The Taihuttus family from the Netherlands travels the world in campervans or vans for camping. Uniquely, since 2017 they have traveled the world only with bitcoin digital money.
Quoted from CNBC, Monday (7/12/2020) for four years traveling, the family lived on bitcoin. They have liquidated their assets, from their retirement accounts, cars, to clothes and toys to bitcoin in 2017. At that time the price of bitcoin was US $ 900 per coin.
During their trip, they were determined not to use cash and other financial services other than bitcoin. For some transactions that cannot use bitcoin, they install bitcoin wallets on their cellphones and exchange bitcoins for cash.
"We waited until we found someone who was willing to accept bitcoin," said the head of the family, Didi Taihuttu.
The mass adoption of cryptocurrencies over the past few years has made it easier for families to transact in just bitcoin during their tour of 40 countries. But to survive, they have to be creative.
Some of their transactions are made through a combination of bartering, haggling, bitcoin debit cards, and convincing vendors to accept cryptocurrency, the family has managed to cross most of Europe, Asia and Oceania.
On their way there are two places that use bitcoin entirely, namely the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana and a small Italian village called Rovereto. In Ljubljana, they pay for things like car repairs and cinema tickets in cryptocurrency, and in Rovereto buy motorbikes, pay taxes, or cut hair using bitcoin.
For Didi, both a very small traditional village and a nation's capital city now use bitcoin.
"In my opinion, any country, any city in the world, can have the same adoption of bitcoin as a store of value, or payment, or peer-to-peer cash," Taihuttu explained.
The price of bitcoin has hit an all-time high, with a price tag of nearly US $ 20,000 and some analysts say the cryptocurrency still has plenty of opportunities to jump again. Mike Novogratz, CEO of investment company Galaxy Digital, said that this comeback rally has just begun. He sees bitcoin rising to US $ 60,000 in the next year.
CitiFXTechnicals chief Tom Fitzpatrick,, said the chart hints that bitcoin could hit US $ 318,000 by December 2021. With these sky-high predictions, it's not surprising that more investors are choosing to deposit their bitcoin, rather than spend it.
According to Chainalysis, the number of accounts that bought more than one million dollars worth of bitcoins and then removed them from the exchange rose 180% from 2017 to 2020. Meanwhile, data from Glassnode shows that 95% of bitcoin market capitalization is held in wallets that hold more than one bitcoin.
