Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin mixers have a long history since they came into inception some time ago. They've been a viable alternative for people looking towards privacy within their Bitcoin transactions. While Bitcoin mixers are far from being perfect, they're still one of the best solutions for obfuscating transactions from third parties. The only concern would be that mixing services are centralized as they're provided by a middleman. In effect, this brings a single point of failure greatly defeating the purpose of privacy.

We've seen how Bestmixer got shut down by the authorities. They claim that Bestmixer encouraged money laundering activities which resulted in legal action. The truth is that Bitcoin mixers can be used for both good and bad things. Money laundering is mostly done with Fiat than with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Still though, the perception of worldwide governments against mixers/tumblers seems to be different nowadays. Which makes me wonder whenever Bitcoin mixers will be considered illegal by such entities within the future?

If governments ban mixers/tumblers, then they could easily do the same to privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Monero and Grin. It's all a matter of power and control over people than anything else. What do you think about this? ???

I can imagine many governments regulating them the same as exchanges, forcing them to do KYC/AML and what not. They can then prosecute the operators in their countries that don't comply, exactly like exchanges.

Banning coins they can try, but hardly succeed. This time its a decentralized service which is not easy to shutdown. Centralized services like exchanges and mixers could be attacked. Well, unless there is some decentralized mixer out there, which should be possible to do (and easier than the Bisq (http://bisq.network/) DEX).

Its happening, this is the beginning of shutting down Bitcoin mixers. This kind of technology is really good for anonymity, but the government think it is being used in illegal activities which we can't know if its real or not. Many mixers are being shut down recently this year, but the good thing is that most of the old mixer are still with us, and maybe they need to be more transparent with the government regulations.

I'm certain they will do it in the near future. Or, they could also require a mixer to have some sort of backdoor which they can use, or governments could just decrypt the transaction itself, or they probably run a mixer by themselves and promote it like crazy so that most users use that.

If anyone can do that, it's probably the governments who are taking this issue seriously.

I have just read a very timely article about how Binance hackers tried to launder a total of 4,836 BTC using Chipmixer.  (https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/73259/binance-hackers-bombard-chipmixer-launder-least-4836-btc)

There have been similar cases in the past whereby a tumbler is the best option for the criminal's footprints to arrive at a dead end. If this will become the pattern and tumblers simply become a notorious haven for criminals to get away from the government agencies tracking down on their crimes, I bet the government will have to also bring down all these tumblers. But I doubt if it will end this kind of service. Perhaps the best option for these tumblers is to go underground. There will always be patrons for this. 

yes, there is a good chance for it as bitcoin gains more popularity and the mixers are used more. but the bigger concern that we should have is if the government agencies start running their own mixers in disguise and become popular!

there is a big difference between shutting down a centralized company that has a physical (singular) place to shut down and a handful of people (the owners of the company) to arrest or put pressure on.
and a decentralized cryptocurrency that relies on its peers that are spread around the world!

The authorities can try to enforce KYC for the mixers, but I don't think that anyone will comply with the orders. The basic purpose of a mixer is to provide added anonymity for its clientele. The mandatory requirement of KYC contradicts this very purpose and therefore I don't think that anyone in their right mind would expect the mxers to comply. The government authorities are still enforcing KYC in the exchanges now. Once the exchanges are covered, then the next target will be the online wallets (such as Blockchain.com). There are some indications about this. But I don't know how successful that would be, since a majority of the users would just install desktop wallets or lite wallets, and stop using these online wallets. For old time Bitcoin users like me, anonymity is very important and that was one of the primary reasons why I got attracted to the idea of cryptocurrency. The authorities can try their best to harass the users, but we'll always be one step ahead of them.

If we take for example bitcointalk.org actually here no one knows about anyone , we already are here but we can change out name country whatever and they don't even need the KYC , just a simple e-mail.
We should understand that mixers which are or can be a hub for the illegal activities , which can cause increase in the crime rates naturally needs to be shut down .
But we can always make a sub topic here to include mixers for you guys , we do have offtopics too .
Instead of bringing out new apps maybe we can integrate the same things in the old ones .

Bitcoin mixer is prone to illegal activities and probably used by the hackers to tumble their bitcoin and transfer on their own bitcoin address. It can be used to disguise and make it difficult to prove where bitcoins came from. Recently, bitcoin mixer company has decided to stop because they know that it is illegal by their country and might used by terrorism attempt. The sad truth is from time to time let us just accept and face the fact that Bitcoin service related will become regulated.

I disagree. Politicians don't go into subtle details like not all money in the mixers is from illegal sources. And they also don't want to allow too much privacy either.
Monero already shows this. Although obviously a big percent of Monero users / holders use it simply for their own privacy, the Japanese (iirc) exchanges don't list it because they cannot check the money laundering, because Monero favors money laundering.
I expect Bitcoin mixers follow the same path: slowly getting banned / decided they're illegal.


I know, they should ban paper money for the same reason, still they don't. This is how silly the politics are.

They are going to have a hard time shutting them down, when they are hosted in a country with their own laws and regulations and complete sovereignty. Why do you think some illegal gambling operations are functioning from small islands in the Pacific?

Also, Mixer services will just adapt to the threat, by going decentralized or falling back onto creating more anonymous Alt coins that are already decentralized. So you are looking at a complex game of cat and mouse and the mouse has 1000's of little off-spring that would leave the nest, if the cat comes to close.  ;)

Remember, Cash is also anonymous in a way... so having a service giving you the same level of anonymity would not be deemed illegal in many counties. <You have a right to protect your financial interest>

Unfortunately there's a simple choice against that.

In the same way some wallets already have in their ToS (and checking!) that you don't use the coins for gambling, the reputed exchanges can add into their ToS that they don't accept Bitcoins coming from those mixers. Some will be able to go around that, but for average Joe it will be a deal breaker.

And again, average Joe will need a reputed exchange in order to get fiat from his Bitcoins if he wants to spend at the grocery store.


The chain may be broken when most merchants will accept Bitcoin. Then indeed, nothing can be done anymore. But isn't this maybe one of the things that makes Bitcoin acceptance at merchants increase this slow? (Of course, I sometimes tend to be concerned by things that are not a problem, and this may be such a case).

