Bitcoin Forum

What's going on with this mixer

Am i the only one noticing that the domain has been seized?  is this known yet? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125389.msg51168862#msg51168862)[/url]

When a site is seized it's supposed to display the famous page "seized by abcd jurisdiction". However, the site is currently displaying 404 Not found. Are people worried just for maintenance (which could be just this) or there is something and the site is really seized??

Weird the site disappears, the exact same day another one is created

Edit:
The site has really been seized
http://archive.is/MymVC
https://i.epvpimg.com/nbzRbab.png
https://i.epvpimg.com/nbzRbab.png

https://www.fiod.nl/the-fiod-and-the-public-prosecution-service-take-money-laundering-machine-for-cryptocurrencies-offline/

I have the same error as you. I would've said that it's an exit scam but apparently, the twitter has been suspended  (https://twitter.com/BestMixerIO)as well...

Did anyone notice this before today? Because the owner hasn't been active since 19th of May and the address last transaction was last made on the 18th.

It's really seized. Here's how it looks on my end http://archive.is/MymVC

Here on the forum but I don't remember where. I went from topics to topics and ended on the post quoted, then I visited the website and that's how I saw it.

Someone posted this link but I can't open it
https://www.fiod.nl/the-fiod-and-the-public-prosecution-service-take-money-laundering-machine-for-cryptocurrencies-offline/

edit:
@dbshck
the picture looks fake to me maybe I am too much used to see the usual USA pages but this one makes me think he created one in a hurry. ugly

edit:
@OmegaStarScream
thanks

Here you go (https://i.epvpimg.com/nbzRbab.png).

Holy crap.  I'm not familiar with Bestmixer's business at all--does anyone know what country they operated out of?  Why would their site get seized?  Mixing coins isn't a crime, right?

Ah, thank you.  So I guess there were laws in place that Bestmixer somehow violated.  I wonder if this is going to be contested and if it'll set a precedent in other countries and for other mixing services. 

Holy crap²

I wasn’t expecting something like this. Did the guy behind it got arrested?

Probably Germany Dutch? Looks like this “FIOD” is the Dutch Anti-Fraud agency. Or maybe they had parties in “Luxembourg, France and Latvia” according to the article.

https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/other-blogs/mcafee-labs/crypto-currency-laundering-service-bestmixer-io-taken-down-by-law-enforcement/

I'll bet John REALLY isn't happy to have his name all over this one. He should change his spelling.

Is this the first formal seizure of a mixing service? Presumably there must have been some crimes directly linked to it.

If I remember yeah it's the first.
If bestmixer has been caught it's because how the mix is done wasn't so efficient. As proof, look today. I knew it already but it suddenly remembers me all the people claiming this and that is the best ever bla bla bla.

Look they even found how many bitcoins have been mixed and how many income they were making :D

Apparently the dutch authorities now have all addresses which used the service.
What a cluster F*** this is thinking you were anonymously using this service just so you could stay anonymous. :-\

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/bestmixerio-service-shut-down-for-laundering-200-million-/

It looks pretty general according to that. There's no mention of specific crimes, just tracing lots of questionable addresses to them. Well, if I were running any mixer I'd be off on holiday right now.

I don't think we should ever assume that there is something truly anonymous here. TOR has proven to not be, and so do crypto mixers not offer you that benefit. It sucks of course, but we can't do anything about it.

BitMixer very likely felt the pressure coming from all sorts of agencies and pulled the plug right on time to avoid ending up like BestMixer. I'm glad that I sticked to ChipMixer, but this is definitely a warning signal to pay attention to.

It is right to close these shits. These are just a den of bandits, services available to criminals.

Why should I, who am clean, be using a mix?
Why does bitcointalk continue to allow advertising of these services clearly at the service of criminals in order to collect money?

This is bad for crypto.

Anonymity is not favoring illegality.

Now ban me too, but I am convinced that like me there are hundreds of thousands of people who think what I just said.

Enough advertising of ILLEGAL services on bitcointalk is enough, just look at this page to understand how many banners there are.

