PixabayCryptocurrencies are all the rage at the moment and all those in the know say they’re the new way of making loads of money.
Everyone is investing in currencies like Bitcoin as a way of making an absolute fortune, but there are other uses for the currency, which people like 39-year-old Didi Taihuttu have capitalised on.
Didi believes in Bitcoin so much, he sold his house for 85 bitcoin, somewhere in the region of £300,000 – he’s moved himself and his family to a chalet on the edge of a campsite in Venlo, in the Netherlands.
He believes the world is seeing a deep change in the way currency works and told UNILAD about why he made those drastic changes:
We were realising more and more that life is not just about materialistic stuff – and I lost my father and mother along the way – so that’s why we sold our company and decided to travel.
While we were travelling we met people who were trading cryptocurrency and travelling.
My wife and children love travelling as well.
Suddenly we just came up with the idea of let’s go for it – sell everything and put it all in bitcoin and live a minimalistic life for a while and see what life gives us.
Didi had been mining Bitcoin since 2010 but sold it all in 2013 – shortly before the value of the currency skyrocketed – which made a big dent in his portfolio.
Such a thing, Didi has come to realise, isn’t always a bad thing – he doesn’t have regrets because it’s still an experience he says he’s learnt from.
Didi told UNILAD nobody should be afraid of making drastic changes to their lifestyle, because you’ll soon realise the change isn’t all that drastic at all:
I realised I wanted to see my children grow up and for parents its a take-able step to go from having everything – three cars, motorbike, everything you want – to nothing, because we can adapt.
For the children it’s a little bit more difficult, we spoilt the kids for the first ten, twelve years of their lives so they have to get used to having less.
But the longer they’ve spent the more they start to understand and see that the thing we are doing is very big.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing for Didi and his family though because the Dutch government are actually going to fine him for taking his children out of school.
Home schooling is illegal in Holland, which makes the prospect of travelling much harder for the family.
Didi continued:
Holland is very open-minded but when it comes to schooling they aren’t as open minded as you would expect.
So the girls currently go to school but if we leave to go travelling again we’ll have to leave Holland on paper.
We still have to find everything out, but we like to be Dutch. We don’t want to be another citizen of another state but if Holland doesn’t give us the opportunity to travel and work and keeps fining us, then we have to.
At the moment it wouldn’t be a fair decision because we really don’t have any money anymore, it’s all in the bitcoin and living in Holland is quite expensive.
Didi already has ideas about his next set of travels and has his eyes set on India, Nepal and Tibet – he’s also had invitations from other travelling families to live with them as far flung as Argentina.
As well as realising the revolutionary changes which Bitcoin could bring, a personal loss fuelled Didi to change his lifestyle – his parents died at relatively young ages, his mother at 48 and his father at 61 – something Didi said was a realisation for him.
He said his only regret (despite not liking the term), was he didn’t spend enough time with his family – instead, he said, he spent all of his time studying, working or playing soccer.
Didi concluded:
That made it very easy to decide to just focus on our family now, we don’t know what will happen with Bitcoin but it doesn’t matter because we will still be living life the same way.
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