In October 2017, Netherlands native Didi Taihuttu and his family sold all their valuable belongings and their house for bitcoin. The decision paid off and the Taihuttu family has traveled all around the world and recently moved to the island of Phuket. On Nov. 30, the 44-year-old Didi Taihuttu told CNBC that after storing crypto in cold storage, centralized exchange (cex) platforms, and decentralized exchange (dex) protocols for years, the Dutch family has decided to proactively transfer $1 million in digital assets to dex protocols in order to have more control via self-custody.
Didi Taihutu and family are taking proactive steps to self-custody their crypto assets
Five years ago, Bitcoin.com news reported on the Taihutu family after they decided to sell their home, children’s toys and vehicles so they could accumulate bitcoin (BTC). On Wednesday, Didi Taihutu, the patriarch of the family, spoke with CNBC and explained that the family is moving $1 million in crypto assets to the DEX protocol following the FTX collapse.
Taihuttu detailed that before the decision to proactively move the funds from cex platforms to dex protocols, the family stored a fraction of funds on trading platforms like Bybit and Kraken. “If you never send your bitcoin to an exchange,” Taihuttu said, “your bitcoin stays in your own wallet, meaning you have complete custody of your coins. [But] you connect to a dex, and by making that connection, you trade out of your own wallet.”
Taihutu continued:
If the dex collapses, it doesn’t matter, because the bitcoins are always in your own wallet.
Taihuttu explained that he learned his lesson in 2017 when the cex platform Cryptopia was hacked and he lost four bitcoins. “From that moment, I was always searching for alternatives,” Taihuttu said. As far as FTX is concerned, Taihuttu insisted that “too many influencers were paid too much money to promote that one.” The family would not disclose how much they owned in crypto assets but they did say roughly $1 million worth of BTC, ETH, LTC, DOT, and other tokens would be moved to decentralized exchanges.
Taihuttu says the current drama involving FTX is the same as happens in every bitcoin cycle. “We get that lesson in every bitcoin cycle I think — “It was Mt Gox, it was banning bitcoin in China, it was banning mining. There is drama every time,” he said. Taihutu wholeheartedly believes that BTC is stable, and he is doing what the leading crypto asset always does.
“Looking at the current situation: We have a huge war going on, we have a huge financial crisis, we have FTX, we have Celsius, we have a lot of bear market signals,” Taihuttu told CNBC. “I think that bitcoin is really holding strong at $16,800. For me, bitcoin is still doing perfect and still doing what it always does: Being a decentralized currency that is usable by all people all over the world,” Taihuttu concluded during his interview on Wednesday.