And I think that even bitcointalk publicizing these services unconsciously is doing nothing but favoring these criminals.
It makes no sense to try to justify the unjustifiable, those services are RECYCLING.

I do not pretend that everyone thinks like me, but I can assure you that I am not alone in finding these UNNECESSARY services for non-criminals. If you don't commit a crime, you have no reason to dirty your coins.

Looking at your profiles is obvious that you try to defend your interests. Here the privacy is really zero.

The collusion of those who take money to advertise these services is obvious. It's convenient to collect money.

Daftness alone isn't enough to get banned.

Just because you assume only criminals value privacy doesn't make it anymore true.

If you never mix or otherwise obfuscate your coins everyone you do business with can glean some information about you, such is the nature of public ledger.

For an anonymous donation there is no need for mixing, it would be enough to use an anonymous coin.

That business volume, that percentage of tax to pay is only useful for illicit purposes. And I repeat, in my opinion who defends these services are two types of users: those who do business with them as the advertisements on this forum (all posts on this discussion, ALL, ALL, have a mixing service advertised), and those who use it for recycling.

My question is, is there really so need to advertise these services? Maybe the only real reason is why do they pay well?

Users who use for lawful purposes these services will be a percentage to 8 zeros, such as a Satoshi.

It's called privacy @cryptoreggae and in some countries, I can guarantee you it worths a lot of money. It's not just about GAFA or your browser. It's about your whole life, but it doesn't mean you commit a crime.
It's something the Cypherpunk have been fighting for decades. (There is a good text to read 'the cypherpunk manifesto'). And when people started to think about creating a P2P currency, well before Satoshi and Bitcoin, they had privacy in mind.


.
Edward Snowden

Do not take me as a fool only because I think differently from you. Cyberpunks were not criminals, and Bitcoin was born to be anonymous not to facilitate crime and criminals.

It is no coincidence that Satoshi was not happy with the associated Assange and Bitcoin.

Privacy is a right, but it is a must to fight criminals, and I see no use in mixing services, none.

If you want to donate to Snowden what does it prohibit you to Exchange BTC for an anonymous one and then send it for a donation? Explain to me why I should use a mixing if I can use crypto anonymous.

BTC that pass through mixing cannot go into Exchange because they would be immediately blocked, this is the harsh truth and is why they are willing to pay up to 5% tax.

I'm not taking you a fool...
Bitcoin wasn't created to be anonymous but transparent, there is a  difference between, otherwise, privacy would have been added to the Bitcoin protocol the day 1 by Satoshi.

If you don't have the need for privacy it's maybe because we have a different culture or something else. But I could give thousands of reasons to use a mixer even if you don't do something shady.

Nothing is stopping you to use a privacy-centric cryptocurrency.
Not true, or show me a link if you have.

@AdolfinWolf
Until today I thought Dutch is a synonym of German, the funny thing is I have been to NL plenty of times  :D

Why do you think he was seized?
Do you really need proof that what passes from those mixing is almost all the result of crime?

We'll see more close, and if that will be useful to stop criminals I will be happy. One thing is for sure, I personally will not feel the lack of these services.
 

As if by magic they will disappear one by one these services, and with them their advertisement on this forum. It's only a matter of time.

Will, they shut down the whole US banks industry since the USD is the currency the most used worldwide? Only criminals use banks.

I don't get that. What does the banks and the USD have to do with this discussion?
While wanting to connect the two things, I do not turn out there are banks online where send stolen money that then distribute you cleaned up another account, and if they exist are illegal, How illegal they will be and should be  illegal the services mixing. This is to protect the scammed and the robbed.

Remember that anyone could find yourself cheated or robbed, too, and if this will help to catch these criminals I will be delighted.

I was trying to follow your logic since banks also use their platform to help 'scammers'. I'm not talking about a bank user who disputes a bank transfer or something like that. I'm talking about the billions moving around banks on behalf the criminals, oligarchy, Trump, companies, taxes evasion or whatever it is... Hello Panama Papers.