This claim is substantiated by Bestmixer's page where it lists reasons why people should be using mixers in the first place. They basically advertised their service as a way to evade KYC and AML procedures with crypto, and the authorities justified their attack based on that fact.

Mixers are otherwise perfectly legal (which was acknowledged by a blog (https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/other-blogs/mcafee-labs/crypto-currency-laundering-service-bestmixer-io-taken-down-by-law-enforcement/) of McAfee, a firm instrumental in the takedown) and I don't see that changing in the near future. Lawmakers don't ever talk about mixers and I would be surprised if majority of them knew mixers even existed. I could see mixers getting on their crosshairs if a single provider gets big and popular enough, but the service itself is so niche that even the most well known ones remain obscure to the general public.

Governments prefer to regulate the companies that are responsible for changing bitcoin into fiat. Most won't bother with bitcoin mixers when bitcoin isn't used to pay for goods. Yes you can buy stuff online with it but when that happens bitcoin is exchanged by someone somewhere and that person or company is responsible for checking you.

Mixers don't allow you to launder money because bitcoin is not money. Not yet at least. Mixers only make it harder for exchanges to trace the origin but they can not accept your mixed coins if they want to. It's more probable that they will do it in fear of government shutting them down.

Old time Bitcoin users could just mine their coins, but as time passes this is less and less the case (as designed). More and more people will enter Bitcoin by buying them with their fiat, leaving a whole trace back to the source of said fiat. Also, as time passes, more and more bitcoins are getting re-used again, and there will be people stealing them, and trying to wash them. Victims of bitcoin theft have nowhere to go beyond their local authorities, but this is outside Bitcoin's realm. There is also the issue of money coming from activities illegal in country a but legal in country b. Then what?

I expect exchanges will be told to drop privacy coins as the price of doing business. That's already happening in Japan and South Korea.

As for mixers, any law enforcement agency determined enough could probably pin countless dodgy monies going through mixers so if the will was there all of them will get nailed if they can be found.

It's possible in future there may be sanitised mixing services created purely to break the link between old addresses for gamblers in the right jurisdiction and people who simply don't want all their transactions to be linked.

The future of mixers open to all may not be a long lasting one. Even if they continue to operate with impunity it's possible third party services will reject coins that are identified as coming from them.

Without a doubt, governments will try their best in order to stop people from using privacy services at all costs. They've successfully shut down Bestmixer because it was a centralized service. Imagine what they could do with the rest of Bitcoin mixers available today. That's why, it's best for these services to remain in the most decentralized way possible in order to prevent third-parties from taking any action against them. Luckily, we have non-custodial wallets for Bitcoin that use CoinJoin anonymization techniques like Wasabi and Samourai. On the other hand, we have a decentralized mixing service called "CoinShuffle" available exclusively for Bitcoin Cash.

Which is why, the more decentralized mixing services appear, the better for the people. I believe that it's time for individuals to take back their privacy via the use of a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and various anonymization techniques available today. With this, governments won't be able to stop every privacy service, effectively eliminating the middleman as Satoshi originally intended. I believe that current centralized mixing services will have a hard time with worldwide governments as they impose KYC/AML regulations. Even instant exchanges like Shapeshift, turned out to require KYC after so much pressure from the government.

Nonetheless, governments may consider mixing services illegal, but those which are decentralized will truly prevail in the long run. People will always look for alternative ways to get access to this, especially when it comes to their privacy among Bitcoin transactions. In the end, governments will recognize that their efforts will be in vain, greatly joining the decentralized crypto revolution in the long run. Just my thoughts ;D

I think the reason for such declaration of some centralized bitcoin mixers as illegal is simple, the government have always seen bitcoin as taking away the shine of fiat because of the decentralized and privacy tendencies and so, any further attempt on privacy beyond the bitcoin decentralization, will be tried to be stopped.

We've already seen a mixing service getting shutdown by authorities in Europe, I think there's very high chance it will happen again. More likely, it will be a part of some global regulatory framework, they can try to forbid all services from accepting coins from mixers if there will be an easy way to tell if a coin comes from mixers or not.

But on the other hand, I think governments understand the value of privacy, usually they want to be the only one's with backdoors. In the last year there was an article how Canada advised people how to buy weed privately, because the US was taking action against people who did it even in other countries. So, regulating mixers is another option, forcing them to keep records and share them with authorities.

This is the same argument with anonymity on a thread I found yesterday, where there are 2 side to the coin. On one side, bitcoin mixers are able to provide us with a level of security and keep ourselves and our money safe, while they also provide the same option to people who do illegal and terrible.

Biggest problem though is that even though there is a small section of people that use crypto to launder their money, the most prominent and popular way of money laundering and illegal activity is still fiat currencies, so we are banning mixers for being a small part of the problem, as the governments screwing over the people using mixers for privacy reasons.

That's true, and it would be even worse for crypto if privacy coins where abolished.

Senators Feinstein and Grassley have tried twice (with some co-sponsor support) to re-define mixers as financial institutions (https://www.reddit.com/r/zec/comments/7h396f/us_senate_bill_s1241_to_criminalize_concealed/). That would subject mixers to banking regulations, as ridiculous as that sounds. Nobody cared enough about cryptocurrency during the last couple legislative sessions for the bill to move forward, but that's probably changing. The FATF is just a veil for the US government, so we'll probably see a similar bill pushed by some very powerful people over the next year.

There will always be decentralized exchanges that would be willing to accept any coins, because those exchanges cannot be shutdown. You can also push those coins through online gambling sites, before you send it to exchanges. <There are many ways to bypass ToS restrictions>  ::)

Stricly speaking Mixer services are not illegal and if people want to go to court and defend this stance, then they will win. If I get cash from someone else and I spend it at a merchant, is that transaction anonymous or not? Why is mixing coins illegal, if you want to hide your wealth from hackers and thieves that might want to track your coins.  ::)

In the eyes of governments around the world, coin mixers are infamous tools which facilitate illegal/underground activities. Since most mixers run parallel, both on the clearnet and a mirror on the dark web, it is a big giveaway that the coins linked with it are being involved in criminal activities. The so called untraceable funds are again used for similar purposes.

I think it's only a matter of time before things become a lot more demanding.

Centralised mixers are custodial services, even if it's for a very short period of time. It's clear that authorities have the desire to bring all custodians to heel. They'll argue that anyone in a position to receive and handle third party money must toe the line.

