And finally…family sells everything and puts it all on bitcoin

A Dutch man, his wife, three kids and their cat have sold up all that they own and bet it all on bitcoin.

Despite Didi Taihuttu’s brother, sister and in-laws calling him crazy, the family is in the process of selling pretty much everything they own — from their 2,500-square-foot house, to their shoes – and trading it in for the popular cryptocurrency.

They are even documenting the whole process online through a blog they are calling Yolo Family Travels.

They have even moved to a campsite in the Netherlands, where they have now been living for a few months and are now waiting for bitcoin to really take off.

The family decided to make the gamble on bitcoin this summer after seeing its swift climb which this year has already seen it surpass $5,000 a coin and some believe bitcoin’s value will reach at least $1 trillion in less than a decade.

The 39-year-old Dutchman is confident, anyway, and says he doesn’t regret a thing as he thinks the currency’s value could still quadruple by 2020.

He may be right, in the last week, the value of outstanding bitcoin reached nearly $100 billion and surpassed the market value of Goldman Sachs.

Mr Taihuttu said: “We were just like – sell it, sell it, what can we lose? Yeah, we can lose all the material stuff. Yeah, we can lose all our money. Yeah, we don’t have three cars anymore. We don’t have the motorcycle anymore. But in the end, I think we, as a family, will still be happy and just enjoying life.”

He once mined for bitcoin, but now only trades it, along with other cryptocurrencies like ether, ripple, neo, dogecoin and XLM.

The income from trading is enough for food and necessities, which the family says is all it needs right now as it continues the process of liquidating assets.

However, the Taihuttus are taking donations in bitcoin through the social media platforms they are using to chart their journey of virtual speculation.

“A lot of people have lost their faith in the current monetary system,” Mr Taihuttu says. “And I think that cryptocurrency is a big alternative for those people.”

But the future of bitcoin – and Mr Taihuttus’ family’s future – remains uncertain.

Bitcoin’s volatility, which can be six times the volatility of the S&P 500 or five times the volatility of gold, is in no small part due to uncertainty about government regulation.

China and South Korea have enacted bans on new cryptocurrency sales and the U.S. has yet to legislate hard and fast rules on bitcoin and other virtual currencies, and the Securities and Exchange Commission warned in July that it might move to regulate new token sales.