In the same way, they used banks to do their shady activities so we can say. I'm not saying we shouldn't fight illegal activities, just that they're doing it the wrong way. Well like they currently do with fiats. Mixers will always exist as banks do.

But the point is that you need to get that some people may need to use a mixer it doesn't mean they're criminal, believe me.
Otherwise, what are your argument to be against people seeking privacy and use a mixer (considering they do nothing illegal)

Credit transfers or Fiat currency cannot be followed on a blockchain. Here instead we can follow the flow, I see only good things.

I try to imagine the Panama Papers on blockchain, it would have been very useful to have the TX.

Why bother engaging this willy? It's boring and pointless. I'm interested in the actual event, not what a silly sausage thinks while throwing down its irrelevant moral judgements.

Not entirely sure what made their platform the hot target for FIOD, but for sure this has something to do with money laundering in large amounts. If the primary objective of the seizure and closure of the said platform is due to basic mixing, then I don't think mixers would be a thing of the future and a lot of governments would be against its idea.

As for the commotion happening around in this thread, @CryptoReggae, if you think mixing coins is a way to help criminals further their nefarious doings, tell that to the Swiss bank accounts and other offshore bank accounts used by crimelords, corrupt and narcopoliticians to hide their precious ill-gotten wealth. Every system has its dark, flawed and dirty side. This ain't utopia you're living at, so expect something rotten and dirty.

Europol states that "the investigation so far into this case has shown that many of the mixed cryptocurrencies on Bestmixer.io had a criminal origin or destination" and that "the mixer was probably used to conceal and launder criminal flows of money."
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/tiny/dutch-authorities-seize-crypto-mixing-service-bestmixer-io/


It's not me who thinks it, it's the facts. And we'll see that it'll only be a matter of time, one by one will fall all the main mixers because they have no control over the origin of these BTC.

Yes, I think it's just a big recycling and they don't serve anything else.Justifying a crime with another crime (bank recycling) is not a good reason to defend a substantially unnecessary service.

Time is a gentleman.

"many [...] had a criminal origin or destination"

"was probably used to conceal and launder criminal [...]"

They're speaking in platitudes, if they had been able to prove bestmixer knowingly worked to launder criminal proceeds, they'd be much more confident. Meaning they spent tax money chasing a business they can't even tell if it caused anyone any harm.

incredible lack of foresight! almost stinks of a honeypot. their servers were all in the netherlands and luxembourg, of all places?! that's asking to have europol mirroring your servers.


that's what the press release alludes to, but there is literally no charge listed.

The Dutch authorities are really quick. I always wondered about Mixers, some survived for so long, some like Bestmixer just got caught so easily. $200 million is a lot of money,,, but I wonder also how did the authorities determine that was the amount of money laundered? Like if they find out other mixers, I thought it was mainly for privacy?

they seized bestmixer's servers---or at least a half dozen of them. it sounds like they have logs of all activity for the past year. they are probably analyzing tx inputs/outputs against letters of guarantee as we speak.

anyone who has used bestmixer in the past should probably consider their transactions de-anonymized. :-\

It is possible to de-anonymize CoinJoin transactions if the input/output sizes are not all the same. CJ will provide privacy from someone casually looking at your transaction, but not someone with some amount of resources.

The Dutch government claims to have been monitoring transactions going through their service for roughly a year. They also posted a message on the domain seizure message that says:
I don't think the purpose of this was to gather information about BestMixer's users, but was to inspire FUD for those who might use other mixing services.

I believe the best way to maximize privacy is to not reuse bitcoin addresses, and encourage other people including the people you trade with to not reuse addresses. When someone uses a mixer, they will often get lazy, and when something like this happens, they will lose a lot of privacy they never really had. If you use bitcoin correct, and everyone else does so too, that is not reuse addresses, an adversary might use incomplete information and some assumptions to minimally break your privacy, but your overall privacy will be lower than it would be otherwise.

Ouch damn, nice catch there LeGaulois. Probably the biggest news regarding mixers I can recall since BitMixer announced its own shutdown... almost 2 years ago now? More or less not long before the time Chipmixer was born. Gives us quite a lot of perspective on how long (or not) things last in this space, doesn't it?

