Bitcoin Forum

Need to know your opinion.
Do you use Bitcoin Mixers/Tumblers/Anonymizers ?

I think the best way is to use a mixer before you buy anything with Bitcoin, so the blockchain transaction can never be linked to any credentials of yours.
My worry is that the procedence of the bitcoins you get after mixing are of criminal origin... what about that? I only want anonymity, and I dont want to end up in problems by using a mixer.

i don't need to protect it for now(i'm playing with tiny amount), but i'm planning to do it when the amount i'll move will become bigger

i'm also waiting for some better anonimity feature for bitcoin, then using a simply mixer

There is no point in someone who is watched as closely as me making any such attempt; it would only arouse further suspicion.   :(

I use Monero to keep my financial life private

I don't know if anyone else aside from me do this method, but I find it really easy and helpful: I send my coins to an exchange and withdraw it to an another address. The coins are very hard to be linked to a single address or trace as to where the coins go because apparently, the coins most of the time stay in that address even though you withdraw your funds into an another address.

I've done the same in the past. When I send to btc-e and then withdrawal a few days later it usually comes from a different address making the linkage very difficult.

Yeah, but to access monero you most likely used BTC before, so whats the catch? they could at least know you bought X amount of Monero.
Using a mixer helps, but im also worried about the origin of the coins you get, being attached to you.

exchanges connect your identity to your coins. for that reason it's higly recommended to get rid of your marked coins and get clean coins in return.

Besides mixers, I also recommend to never buy BTC from an exchange in the country you're staying in. That's what I do.

No need to, privacy is just for criminals.  :P
Seriously, I suppose I would if I had a strong reason and/or if BTC was being treated a lot more harshly by the Gov't.

yes obviously, especially if you are doing anything shady, you need to use a mixer. bitcoin is NOT anonymous by default!

Why would there be a need to be anonymous? As long as you have a secure connection and secured wallet, who cares?

no i don't use any of these services, i'm not doing anything illegal then why should i use these services? 

Anonymity is a joke, even if you use Bitcoin addresses only once. I use Tor for some degree of privacy, but only to hide my spending habits from curious people. {You have the right to the same privacy, when you use other payment methods}

I use Mixers to mess around and waste other people's time, who want to track my crypto use.

If some expert really want to trace your coins, they could just use other methods. There are too many other vulnerabilities for people to use, like  Trojan's / Key loggers / Browser finger printing / VPN tracking etc..

Let's just accept that we have no true anonymity, and let's continue as normal...

What?
What are you on about?
Of course we can have true anonymity.  ::)

Who says we have no true anonymity?
That's like saying that Santa does not exist....  ::) ::) ::)

Using a mixer isn't that secure and one has to use it multiples times.
Essentially what you do it transfer all your BTC to an exchange and buy Monero.  Monero has untraceable payments and unlinkable transactions. You could always sell them at the exchange and send the BTC to your new wallet.

No, I am not use such service. I am not doing anything illegal, then why I use that?

I prefer mixer though i haven't used it but i have  seen many people using other less known service and then the service messes up or fled with amt if big.


It isn't necessary that you need it just because you're doing something illegal . Some people prefer anonymity or some don't want the money tracked back to themselves ever and it helps them

I have a new Bitcoin acct and I'm setting up a VPN so google and the rest of the world does not need to know my every move in life from where i want to eat all the way to dealing with the rash on my..........
Not that it matters I guess, but at the end of the day the chain as they say is only as strong as the weakest link and if I use bitcoin to pay for the service isn't it ultimately traceable to me and if so how do I fix that?

Nope, I don't feel the need to go through tons of hassle to hide my identity, Bitcoin is anonymous enough for me as it is. I don't see why anonymity would be a big deal for the layperson who's just looking to use the coin as a convenient means to shop online. I can totally understand why people who are always engaging in shady deals would feel the urge to defend their anonymity though  :D

No, have stopped using BTC completely

Mixing doesn't mean if will be for the better and for some reason if the new coins actually originate from some illegal stuff or activities, that could be even worse. Anyway, just wondering if there is nothing to hide then why worry about anonymity in the first place.

