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- This crypto family’s preferred storage methods are hardware wallets and a variety of secure yet unique locations
- The storage strategy of the Dutch family of five includes a network of secret places scattered over four continents
- Custody services, which a number of prominent exchanges, like Coinbase and soon PayPal, will provide, are an option
Didi Taihuttu, his wife, and their three children sold all of their possessions and bought bitcoin in 2017 when the price was approximately $900. The five-member Dutch family is now securing the majority of their crypto riches in four separate vaults in four countries. Taihuttu, a patriarch of the so-called Bitcoin Family, revealed, She has hidden the hardware wallets across different countries so that I never have to fly very far if she has to access my cold wallet in order to leap out of the market.
Taihuttu has six hiding places: two in Europe, two in Asia, one in South America, and one in Australia. The family told CNBC that the crypto stashes are hidden in a variety of ways and in a variety of locations, ranging from rental apartments and friends’ homes to self-storage sites. They aren’t talking about buried treasure – none of the sites are below ground or on a remote island – but the crypto stashes are hidden in a variety of ways and in a variety of locations, ranging from rental apartments and friends’ homes to self-storage sites.
Cold storage vs. hot storage
Cryptocurrency can be stored in a variety of ways. Users can save their tokens on online exchanges like Coinbase and PayPal, but the more tech-savvy can cut out the middlemen and keep their cryptocurrency on their own hardware wallets. Devices the size of a thumb drive, such as the Trezor or Ledger, can be used to safeguard crypto tokens. Square is also developing a hardware wallet and service “to provide bitcoin custody to a wider audience.
People who want to keep their own cryptocurrency can keep it hot, cold, or anywhere in between. A hot wallet is one that is connected to the internet that allows users to access and spend their cryptocurrency with relative ease. The cost of convenience is the risk of being exposed to bad actors.
According to Philip Gradwell, chief economist of Chainalysis, a blockchain data firm, cold storage refers to crypto that has been moved to wallets whose private keys – the passwords that enable the crypto to be moved out of the wallet – are not stored on internet-connected computers, so that hackers cannot hack into the computer and steal the private keys. Exchanges will frequently employ cold wallets to secure the crypto their customers have invested, according to Gradwell.
Bunkers in Switzerland
A vault inside a deactivated military bunker buried in the Swiss Alps is blocked off from the internet, monitored by an onsite security team, and reportedly looked over in the skies via satellite, according to digital bank Xapo’s website. Bitcoin is the prized possession under lock and key. Coinbase purchased Xapo in 2019, which was an unsurprising move for a business that stores 98 percent of its customers’ cash offline, to provide a crucial security safeguard against theft or loss.
While centralized vaults like these provide certain security benefits, Taihuttu believes they are overly centralized. You can hold those private keys directly if you want to store your currencies really outside of the reach of the state. Nic Carter, a general partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder of Coin Metrics, compared it to burying a bar of gold in your lawn.
Multiparty computation, or MPC, is also proving useful in the digital asset arena, according to Phu. To complete a transaction in this custodial arrangement, numerous parties must all provide their approval. This eliminates the possibility of a single point of compromise by keeping private keys and authentication credentials in the same location. According to Fireblocks, a digital asset infrastructure provider, MPC instead divides the private key into shares, encrypts it, and then distributes it to numerous parties.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.