Read the news and I have to say, it's probably about due time something like this happened, especially if it's really true that the BitMixer method (which is used by BestMixer and most others) has been successfully cracked (https://bitcoinnews.com/exclusive-college-student-claims-to-have-cracked-bitcoin-mixing-services/).

Well the obvious answer is that they are not anonymous,  ;D. Maybe the authorities are really looking and casing everything before they seize Bestmixer, as for the implications? could lead to arrest. Remind me of this thread, Breaking Mixing Services (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5117328.0).


And two months after Felix release his thesis, one mxing services fall down.  ;D

Heh, yeah, it's the same guy I linked above. He probably shared enough in his work for the authorities to attempt the same. Fairly simple (not for me, but for someone with enough technical knowledge) in the end, it seems. There's quite a bit of work going on in the Dutch system too, so really not surprised, except that it took this long. Almost a year of investigation, if we believe their admission.

On another note now, this will only result in stronger methods being developed, and a gravitation towards superior mixers. It was always going to be survival of the fittest!

Yep, those remaining mixing services left in the game should up their 'tempo', another lessons learn from this debacle, servers should be located somewhere not within reach of authorities, (although US has proven in the past they can get anything) ;. So let's see how it goes, cat-and-mouse game right now. ;D. Probably the Dutch authorities wanted to make sure everything is in order before they made the seizure and that the case is tight. Let's look at @LeGaulois 2019 List Bitcoin Mixers Bitcoin Tumblers Websites (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2827109) and see who's next.

There is this post from another thread, I found it interesting. This is ambiguous but a mixer is truly legal up to a point. I guess if set up correctly the person behind is safe. They just have to shut up and take the money.. Could be interesting to check Bitmixer.io just out of curiousity

Kind of a strange piece of wording.

So you can be an anti AML/KYC operation as long as you don't say you're an anti AML/KYC operation out loud?

It's not as if they were taunting the authorities. They were pointing out what everyone already knows.

It literally was the purpose, if not the end result. (See "Seized servers and transaction data captured") (You quoted it yourself? lol?)
They're investigating the data and sharing it with Interpol etc.

???
You're not making sense.
Not reusing adresses still don't break any cryptographic "chains" the link will only get broken if you use a mixer of sorts.

Anonymity is not necessarily improved when not reusing adresses....

OH my!!! I am so late to see this precious news. The bad thing there I think they save all transactions from bad coins to clean coins. Unlike chipmixer that they delete the history after a week that is why it's still good to use chipmixer than other mixers.

And I think this is the reason why theymos post in beginners help section I was recently thinking what is the reason but right now I know.

The most interesting thing is that there's no information about anyone arrested with the case.
Means the author is probably still here?

Maybe they're much more interested in the people who used the service than the people hosting it. It looks like they might have many of the details of the transactions that took place there. Stopping the service and draining it of info will have more of an impact but it is interesting how there's no mention of charges anywhere, or any names.

They don't release names, it's not the US. I bet they owners will get be investigated and will have to pay taxes on their earnings (if they aren't involved in criminal activities).

Possible. It's also possible they have the domain and servers but none of the people. If you were running a mixing service I'd hope at least you set that bit up anonymously. And if they're that shit a mixing service I hope they ran their earnings through another one too.

I'm not talking about releasing names. I know that they dont.

Usually, however, there's information when there was anyone arrested - with no names. Just read interpol announcements.

I am not aware of any jurisdiction in which the government can seize a business if it is not alleged there is criminal activity.

The owners were most likely charged under seat last years, or their identities are unknown.

According to media reports, no arrests have been made. Maybe the owners successfully obfuscated their identities when registering the site and operating the servers. Stranger things have happened.

I'm leaning towards the honeypot angle, myself. Nobody is stupid enough to run this service from the Netherlands.

Doesn't anyone remember what the Dutch police did with Hansa? (https://www.wired.com/story/hansa-dutch-police-sting-operation/) They hijacked the market and ran it themselves, altering code and social engineering sellers into leaking their location and other identifying info.