It doesn't matter whether you're complicit in money laundering, if your service has the potential to enable it you'll be expected to be just as uptight as Coinbase. Mixers in the form we're familiar with will have to go properly dark or properly corporate eventually.

 

Here's the point we don't fully understand about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is decentralized. So technically nobody can forbid anything. We only need a true decentralized exchange, so we can completely runs our investment with transparently.

If Money Laundering is the main excuse for closing down Mixers, then by the same rule of thumb at least the following industries should also be taken down:

- Banking
- Underground banking
- Futures
- Professional advisors
- Finance houses/building societies
- Financial transmitters
- Casinos
- Antique dealers/jeweller’s/designer goods suppliers
- Any internet based business
(see http://www.imlib.org/page9_bus_prone_ml.html).

It’s not really a Boolean decision, and they should not be demonized as a collective, but rather more on a case by case basis that study the degree of implication of all parties (corporation/platform, employees, customers, etc.). A boolean decision of a kind would have banned banks ages ago, and they they stand ...

Mixers are helping in money laundering. This is what they are for, aren't they?

Most gambling sites are also centralized and prone to being shutdown, depending where they operate. In that regard they are also like the exchanges and the mixers. Governments may at some point force them to inspect coins against some sanctioned list and who knows what criteria they will use for blacklisting.

Of course its not illegal, which is why they will explicitly make it illegal. Because those politicians write the laws remember? Its not about common sense or the people's needs, its about what they believe and their interests.

Bitcoin wasn't illegal anywhere, but some countries made it illegal, possession, mining, and trading. They are idiots and we already know that, but they have power over those places. And FWIW the same thing could be said about gambling, prostitution and drugs, just to name a few. Did you know in a certain Caribbean country homosexuality was illegal with 20 years prison? That was until last year when they finally rescinded that law. In some places its still a death penalty...

Never forget who makes those laws.

We all know that the government hates anything they can not control especially the flow of money from one point to another point.  So there is a huge possibility that Bitcoin mixers will be considered illegal by the government.  I believe they are so wanting to shut them down but they cannot just close them without any legal reason.  They are just waiting for an opportunity to close these kind of establishment or some regulatory bills to be approved by the law making buddies to legalize any of their intentions to shutdown these kinds of business.

Unfortunately Bitcoin mixers are apparently still used by hackers to obfuscate their funds.

Binance Hacker Still Laundering Stolen Funds through Mixers

According to Luxembourg-based cryptocurrency capital flow research team Clain.io, the hacker responsible for the May security breach is continuing to render his spoils untraceable with the usage of mixing services.

The Clain research team states that the 7,074 BTC of stolen funds are being laundered by means of mixing service Chipmixer. Clain reports that since June 12th, 4,836 BTC have been laundered through the service by the hackers. They also report that 814 BTC of the total 4,836 are likely to be confirmed as a result of the hack.

According to Clain’s report, Chipmixer had never before handled such high volume activity, leading the team to conclude that the majority of funds currently being outputted from Chipmixer stem from a single source: the Binance hacker. Chipmixer’s capital flow has spiked in weeks as shown in the image from Clain’s report:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GtoOn95GPDHu0qDoSdw0W6ipNfvGMW-6jIvMVImcbAw_ZNekLiOvl9A4-B--GpmfIVFgBZ3ZkUXvji4bzqSUM16myofqB1paj2U0tEaW19_Dyy8WqQGRvlSrHbhr8MOr1fMxaHpr

https://en.ethereumworldnews.com/binance-hacker-still-laundering-stolen-funds-through-mixers/

Still bitcoin isn't accepted by all over world governments. So we can't expect that they will accept bitcoin mixer. I think even bitcoin accepted by all over worlds government but they will not accept bitcoin mixer. Money laundering doesn't matter for that in my opinion. Still now people's using real money for crime more than crypto currency. But criminals would get benefits of mixer, that's why government would not accept mixer.

It's only a matter of time, I believe. It already started with a lot of services being forced to do KYC to comply with AML regulations dealing with cryptocurrencies, else their license would be revoked or they'd receive some form of penalty. Governments don't like its people being sneaky to them, so there's really that huge chance wherein they'd ban mixers since they might find it as a way to launder money. Privacy coins might take a beating as well, although I can't fully understand how would they go on about it anyway.

Do not confuse centralized mixers from anonymous cryptocurrencies.Upon any mixer you can impose a ban, alas, to impose a ban on anonymous cryptocurrency impossible.

That's the logical trajectory we're on. Gemini already prohibits the use of mixers in its user agreement (https://gemini.com/user-agreement/#contract-upgrades-and-modifications), presumably because they are already expecting a regulatory crackdown. I wonder how effective their analysis is, and how quick they are to terminate accounts. I believe we'll see other similar exchanges following suit in the not-so-distant future.

The next step after that will be for the white market exchanges to start shutting down accounts of customers who transact with non-compliant exchanges.

Well you're right, it's a clever argument but I think it's technically rather difficult to detect "in live" if a transaction comes from a mixer or a legit service like an exchange, a custodial wallet, a gambling platform or any other thing. Moreover with some wallet like Electrum you can easily add several inputs and several outputs when you do a transaction.

If this become a real problem, governments will do the same as exchange, these companies will have to inform KYC and all activities
With this, a mixer will not have any reason to exist, but it's a hard question to debate
I confess it's hard, but it's not the technology fault, people do wrong things

I'm not really sure what you could define a bitcoin mixer as - they definitely aren't financial institutions, you definitely can't put them in the same industry as big banks. You'd probably need a new set of rules just for crypto activities and include mixers in that section.

Centralized mixers that are registered, etc, will be very easy to bring down. Decentralized exchanges, mixers and anything else are the only ones that are able to be safe from the regulations and still survive.

Anyway, I'd love to see what happens with mixers and their regulations, and how the governments deals with it.

i don't think the government can ever regulate mixers! by definition a mixer must remain unregulated. so all they could do is either shut them down and the mixers will either shut down or move away to somewhere that those governments can not touch them anymore.
and all this drama will only make things more decentralized. for example if they start shutting down mixers then things such as Coinjoin will become more popular, Anon coins like Monero would fly to the moon,...

