spreading funds across different types of wallets and avoiding storing large amounts in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility.

This growingSafetyThe sense of crisis has also driven the demand for physical protection, and insurance companies are accelerating the launch of "kidnap and ransom insurance" (K&R) for cryptocurrency holders.

But Taihuttu couldn’t wait for enterprise solutions to mature. He chose to completely decentralize — not only financially, but also in personal risk management.

The family was preparing to return to Europe from Thailand, and "safety" became a frequent topic at the dinner table.

“We’ve been talking about this a lot as a family lately,” Taihuttu said. “The kids are watching the news, too—especially the case in France where the CEO’s daughter was nearly kidnapped off the street.”

Now his daughters are asking the hard questions: “What if someone tries to kidnap us?” “What’s our plan?”

Taihuttu used a hammer and a letter punch to manually carve parts of the mnemonic onto steel plates, which were hidden on four continents around the world as part of a decentralized storage system.

Although the daughters only had a small amount of crypto assets in their own wallets, the family decided to leave France completely.

“We were a little bit of a niche — but that niche is getting 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, where Taihuttu has recently stopped posting travel updates and family photos, he has received harassing messages from strangers who claim to have found his home address through his YouTube videos.

“We were living in this really nice house for six months — and then I started getting emails saying they recognized what house it was. They were warning me to be careful and not leave my kids alone,” he said. “So we moved, and now we don’t do any videos at all.”

“The world is a strange place right now,” he said, “so we have to take our own precautions — and in terms of wallets, we don’t use hardware wallets at all now.”

To prevent being hijacked, Taihuttu encrypted some of the words in each set of 24 mnemonics, and then divided them into four groups of 6 words each, hiding them in different locations around the world.

The family's new security measure is to divide a 24-word Bitcoin mnemonic into four groups of six words each, stored in different geographical locations.BlockchainThe encrypted platforms are stored digitally, while others are hand-engraved on fireproof steel plates and stored on four continents.

“Even if someone found 18 of those words, they wouldn’t be able to do anything,” Taihuttu explains.

He also added a layer of personal encryption: replacing specific mnemonic words to confuse attackers. This method is simple but effective.

“You just have to remember which words you changed,” he said.

Part of the reason they are moving away from hardware wallets is the growing distrust of third-party devices. Including a controversial update from Ledger in 2023 that raised concerns about backdoors and remote access capabilities, they decided to completely abandon hardware wallets and switch to paper and steel plate encrypted backups.

Although they still keep a small amount of cryptocurrency in "hot wallets" for daily consumption and algorithmic trading strategies, this portion of assets is protected by multi-signature approval, and multiple parties must sign to execute transactions.

They use Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) to manage Ethereum and other altcoins; Bitcoin uses similar multiple security measures on centralized platforms such as Bybit.

Taihuttu in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Spain. The family's lifestyle - no bank account, nomadic life, heavy Bitcoin holdings - is an anomaly even in the crypto community.

Taihuttu stores about 65% of family crypto assets in cold wallets on four continents — a decentralized system that is a better option than the centralized vault used by Coinbase-owned Xapo in the Swiss Alps, which offers physical protection and inheritance services, but Taihuttu said it still requires "trusting others."

“What if those companies go bankrupt? Can I still access my assets?” he said. “You’re handing capital back to someone else.”

So Taihuttu has chosen to keep the keys to himself—hidden around the world. He can replenish his wallet balance remotely, but withdrawing the funds requires at least one international trip, depending on the location of the required mnemonic fragment. The assets are viewed as a long-term pension, planned to be used only when Bitcoin reaches $1 million—a time he estimates will arrive in 2033.

Didi, Romaine, and their three daughters live off-grid most of the time, using decentralized exchanges, algorithmic trading bots, and a globally distributed cold wallet system to manage their crypto assets.

This shift towards multi-party security is not only reflected in multi-signature wallets, but also extends to MPC (multi-party computation) technology, which is gradually becoming popular as a more advanced security model.

MPC does not store private keys in a single location, but encrypts them into multiple "shared fragments" and distributes them to multiple parties. Transactions can only be executed when the set signature threshold is reached, which greatly reduces the risk of beingstealor risk of unauthorized access.

While traditional multi-signature wallets require multiple entities to approve transactions, MPC goes a step further by cryptographically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single person has the full private key — not even their own fragment to sign independently.

The trend comes as scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase has increased again, following the recent disclosure of a data breach affecting tens of thousands of users.

Taihuttu said that now all of his 80% transactions are completed on decentralized exchanges such as Apex. Apex is a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to set buy and sell orders while retaining custody of funds, and is committed to the original decentralized spirit of cryptocurrency.

Although he did not disclose the total amount of his holdings, Taihuttu shared his goal for this bull run: to achieve a net worth of $100 million, of which 60% will still be held in Bitcoin. The remaining assets are distributed in L1 tokens such as Ethereum, Solana, LINK, Sui, and more and more startups focusing on AI and education - including a platform he founded that provides blockchain and life skills courses for children.

Recently, he has also begun to consider whether to fade out of the public eye.

“Content creation is truly my passion. I enjoy doing it every day,” he said. “But if it’s no longer safe for my daughters … I really need to reconsider.”

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