These Dutch police are ruthless and sneaky. I wouldn't put it past them to spin up the site themselves. Now they have a treasure chest of data on darknet smugglers. I'm sure many arrests will come from this. Probably none to do with operation of the mixer though.

He registered the domain with Gandi and hosted the website with Worldstream . And I can tell you that you can buy a domain name without any real information and you can pay with bitcoins (at least before Bitcoin was here) the dedicated server too.

Today the Whois Record has been updated http://whois.domaintools.com/bestmixer.io but too lazy to find what changed. Probably the NS.

Look like they haven't moved yet the site to their own server, they're probably still working on few things like extracting or idk.

what did bestmixer's FAQ actually say? did it literally say "use this service to launder your money"?

i'm not sure how the money laundering statutes work in europe. in the USA, the law (and associated conspiracy charges) requires an element of intent. from wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Laundering_Control_Act)

advertising a service as a way to conceal the source of funds could be construed as conspiracy to launder money.

but if one runs a mixing service for privacy purposes only and doesn't advertise anything about money laundering, are they really in the clear? i dunno, sounds a bit too easy! :)

i always assumed the people running mixers would be doing so from some faraway island nation where they are safe from extradition treaties. so the worst thing they need to worry about is a domain seizure.

The quote is huge so I’ll only link the post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5099654.msg49639206#msg49639206

It’s funny because they explicitly said in their FAQ that they didn’t allow money coming from drugs and other illegal methods, which is exactly why they got shutdown. They were probably only trying to blind themselves from legal issues, but it didn’t work as we can see. :)

Do you know what percentage of the market BestMixer had? I don't, but I believe it was not a major player in the mixing market.

Let me give this as an example:

Say I take out a loan from you, I give you an address to send the coins to. You are a very nice person and only require me to pay 95% of what I borrowed, and I repay 95% and send the remaining 5% to an address of my own. In all cases, brand new addresses are used for each transaction, and are not disclosed anywhere publicly. Looking from the outside, how would anyone know who owns any of the coins in either the address I repaid the loan to, or the change address I used to send the 5% to? Someone could tell the coins used to belong to you, but they cannot know if they belong to someone who traded with you, or if they belong to you without additional information.

I have a premonition, here there is more than someone who is literally doing himself under the shit out of fear ;D
I expect great actions soon from the authorities, obviously among those who have used this service of unnecessary anonymity to launder illegal proceeds.

I try to imagine all those scam posts, malware (fake wallets). I have no doubt that many of these idiots have used this and other sponsored mixers on this forum.

The article says that they were among the top 3 mixers. So, pretty good volume and (probably) porcentage (75 BTC in fees/month).

Source: FIOD.nl article

Perhaps they won't, but as soon as i transfer any portion of those coins (95%) to an exchange/or use it for X Y Z, it becomes clear that i owned all of them. hence why one might want to use a mixer before doing any sort of trading.

- I mean yes, you could let them sit in that adress for ever and it you can provably deny that they're yours, but you won't ever be able to do anything with them either without your privacy getting f'd.

- Cash out a portion of the coins -/ connects you to all of the coins.
- Buy something from shop X with btc -/ connects you to all of the coins.

I guess if you don't make a connection to any real world service or application, your argument could be validated. (but still isn't very strong..)

The title makes me think about this tweet
Mobile. CoinJoin. Let that really sink in. (https://twitter.com/samouraiwallet/status/1120215932922679297)


I guess this is the case with the posts above if i read it correct.
Samourai-Wallet points towards this function 'Stowaway (https://github.com/Samourai-Wallet/samourai-wallet-android)' what is based on this concept [ I taint rich! (Raw txn fun and disrupting 'taint' analysis; >51kBTC linked!)  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139581.0)

Please see this article on address reuse and privacy:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse

Not reusing addresses absolutely increases privacy, and gives plausible deniability as to ownership of prior inputs that can be tracked back to bad/illegal activity.