Looking at the current trends, it is difficult to believe that the US authorities are going to tolerate Bitcoin as a decentralized currency, and Bitcoin mixers are  further down the line. To put it bluntly, the government will never get comfortable to the level of anonymity provided by Bitcoin. Sooner or later, they are going to act against this. The mandatory KYC verification for exchanges is just the tip of the iceberg. In future, KYC will be mandatory everywhere, including wallets and crypto-related forums including Bitcointalk.

I don't know how many of the mixers have the required licenses and permits to operate. I doubt that the majority don't have any. Even those with the licenses may face hostile action from the government in the long term. Illegal mixers will be treated the same way as the authorities are treating the dark markets (such as Aplha Bay and Silk Road).

Even mixed cryptocurrency can be traced. Mixers just make it much harder, so that in order to trace it you have to dedicate a lot more time and money, and preferably have a good program to help you do it. While mixers are making algorithms to better hide the coin's origin, government agencies are doing the same thing in reverse. Everything is in the blockchain and I've seen graphical representations of coins ending up on certain addresses after they were mixed. When you have that you just wait for someone to spend and then go to his place with a warrant and ask where he bought his coins. Then you go to the person or exchange he got it from and eventually get the information you need.

I have never heard about the privacy coin you mentioned and it does not look popular to me, which I don’t see much about it on the forum except now, I know of Monero and grin, and I feel these are even more popular, but in the event that it becomes popular, government would never allow it except maybe the system is handed over to the government to control since you said that it is a centralized system and has middle man in it, which is not different from the way the traditional fiat method operates.

If it is a system that would jeopardize the operation of the government, Sure they will put an end to it, if they are still fighting the main bitcoin hard, then they would have no problem putting this one you mentioned away like it does not exist.

if a bitcoin mixer requires kyc then there would be no more anonymity and it would therefore no longer be useful, i believe that slowly all countries will outlaw mixers, but i believe there is an easy alternative like turning everything into monero then making the transaction and then re-transform everything into btc, maybe is even less expensive...

Government wants transparency and i am sure they will restrict and put pressure on every tumblers in the market to shut their doors or to face legal prosecution and everyone choose to move on with their life rather than fighting against the government and sadly we might see that happen in the near future, when it comes to legalization i am not sure how the government will take a stand against privacy coins, will they force the exchanges to remove the coins is to be seen, if it continue like that Privacy will be a dream for the future generation.

Tell me what else for mixers are used then laundering money - making their transactions untraceable?
As you wrote, mixers are centralized - so they can be brought down by legal action.
Monero and other privacy coins are not centralized so they can not be brought down.

The solution is script based mixers, the only action can be made towards site owners, but this is the future also for the decentralized exchanges.

that's a great question and very likely. I know ciphertrace's technology is good enough to trace digital assets even if they did run through a mixer so idk if governments will use that to their advantage

We can't blame government for shutting down bitcoin mixers, as it was used illegally by some criminals thus the reputation of it was severely ruined. Governments has a power to do that, if they think it was better to shut it down than to become tool in a crime then we can't do anything about it.

We can't deny the fact that bitcoin mixers unconsciously peomotes the Money Laundering  act which the governments do not want that to be evaded.

And to do that you need a true DEX like Bisq, which is already rumored to be in use by criminals. While you are at it, you could probably run a mixer as a hidden service on tor or similar anti censorship network.

The only compromise i can imagine is some sort of community (not government) maintained list that reputable services opt in, but i see no clear solution in the horizon.

Although there are many people out there who would claim that Bitcoin is anonymous, it is not so. All the transactions are stored in the Blockchain, and if you trace the transactions, then it may be possible to find out the real identity of the user. Here the assumption is that at some point the user is converting his BTC to fiat (or vice versa).

Monero claims to be 100% anonymous and that is the reason why most of the remaining dark markets have shifted to that currency from Bitcoin. But it is not doing well in the market lately and has lost most of its market capitalization during 2018-19. The continued development has also slowed down, and it should ring some alarm bells, as there were rumors recently that the feds have found some loophole to trace the XMR transactions. That said, XMR can be converted to fiat without getting traced back to the owner.

then it becomes like a game of cat and mouse. just as blockchain analysis companies are constantly improving their methods, so too are mixers. it's not as simple as mixers immediately becoming obsolete.

at the end of the day, all exchange customers are risking (at least under the current paradigm) is having their account closed for violating terms.

When you use some of these Mixers via Tor, it is virtually impossible to track these coins and these transactions and normal Blockchain analysis becomes really difficult. The problem is that the average Bitcoin user <Noob> have never used Tor and they have never used Mixer services before, so it is a steep learning curve and probably too much effort for most Newbies.  ::)

Mixer services will not sit on their hands and wait for the analysis companies to beat their services, they will adapt to survive. <There are a lot of money to be made and these people will protect that income at all cost.>  :P

Maybe we could ask the question in another way : Do you think any government consider mixers as legal service?

Well of course the answer is no, but most if them have no idea what this is really about, even Bitcoin is a mystery to them. The politicians we watch and listen every day are really just executors of the will of some other powerful shadow players, and in general they are very stupid people.

If one day they get instruction to start hunting coin mixers, they will do that same as the trained dog executes the command of its owner. Problem for them is how to do it effectively, and if mixers play smart they are completely safe.

If the governments could stop Bitcoin, do you think they wouldn't do it already?

It seems to me that it depends on the governments of specific countries. From their attitude to this.

Exactly. That's what I've thought in the first place. As soon as governments realize that Bitcoin is unstoppable, they'll take their efforts in trying to destroy it at all costs. The situation becomes worse for mixers/tumblers, and even privacy-oriented solutions for Bitcoin (such as CoinJoin-enabled wallets like Wasabi and Samourai). Their main excuse would be that they're trying to fight money laundering and other illegal activities. But the truth is that, most criminals use Fiat for their nefarious actions instead of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The main reason is that cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile, whereas Fiat is not. This makes it a terrible solution for wrongdoers (not to mention that most cryptocurrencies are transparent by design too) as a means to "launder" money.

Despite these facts, we cannot deny that sooner or later, governments will take actions against centralized mixing services. They've already began taking action with centralized exchanges where KYC is a must in order to trade cryptocurrencies within the mainstream world. We've seen the case with Shapeshift where it was once an "Instant Exchange" that allowed people to exchange cryptocurrencies in an anonymous manner. On the other hand, the US' IRS agency has been against every US citizen using Coinbase.