Anonymity is important for multiple legitimate reasons that can occur in the future.

1) It stops potential miner censorship
2) Advertisers can't focus on you
3) Stores cant raise prices for things that they know you will 100% buy there
4) If you run a business you don't want your competition to know what your profit margin is
5) You don't want your friends to know how many bitcoins you have and ask you for money
6) You don't want criminals to target you to ask for ransoms or rob you etc
7) The list goes on...

aren't you guys worried about tainting your coins? blacklisting and trouble spending mixed bitcoins is a real threat in the future (at least it is reasonable to calculate with this possibility).
bitcoin is an open ledger, there is no anonymity unless you think buying launch with bitcoin where they don't need an ID counts as withdrawing bitcoins. But wait until the big regulated transaction processors come into play and simply deny your transactions because your coins are on the list.
well, i guess you can always try to sell your tainted coins on a black market at a small discount...

At some point in time all coins in circulation will be tainted. It won't be practical to block transactions just because the coins were used in some alleged criminal activity at some point in the past.

Some exchanges do not agree in what you say.

there will be fully regulated exchanges compliant with all government rules - 100% not tainted

and how you acquire monero then by mining? i don't see many other way to be honest


how they do know that my coin are mixed, they can't just tainting some coins

you could always sell your coins in a private forum, anonymity is there you just need to work hard to make it better

I always protect my anonimity because I dont want people to know how many bitcoin that I have in my wallet because it might make my address to be a target for hacker, just for safety measure and also if you want to protect your anonimity then you can always use an exchanger to launder your bitcoin because it is way easy and you doesnt need to pay some percentage for the fee.

Note: To acquire a tainted coin, the previous owner just needs to use a mixer before transfering it to an exchanger.
That's why crime tainted coins can originate from a "clean" exchanger as well as from a mixer.

When doing bitcoin ↔ fiat conversion, sometimes I used to set up a face-to-face meeting and had some nice cappuccino&smalltalk moments, but I never had any problems except the block confirmation times was sometimes a bit longer than expected.

• If I buy bitcoins for speculation purpose and non-anonymous payments (because my full name is involved), I'm using online banking without hiding my identity. I almost never mix any cryptos I acquired with online banking. I never use any anonymization when dealing with.
• If I plan to use crypto anonymously, I get it by settling a meeting as explained above. I never touch these cryptos without using an anonymization service. Prior to doing a payment, when reorganizing my stashes, when selling: I'm always using a mixer if not already done.
• I never throw non-anonymous cryptos and anonymous cryptos in one pot.
• I'm using a dedicated virtual machine for anonymous browsing and anonymous bitcoin activity which is network firewalled in that way no traffic can escape without using the anonymization interface. This virtual machine can't communicate with any machine in my LAN.
• I never typed in my full name inside this virtual machine at any time. I never had me logged in into any full-name registered email, bank account, messenger, exchanger account inside this virtual machine at any time.

Wouldn't be the least surprised if all current mixing services were LE honeypots.

Just sending your money to an online wallet and then from there to an exchange should do it. Won't work against a global adversary, but then again, if you're not involved in money laundering you should be fine.

anonymizing bitcoins is a pain in the ass. it's just about time for us to settle on a proper anonymous coin that solves these things by design.

Monero is everything Bitcoin could have been by wasn't.

I think that in time more and more people will come to realize that Bitcoin isn't anonymous at all and move to XMR instead. Or at least use it in complement with XBT.

I definitely use a mixer to get fresh coins. I use it only when I want to send coins to my cold wallet. So I surely know no one knows what my cold wallet address is.

Bitmixer is doing the job very well for me. No, I don't say this because I wear a Bitmixer signature. Their service is simply the best.

Really no need to ever mix coins...this thread was started by someone advertising a bitmixing service, seems like a clear agenda to me to scare people into thinking there is some kind od necessity in doing such a thing.

Doesn't have to be illegal to be private.  Some folks are embarrassed about things like buying a dirty magazine and a tube of hand lotion.