 
Even if it were the US of a mixers don't keep names....think about it. whose name will be there ?
Mixer....criminal activities....what are the odds of this not linked by some transaction somewhere? Besides the company operating in the lines of giving people their crypto privacy...and these guys could casually slap them with some money laundering charge


For a mixer to be shutdown this easily, something is not adding up!
I Wonder whose buttons got pressed for this to unravel....domain provider.....unsatisfied customer???

What really funny is actually a reaction of hero members that praised and prayed to bestmixer making of it a big example to other mixers.

This is what you basically get when you talk bullshit about other mixers.

So where are you heading with this statement of yours lol. The situation bestmixer currently find themselves in, has nothing to do with their downgrading of other mixers. it was just a business strategy they employed. Irrespective of whether your downgrade other mixer or not, if the government body have you under their radar they'll come for you.

It's still pretty ironic that they high horsed every other mixer for being "insecure", or not providing privacy, while their servers with (allegedly) full transaction data have been seized, (and were stored in Europe ???)

Already said this, but i get where xtests is coming from.

They mentioned two other mixers as well in the article where they talked about the seizure, and have they been raided yet?
Seems like they must be doing something better than Bestmixer..

i don't think it's very hard when the servers are stored in the netherlands and luxembourg, lol. with TOR so full of holes and the network so full of adversaries, IP address obfuscation is only as useful as police inability to enter your jurisdiction.

the FIOD said they were sitting on this case for a years time. i'm guessing those servers have been mirrored for many months already. the domain is just an afterthought.

best suggestion ITT:

If best mixer had the best practice when it comes to hosting and how they secure their servers as well as their domain, these kind of situations does not arise, all they could do is seize the domain name and nothing can be done other than that, but that is not the case here, they were investigating them for a year, took all the details and then acted, if you are running a service like this, which cleans all the tracks of your coins, you have to be aware that you might end up in a situation like this.

If the person is arrested, I wonder what he would have in court. He could argue to say that the platform is used to anonymize bitcoins but that he has no control over what people on his platform do or say that he does not have the resources to know that the bitcoins came from illegal activity.(Especially if the website mentioned the bitcoins can't come from illegal activities)
well you know, like the banks.

Offshore domain name registrars do exist and tend to ignore complains (until a court order)

IIRC, they did have some terms in their TOS that may have protected the operator a little bit.

I don't know the statute or legal theory that was used to seize the domain/servers, so I cannot review the text of the law to see what, if any affect the TOS would have done to protect the operators. 

Bitblender just announced they're shutting down also. I guess this is a disease that's spreading rapidly. Looks like Bitmixer.io sniffed something long before anyone else. If I were completely confident in my anonymity I'd stick around to see if they attempted to hang a case on someone. I get why you wouldn't linger though.

Afair when they closed the business, some members here were requesting the owner not to close or sale the business.
But the owner said something that the "Bitcoin is not an anonymous thing anymore" and "I can sell the business for $5m-$6m but I'll not do that"
Maybe the owner predicted the future consequences about mixing services and decided to shut it down. Well, the Bitmixer owner left the industry with respect I guess.

---

I had created a thread with some of my questions but the mod has removed it may be because of this thread. I'm posting it here again. I have read the first 2 pages of this thread and then you can say I felt lazy to read more, so not sure if my question has been answered or not. The thread was as below.

****************

I would like to ask the community about their current thoughts after BestMixer Seized by Feds.

https://i.imgur.com/xE4Vura.png

According to the image (LeGaulois says it could be fake (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5146123.msg51170027#msg51170027)), it says FIOD were investigating Bestmixer since June 2018, that's almost a year. They say they have collected information about transactions, letters of guarantee and support messages.

And also said "YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS", not sure if it is a bluff or they really know who are those users using bestmixer.


To the point, Bestmixer is gone and there are others still alive and I was wondering about the following things...

1. Is it possible, that any authority is investigating any other mixers under the user's nose and collecting information and one day the mixer will be seized as like bestmixer?
    Bestmixer users never knew that there was an ongoing investigation under their nose for almost a year.