It would be unfortunate if Bitcoin wallets end this way. If this happens, then the only means to send/receive Bitcoin would be within the "Core" Wallet which serves as a node to secure the Blockchain. Hopefully, developers would come up with a solution that would allow people to send/receive Bitcoin, and even obfuscate transactions without the intervention of governments worldwide (by making government's efforts harder to achieve over time).

Nonetheless, what we need is decentralized alternatives to current mixing services. Luckily, this is already in the works with TumbleBit, CashShuffle (Bitcoin Cash), and even the Dandelion Protocol. Which means that, privacy might be obtained with ease after all. Just my opinion :)

I don't know whether the government will consider bitcoin mixers illegal or something, but i can understand if that happened. Because from my perspective, i think it will be a right thing to do for the government to shut down or make mixers illegal because they are afraid it will be used for crimes like money laundering and such. Although we know it's not true, but not false too. It may be right that mixers can be used by the criminals to do the crimes, and the government may want to prevent that, although it means that the innocent one that has no bad intention in using mixers will go along as well.

We've no way of knowing how good or bad most mixing service methods are, or how good the people are who are trying to crack them. And what's a wonderful technique today may be compromised tomorrow or has been compromised for many months already.

The future of it is surely open source P2P type stuff like plenty of other areas too. Third parties are the eternal weak point of this whole scene but they were needed to get rolling.

You have actually bring another angle of discussion to the mixing part of crypto hemisphere. Of course there will be series of opposition from the part of government if they realize that the services being provided is making it difficult for the tracking of people who engage in illegal activities. At the same time, it would be fool hardy to focus on the mixing services as a way of crime control rather than the exchange sites where controls should be established. When the exchange sites promoters are made to be responsible for the coins in their custody, they are expected to take it serious and ensure that maximum security is done to that effect.

Bitcoin is being demonized as a weapon of criminals and mafias by the mainstream media, despite the fact that less than 2% of the transactions are illegitimate (as per studies done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). With Bitcoin mixers, this proportion will be much higher. So we can expect an even more hostile reaction.

That knee jerk phase is largely played out. Only complete know nothings wheel that out now.

The next phase is the sanitisation and relative integration into the existing order and that's where mixers are going to get a kicking. No regulator is going to say they're a good thing and money in general is getting ever more tightly controlled.

If someone today proposed a publicly accessible system that guaranteed the questionable dollars you put in would emerge sparkling clean no questions asked, about 1000 ICBMs would rain down on it within an hour of opening.

What was acceptable in Bitcoinland when not enough other people gave a shit suddenly hits the wall when the rest of the world looks closer.

Not only media are hostile but I think that reason for that is ignorance, not necessary bad intention. People don't know enough about the Bitcoin and don't understand it. And people are afraid of unknown. Once you get bad reputation like Bitcoin did, that is hard to change although not impossible.
I think that will change for the better but it takes time and lot of education and positive promotion.

It depends on the level of scam and how rampant scam becomes through it that would make them decide if this services should be ban or not and that will only affect those that are concerned about privacy of a thing because not everyone you see in the cryptocurrency market cares about that.

I have been in the cryptocurrency industry for a while now and I have been receiving payments from my services to people in one way or another, which I have also sent out several payments and I have never bothered about inking of privacy thing and this I know that we have so many people out there that also do same.  If their services would really make the level of fraud in cryptocurrency to become rampant to the level of giving cryptocurrency too much bad name, then they might eventually ban it fully.

after the FATF rules become integrated into the law in some of the major countries, they'll start coming after mixers IMO. governments don't need to outright ban them, they just need to place AML/KYC regulations on them and start coming after those who don't comply. but i think there's a good chance enforcement efforts will never net any seizure of funds, so i'm interested to see how hard they actually come after them. playing cat and mouse with clearnet domains doesn't seem like a big deal, and assuming a given mixer isn't sloppy (or a honeypot), there isn't much else governments can do.

Some people hate Bitcoin because they are ignorant about it. Some others hate Bitcoin because they know too much about it. When I talk about the latter group of people, I mean the bankers and the politicians. They are knowledgeable about Bitcoin, but want to destroy it since it represents an existential threat for them. Their hatred doesn't come from ignorance about how cryptocurrency works.

The second group of people are responsible for most of the propaganda against Bitcoin, and this propaganda is directed at the first group of people. An example that comes to my mind right now is Jamie Dimon (the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase). He crashed the Bitcoin exchange rates not once, but twice by calling it a ponzi scheme. And the last time I heard, this loser was involved in the scam-crypto XRP.

Governments will always have an eye over the cryptocurrency usage until every country make it legal. When there is legal support for bitcoin and other cryptocurrency usage automatically people will begin to use it in a legitimate way fulfilling all the KYC norms. By that time the need for such mixing services to stay anonymous will also shrink. All this to take place in reality is really a difficult task, so when countries badge bitcoin as illegal surely the mixing services will also be cited illegal.

The act of using a mixing Bitcoin service is something that violates regulations in the use of Bitcoin. That is the same as faking and changing identities for personal gain to avoid rules. The government has the right to punish Bitcoin users who use the service in a country because it is illegal. But in the crypto world using mixing service is considered normal because it is the nature of Bitcoin itself, which is anonymous.

Bitcoin mixers do not make this proportion even higher. It simply means 2% of those transactions are using Bitcoin mixers.

The hostile reaction is from those who think mixers help to hide those 2% of illegal transactions that's all.

But people should go after banks instead,,, they are the ones who knowingly help criminals launder money.

I wouldn't have an issue mixing for pure privacy purposes but if I had a ton of smoking hot BTC I would not be comfortable sending it to an anonymous stranger to give it a rinse. They could be anyone and they're going to be able to follow me from then on. There's a freakish amount of trust involved in a transaction that needs the absolute minimum of it.

If I were serious about my crypto crime I'd be shopping elsewhere.

Guys, I think that there is no reason to argue, because if we talk more seriously about the legalization of Bitcoin in the near future and the fight against crime or tax evasion that use cryptocurrency, then in any case Bitcoin mixers will be outlawed.  If we understand what it is, we should objectively evaluate the further use of Bitcoin mixers.

