Didi Taihuttu and the Bitcoin Family: the family that sold everything for bitcoin in 2017

In 2017, a Dutch entrepreneur and his family made a decision most people would call reckless: they sold nearly everything they owned and put it into bitcoin. Nine years later, Didi Taihuttu and The Bitcoin Family are still at it, still on the road, still unbanked, and still telling anyone who will listen that time is the most precious currency there is.

The decision of 2017

Taihuttu was born in 1978 in Venlo, in the Netherlands, according to Wikipedia. The family's own site says they "sold everything in 2017 to go all-in on Bitcoin," and its homepage puts the philosophy in one line: no house, no backup plan, just a belief in freedom. CNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos that the family sold nearly all of their possessions at a time when bitcoin traded around $900.

It was a family decision in the fullest sense. CNBC describes five people: Taihuttu, his partner Romaine and their three daughters. They have since written two books about the journey, per Wikipedia.

A family on the move

The Bitcoin Family describes itself as a family that travels the world and helps others do the same. They travel full time, and CNBC reached Taihuttu in Phuket, Thailand, with the family planning to head back to Europe. They remain entirely unbanked, a point he returned to in his October 6 video, where he said he has lived without a bank for more than ten years and converts what he earns into bitcoin every month.

The life has also changed with its audience. The family has stopped posting travel updates in real time and stopped filming at home, CNBC reported, after strangers worked out their location from YouTube videos. Taihuttu told CNBC he is weighing a step back from the spotlight for the sake of his daughters. That context matters when reading a channel built on openness: the public face is deliberately a step behind the family's actual location.

Buy, hold, repeat

Taihuttu's investing philosophy is a long-horizon one. He told CNBC he treats his bitcoin as a long-term pension and has named $1 million per bitcoin, by 2033, as a target he set for himself. He declined to disclose his total holdings, and we make no estimate of them. In his October 6 video he argued that holding bitcoin for roughly 3.6 years has historically broken even or better, so staying in matters more than timing. That is his claim about history; the case for it is that bitcoin has recovered from each past bear market, though the drops along the way have been severe.

What he is saying about this cycle

Bitcoin set its record of $126,080 on October 6, 2025, per CoinGecko. In his October 6, 2026 video, exactly a year later, Taihuttu said that if past cycles are a guide, the bear market low arrives about 12 months after the top, and he put the odds that the low is already in at about 90%, while saying a dip first is possible. We looked at the dates in our earlier story.

Ahead of the November 3 midterms he says a dip around the vote is possible and that he keeps buying through it. Our midterm piece lays out how bitcoin traded around the last three elections. He is consistent in saying these are opinions and that he is not a financial adviser. Live prices are on our crypto prices board.

Watch them: we keep a page of The Bitcoin Family's latest videos, or go straight to their YouTube channel.

Why the story endures

Whatever one thinks of any individual call, the family's consistency is the story: one decision in 2017, then nine years of living by it, in public. For a lot of people watching, the lesson is not a price level. It is that conviction and patience are a strategy.

Sources: The Bitcoin Family; Wikipedia; CoinGecko. Taihuttu's statements are reported as his own. Information, not investment advice.