2. Do you guys think that mixing gives real anonymity? after reading some posts, it seemed that 100% anonymity is not possible.

3. Do the users are in danger and is there any possible threat?

4. Please also write about other concerns which you think appropriate about the case.

I think it may have been raised elsewhere in this thread, but it's quite possible the police were running it for quite some time. For all we know maybe they founded it.

If I was running a mixing service I would be surprised by all this but I also would've expected it was going to happen some day and planned accordingly from the start.

If I were mixing because of nefarious activities I would be nervous indeed. Like anything centralised you're depending on an unknown third party to do it properly and not get busted.

https://i.imgur.com/xEbr3qb.png

Something is not right here.

If I have physical access to your computer, I can access anything in RAM, and can copy the entire contents of your hard drive. If some files are encrypted, the decryption keys will be stored in RAM when you decrypt the file. I can do this without anything on your computer telling you I am doing this (you would see me with your eyes).

If you have a server or a VPS, the servers are located in a datacenter, and both the datacenter operator and the hosting provider can physically access the server without the customer knowing. If the Dutch investigators obtained a legally enforceable order for the hosting provider to give the investigators physical access to the servers, and to not inform the customer, they would have to do exactly that.

I believe they know that they will be hot in the eyes of those investigators even before starting their business. We really don't know the real story behind this. All are just speculations. But I honestly thought everything is in proper order with them because they were running a sig campaign here. Oh well, that's life!

If you think sig campaigns are a mark of respectability you're headed for a life of disappointment.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept of mixing. People will mix to stop others seeing all of their affairs, do some perfectly legal gambling in their own jurisdiction hidden from some asshole exchange. If I were running one I'd prefer to have nothing to do with theft or hacks. I don't want my efforts benefiting dishonest pricks. Presumably they could intercept and return the most obvious cases. I've never heard of such a thing though.

that would definitely come back to bite them. customers would immediately lose trust if a mixer started freezing and stealing "illicit" funds at its discretion.

i am curious what mixers do when they're sent coins from a prominent hack. like the recent binance hack, or the bitfinex hack a few years ago. send them back? steal them? taint their customers' coins with them?

I don't know what mixers do in these cases. I do know if I mixed my own coins, and got coins that can be traced to a high profile hack such as the binance or bitfinex hack, whose inputs are well known and public, I would be very unhappy. If this happened, and I tried to deposit these coins into an exchange, I don't think I would see this money again. I don't know if these were coins the hacker sent to exchanges, or if some mixers sent these coins to other customers, who sent the coins to exchanges, but 27 BTC was seized from various exchange accounts that can be traced back to the 2016 bitfinex account and this money was returned to bitfinex - https://www.coindesk.com/us-government-returns-bitcoins-retrieved-following-2016-bitfinex-hack

FYI, There's an active Bitcointalk trust flag for bestmixer (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1721098).

Direct link to support it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;flag=29;support

What are trust flags? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5153344.0)

They'll do as they like. They're probably working closely with blockchain analysis companies or using their products, those who can be de-anonymized and found to have participated in illicit activities can expect visits and letters from cops. These days even small-time users in Europe are getting visits from the police if they or the other party to the transaction weren't careful.

P.S. No need to post the same post in three topics.

It would take them too much time for analyzing all TXs and the ROI doesn't worth. What was important to them was to stop a platform with a potential ML activity. Imagine the time to spend to check many things to finally figure out it's a $100 transaction used to pay a whore because he didn't want his wife know it. Perhaps they will filter to find anything above $1 million in value but the rest can be forgotten.

Not necessarily. A lot can be automated, and these days the police in some countries will go even after individual users purchasing, say, small amounts of drugs for private consumption. There were quite a few threads of on this topic on reddit of Germans on dnm subreddits getting visits from the police over small purchases.

https://bitcointalk.
They would really care on big fishes and neglect the smaller ones yet they do know that it is really just a waste of money.
As malevolent said above that anything nowadays can really be automated so there's still chances that anyone can really be traced out
on whose using up the service but the real thing here is that they dont waste up time/funding and effort just to that as a whole.