Unfortunately, that's the hard truth facing Bitcoin these days. The power of mainstream media is such, that anything said (either positive or negative) could greatly affect the perception of Bitcoin among people within the mainstream world. For a long time, Bitcoin has been given the reputation of being the cryptocurrency for criminals. We all know that's not truly the case, since there are more legitimate uses for Bitcoin than all the other way around it. But, worldwide governments don't seem to care much about this, since all they want is power and control over their citizens.

Bitcoin mixers are highly beneficial towards preserving one's privacy, but they serve as a target for governments within the mainstream world. Money laundering and other illegal activities are not the main reason why they want to take down these services so badly. They just want to avoid people from using mixers, in order to keep track of every single transaction made across the Blockchain and invade people's privacy. I believe that while centralized mixing services and exchanges will become a huge target from governments worldwide, decentralized alternatives would be the ideal solution to counterattack such efforts.

In the end, only CoinJoin-based wallets (like Wasabi and Samourai), decentralized mixers (like TumbleBit and CashShuffle (BCH)), and decentralized exchanges (like Bitshares and EtherDelta) will prevail as they become truly unstoppable from oppressive governments worldwide. Only then, people can achieve true financial freedom. Just my opinion :)

@mitchr4

There is no regulation on how to use Bitcoin. And we don't need that. If someone thinks it needs then he can go back to the fiat system. I don't want to use cryptocurrencies to be patronized with what I do with. Mixing bitcoins and stealing a person's identity have nothing in common

@atjiat

HSBC is well-know bank to be used for illegal activities of all kind, what happened to it since all these years? Nothing, even better; if it was a country it would be the 5th richest.
They can outlaw Bitcoin, then what? It doesn't stop people to do whatever they want (legal or not)

If your post is even remotely true, then the governments have all the justifications they need to nuke the Bitcoin mixers. All they need to prove is that most of the coins from these mixers are going to the dark markets and money laundering schemes. As we have seen with the case of Bestmixer.io, when the government authorities come against you, there are hardly any options. IMO, if the mixers want to operate then they should move to TOR. That will make it difficult for the authorities to seize the domain and detain the owners (as happened with Bestmixer). And the case of Bestmixer was a bit unique, since the servers were located outside the United States.

If it is the report by the company named Elliptic you are talking about, I don't think that 2% figure is to be taken seriously. In the report, they said 71% transactions were "unclasified", that is, they had no idea where to put them.

There are two sides to this. There are people who would say, with enough precaution, you can do what you want by making yourself anonymous, hiding behind VPN etc etc. Yet, time and again, haven't we seen that if enough time is spent by them, the authorities do get to even the most well hidden entities?

Then there are some who think that regulation are inevitable or even necessary for mass adoption.

This is probably going to be the biggest debate of this century as technologies like AI, Machine Learning, Genetic modification etc get perfected and it becomes imperative for us to consider the moral and ethical consequences of technology and unhindered privacy.

The governments can say that bitcoin mixers are illegal because they have the power to force bitcoin mixer to be closed by them. But I think some people still want to see the bitcoin mixers still running so they can mix their money with their services. I hope that they don't use bitcoin mixer to be used for any illegal things because that will make bitcoin name bad in public, and people only know that bitcoin is for illegal things. If that happens, then that will impact the adoption process in all countries.

We are all here or freedom and that’s why we are decentralized what governments are doing now is interfering our rights to have privacy.two of the big mixing company has been seized recently and even how they provided proof still cryptonians think that this is their way of invading the crypto community.lets admit that there are some cases that mixing company has been used for some illegal activities but the truth is Also Banks has this same issues righ?But they are still existing now and nothing’s in closure happens to them.lets continue exercising our rights maybe sooner government will realize how solid crypto is and how beneficial not like what they want to out in others mind about the negativity

Those are the people that are giving bitcoin bad name, and it is because of their silly game that they are playing that is making them to make such pronunciation not because they really hate bitcoin, if JP Morgan really hates cryptocurrency, why is he involved in xrp and why is he creating his own cryptocurrency too.

Sometimes when they make those FUD statement, they do that because they want to crash the price of bitcoin so that they can be able to manipulate investors and get them to sell into their hands at a higher rate, I believe that this people are also in group, they have a group that would create FUD news to buy at cheap rate while they have the other group that will great a positive news to cause a FOMO buy that will earn them profit and this is part of why government is keeping their eye on crypto.

When bitcoin mixer supports illegal activist then it will be considered as bannable offence and that is why bitcoin mixers were shut down recently but not all the mixers will be banned if they don't break any laws from governments but if still anyone want complete anonymous they have other coin than bitcoin and also mixing coins doesn't give 100% anonymity.

many people don't realize it yet, but this is all shaping up into a big battle for fungibility. we'll have the "whitelisted" tier of services who will be fully AML/CFT compliant, and then we'll have the non-complying tier of services who are crypto-only and don't enforce KYC. eventually the two may not mix very well. coinjoins becoming more common---especially with future fee incentives like schnorr sigs---will open a whole new can of worms too.


you're giving law enforcement agencies too much credit.

think about it. you hear about cases where people were arrested/convicted, services taken down. you don't hear about all the cases where the authorities hit nothing but dead ends and couldn't identify or arrest anyone.

I think you need to grow a thicker skin. Bitcoin has been labelled as the currency of the underworld for many years now, and it still has managed to grow out to become the worldwide phenomenon that it is today.

It's a weak argument no-coiners like to use against Bitcoin, but it doesn't work. Mixers have a perfectly valid legitimate use case, but this might be hard to fathom for people not respecting their own privacy.

If you don't think privacy is an asset on its own, then sure, you by default assume that other people fall in the same category as yourself. One day you will find out why mixers are important, but then your privacy might already be compromised.

Can’t really tell if these coin mixers are legal or illegal, but the purpose for bitcoin is to be pseudo-anonymous and that’s what these coin mixers are trying to accomplish, to make it more difficult to trace out. I know that most of them might be doing it for a good purpose, but some people are now using to accomplish their bad purposes.

Just like recently I saw news that the Binance hacker has moved about 4000+ bitcoin into a coin mixer so that they would be hard to trace. That’s one of the disadvantages, people would be using it for bad purposes.