Not really into the hassle of mixing my coins... I wouldn't really benefit on the improved security :)

That would only be embarrassing if my family or my boss found out, but the government? I couldn't care less if they find out I masturbate every night.

I would go as far to say other than the new coins being mined everyday/week over 50% are tainted in one way or another if you count tax avoidance then the % would be even higher. It is just like cash are you worried about 'tainted' fiat? You don't care because you don't know. I used to use a mixer quite a bit but as time has gone on, I have not needed to as someone said about buying a altcoin I do that but send to another exchange and trade back arbing covering fees. Most exchanges use throw away addresses and they are plenty good enough for my needs, I am not shady enough to need more anonymity yet and probably never will be.

...

Thorough mixing of coins is a great idea, IMO.  Even if only to practice doing it and learning the system.

Mixing will weed out some of the privacy abusers as Lyth0s pointed out above.

I have no idea if the NSA and their buds (probably) could easily break bitmixer.io (http://bitmixer.io) and sharedcoin.com (for blockchain.info (http://blockchain.info) wallets), but hardly anyone else could, with the mixing done right.

I personally think the mixers provide a much-needed and great service.  JUST those two above I mentioned, almost EVERY OTHER mixer has bad reviews...


*** Do follow instructions though. ***

At the risk of stating the obvious, if you're getting paid in Bitcoin, your boss knows your Bitcoin addresses, and hence will find out. Companies monitor what their employees post on social media; do you think they won't monitor Bitcoin transactions too?

How can they know I spent money in le sexy stuff if the shop, properly, generates a new address for every sale?

Is the effort to analyze all the blockchain and the relations between the addresses and other businesses worth discovering an employee's sex habits?

It's a paradox, If you don't use the exchange, how do you buy bitcoin?
Anonymity is not that important, if we just use it for legal purpose, i don't think we need anonymous.

He is speaking the truth. If you don't want to pay taxes in the future, when exchange you are using now, will give out your personal information  to the IRS. Then you better don't use local exchanges.
Instead you can acquire bitcoin via localbitcoins.com It is probably the astest and easiest way to buy and sell bitcoins while being anonymous.

well i don't do that because i think bitcoin's anonimity is already good for me

yeah they know that address, but who said that i'm gonna receive other income in the same address? not to mention that every other transactions will be done from different transaction, this feature isn't present in bitcoin, they should add it, i want to select from wich address my transaction goes out

No I don't use mixers or other stuff maybe because I only use bitcoins to either gamble or buy some digital goods and I don't feel it's really necessary to hide anything whilst doing that.


I don't think they can track it even if they wanted to and they won't bother to do it.

UM OK....Wait...WHAT??!!!  Are you trying to say that there is no and never has been a Santa??!!
Yeah right....HELLO where do you think my Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock came from when I was 8 years old??

I don't need no mixer to stay hidden/anonymous and neither does anyone unless they are serious criminals, there are basic coin control techniques that can keep you as anonymous as needed. If I was upto no good though I would mix the coins a few times depending how naughty I had been :)

I don't have that much BTC to actually matter.
But for privacy I use Monero. I actually hold more Monero than BTC right now. And instead of using mixers I would use in-built mix-in of Monero. At least I have control over my own money.

Maybe this sounds more like a commercial, sorry, it's not intended.

I'm gonna check out Monero to see what you're talking about maybe I can use it.....um I mean I totally know what it is, I'm just gonna go to their website to see if ....... to see what you're talking about cuz I have no clue what it is.  OK I said it.....I'm ignorant....happy?

Basically for any transaction you do you have an extra parameter: the mixin.
Bigger you set that parameter, more anonymous the transaction will actually be.
Actually most people started asking and using mixin at least 3 for privacy reasons.
But yeah, go on, read ;)

Thank very much for the info it is a big help and probably will solve this particular concern of mine.
(But I totally knew that)

Every night?  Really?  That's all?  What do you do in the mornings and at lunch time and for your mid afternoon break and before dinner and at 3am when you wake up to pee?

Classic case of sleeping ignorant people, just like pre-bitcoin