Advantages of these coin mixers is that if you’re someone who is a huge investor and you don’t want hackers to target your wallet, you can move it into coin mixer and have it mixed with the giant pile of bitcoin so that people will find it difficult to trace. That way you wouldn’t be a target. But people continues to use it for their bad plans as well

Anonymity on the Bitcoin mixer platform makes it difficult for authorities to track down people who act as money launderers from hackers or corruptors. Of course the government cannot stay silent. There may be times when KYC is needed for large transactions as a solution to the anonymity problem for security.

I have a feeling they will especially after BestMixer was seized by the Dutch Financial Intelligence and Investigation service.

CipherTrace issued an alert in December 2018 about BestMixer’s practice of “cryptodusting” users accounts as a means of foiling AML tracing technologies by “dusting” every address with money laundering funds, thereby soiling virtually every user’s reputation. This then created a chain reaction of Bitcoin Blender mixing service to shut down the next week.

I think mixing services are either going to voluntarily shut down or be shut down.

The circumstances of that case are reminiscent of the Hansa darknet market shutdown in 2017, also compromised by the Dutch police. In fact, I wouldn't be all that surprised if Bestmixer was actually a honeypot run by the Dutch police.

History shows that any questionable service should keep their servers far, far away from the Netherlands.

If cutting off electricity for miners would be a solution, or even possible, why don't the goverments turn off electricty for black hat hackers? I think you don't understand very well how electricity, the internet and goverments work.

As for making something illegal to trade with cash, that's even dumber, it would only raise the price of bitcoin more. Trading cash for drugs is illegal, that's why morphine costs pennies if you have a prescription but it costs a lot of $ in the streets.

That's certainly true, mate. Based on this perception, we could say that Bitcoin mixers are a double-edged sword. It can be used for both good and bad things. Criminals will always look for ways to launder their money, and Bitcoin mixers prove to be the ideal solution for them. However, this privacy technique is also convenient for preserving people's privacy among transactions made on the Bitcoin blockchain from prying eyes. Still, the government doesn't seem to understand this, as it's mostly concerned about the negative implications related to Bitcoin mixing services.

Considering that centralized mixers don't comply with KYC/AML laws, they'll be easily targeted by governments worldwide. If these services want to continue their operations, then I guess that they'll have to implement KYC in the same way as Shapeshift did. Only then, governments will be able to open the path for centralized mixers as they require identity verification for every individual using them.

Despite this, the only way to achieve full-fledged privacy would be towards the decentralized route. Non-custodial mixing solutions would prove to be the ideal solution against oppressive governments worldwide. Slowly but surely, this is being implemented, where people have a choice to preserve their privacy without the need to comply with KYC. With CoinJoin-enabled wallets (like Wasabi and Samourai), CashShuffle (for Bitcoin Cash), and even TumbleBit, it'll be possible to mix your coins in the most decentralized way possible effectively removing the middleman.

Nonetheless, time will tell us whenever crypto will truly stand against restrictive governments for a long time. So far, they've done everything within their power to stop this revolution from happening within the mainstream world. But, their success will depend on how many people will allow them to take control of the decentralized realm. By the looks of it, most crypto services are largely centralized which is considered something bad as it enables a single point of failure (making these services easy targets for governments worldwide). Hopefully, more decentralized solutions would appear that would counteract the effects of restrictive regulations worldwide. Just my thoughts ;D

Does it matter to them figmentofMA if we give them credit or not? It doesn't change the fact that they are the one authorized to use batons, tap your communication and knock down doors. For people to run viable businesses on BTC or be their customers, they will all have to be on the right side of the law.
Nobody wants to do a business constantly looking over their shoulder. Of course a lot of people do just that but that isn't sustainable in the long run. Can BTC remain a currency which is only for the dare-devils who can hide themselves behind dead-ends?

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/chainalysis-most-mixed-bitcoin-not-used-for-illicit-purposes

Less than 10% of coins are mixed for illicit purposes according to that, though who knows whether the people claiming it have the slightest clue. Privacy is the number one inspiration for its use.

Keeping anonymous is likely we want to and keep it with the help of Bitcoin mixers but some of them illegally operated by scammers and hackers. Will it have to understand some governments banned crypto and have to expect also that some of Bitcoin mixers aren't recognized by the government.
Just like it happen to these https://www.zdnet.com/article/bestmixer-seized-by-eu-police-over-laundering-of-200-million-in-cryptocurrency/.

I think so, when regulations are made, of course KYC will be applied in various online wallets and exchange sites. mixer which is a means for money laundering will certainly be closed and prohibited its use. that's a very obvious thing, but is it possible that just a ban can make the mixer stop being used by many users?

The problem is not on the mixer but crypto itself.
When my government heard about crypto mixing , it's really annoying because the corruptor will have the advantage for using it !

The main question the financial authorities asks themselves is why would one engage in a service that makes their transactions anonymous to third parties and the answer is that they have something to hide that's why but with authorities going after bitcoin mixers, they should also look at monero which OP said highly anonymous. I am sure if the Bitcoin Mixers implement KYC it would help with all the negativity towards their services.

From what theymos wrote in his guide: [Guide] Decent mixing methods (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5146241.0). The probability to see mixing services discovered by authorities, and shut them down is not too low. He mentioned that even ChipMixer (it seems the best mixing service for now) can be shut down. In addition, mixing services do not truly provide full privacy for their customers, as they always promised.

Whether you mix your Bitcoins or not, the moment you convert them to fiat currencies and send them to your bank or credit card, and most people do this sooner or later, your government can track you and there is now a name and a face associated with those coins. Anything that makes laundering money easier is a target for government agencies and bitcoin mixers can be used as such.

So you expect to see a mixer (supposed to anonymize you) applying a KYC legislation? That doesn't make sense in any way.
Whoever uses such service does not necessarily mean he has something to hide, as well that doesn't mean he's doing anything illegal.

It's called having the right to privacy because people don't need to know what you do with your money. What would you say if your bank account history was accessible to everyone on a monthly basis?

The government will eventually ban cryptocurrency mixers and pronouns them illegal. This may not be now but its a thing we all should wait for in the future if cryptocurrency. Now that most countries have developed interest in creating their own cryptocurrency, we should underrat the control that will come from the government.

Mixers are not bad or shady, only people whom use mixing services are bad. Bitcoin has to face with the same thing, bitcoin itself is not bad, only bad people whom used bitcoin for their shady things, money laundering are bad. They, in turn, affected reputation of bitcoin. If you search Bitcoin + Fraud (as key word), abundant results on Bitcoin is a fraud will be shown on your computer screen.

Unless someone would state an actual example that it (Bitcoin Mixer) was used in an illegal transaction that's the time that they (Government) will start to consider or think of banning Bitcoin Mixers. Even if Bitcoin Mixer will be banned, those with criminal minds will still think of another way of how to launder their dirty money.

Mixers can't be mixers if they followed government rules and show their client identity. as long as they remain hidden and anonymous the governments will not let them do what they want that's why they are being shut one by one.

we see that they already shut big-name mixers but it's not an easy Job because shutting one of the best mixers right there is took a long time to shut down, like best mixers.

Exactly. This applies especially to centralized mixing services as they provide a single point of failure to the crypto space. Which is why, I believe that the only way to obtain true censorship resistance for mixing coins would be via the decentralized route. We already have alternatives towards current centralized mixing services such as Wasabi Wallet, Samourai Wallet, and even Bitcoin Cash's "CashShuffle". By doing mixing at a protocol level, you take down the possibility of government's intervention within any point in time. This will prove to be ideal for people looking to preserve their privacy in order to protect their funds from prying eyes.

However, it's a double-edged sword as it proves to be extremely beneficial for criminals too. The only reason why criminals have used Fiat more than crypto for money laundering is because Fiat is stable in price. Once crypto's volatility in price comes to an end, then I believe that the space will become more attractive for these wrongdoers. After all, we not only have decentralized mixers, but also privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Monero and Grin. If government's efforts towards stopping the crypto revolution tend to become in vain, then they will join this trend no matter what. As a result, it will up to be people themselves to make good use of the crypto ecosystem in a responsible manner by preventing unwanted activities at all costs. Just my thoughts ;D

you're right, but the market is in a transitional state because decentralized tumbling methods don't always have adequate liquidity---cashshuffle in particular. someone looking to do high volume tumbling might use coinjoins in addition to multiple centralized mixers.

i'm excited for schnorr signature aggregation because it'll create new economic incentives (fee savings) for people to participate in coinjoins.

I think if there is a standard law that will be followed, mixers will be considered illegal since it's the best tool to do money laundering.
Though we are fighting for our right here that mixers helps us to make our transactions anonymous and we want privacy that's why we are doing that, but the government are looking on the bad side which is the money laundering using the service of mixers.

Like the Anti Money Laundering Act or AMLA, the rules are standard so it's easy for the implementer to impose it.
Most financial service now are required to conduct KYC on their clients, and that's completely opposite to the service of mixers.

most governments won't make them illegal. what they'll do is classify them as financial institutions or money transmitters, subjecting them to AML/CFT regulations. the only way for mixers to comply will be for them to implement full KYC---laughable of course. once mixers refuse to comply, governments like the USA will have a legal basis to come after them.

Exactly. That's the only limitation of decentralized mixing services where there's not enough liquidity to perform the desired operations. This also happens with decentralized exchanges, which explains why most people prefer centralized alternatives. In the bright side, the solutions are there for anyone to make use of within any point in time. With enough liquidity, people can mix their coins with ease achieving true censorship-resistance. Governments may try their best to take down centralized mixers (like Bestmixer), but they'll find it hard to do so with decentralized alternatives. Being at the protocol level, ensures true censorship-resistance & privacy.

I look forward for the adoption of Schnorr Signatures within the Bitcoin blockchain, as it will improve our privacy and the whole performance of the network. It'll surely attract more people into CoinJoin mixing because of the reduction in fees. With this, non-custodial mixing wallets like Wasabi and Samourai should experience a boost in mainstream adoption. In the event that every single mixer becomes illegal, people will always find a way to keep these services alive no matter what. With the decentralized and open source nature of crypto, anything's possible. Just my opinion :)

I don't think it's fair to compare decentralized mixing with decentralized exchanges. The latter will not ever take off to the degree people want it to take off because most people have no problems with KYC verification.

Thousands of people have even sent their personal information in form of ID scans, utility bills and bank statements to shady ICOs just to participate in the initial token sale.

Mixing has always been a niche, especially with how most people aren't aware of how valuable their privacy is, and there is still the 'I am not a criminal so I don't have to use a mixer' sentiment amongst these folks.

Large companies and governments definitely hold the control... there are always excuses that connect crypto with money laundring and such, this is so ridiculous that if we compare the global capital values of the main black markets, our modest crypto-cap will be a drop in the pond... so the fact is that crypto will be adopted because human development leaves no other way... but will it be BTC or some government crypto? that we'll see...
Concerning mixers, in essence they do not work on the task of delivering privacy, so they do not fear them... just want to put crypto-people in line and grow some FUD, same as several crypto-service companies have been shutdown all over the world

That's certainly true, mate. Most people nowadays don't care about their privacy. They just want to "go with the flow" even if they have to give their utmost sensitive personal information. After all, people are mostly into crypto for the money than anything else. It's no secret that centralized exchanges and mixers are much easier to use than decentralized ones. Not to mention, their liquidity is far superior than the latter. Considering that a small portion of people are using mixers to preserve their privacy, it could be known as a niche than anything else. The most common phrase of people within the mainstream world is that they "have nothing to hide".

In case of governments, they're always looking for the way of disrupting the entire crypto industry. Centralized mixers, and exchanges have been proven to be easier targets for them since these services have the risk of a single point of failure. Whenever they see a lot of money involved in a specific service, they target it in order to damage the reputation of crypto (with the excuse that crypto is largely used for illicit activities).

Nonetheless, time will tell us whenever governments will reach a consensus to put an end to mixing services or not. The industry is still small compared with the world of Fiat. But as it grows over time in mainstream adoption, governments will attack crypto and Blockchain tech by all means necessary as they present a threat to the current economic system. Just my thoughts ;D

Bitcoin mixers, or crypto mixers, have nothing to do with money laundering at beginning, as same as bitcoin. When bitcoin created more than ten years ago, it was not initially used for money laundering, but over time, bad guys abuse and use bitcoin for money laundering. It is their personal approach with advantages of bitcoin transactions. Like centuries ago, gun and powder created to protect human, and not to provide a powerful tool to kill each other in national, regional conflicts, but human abuse gun and use it for terrorist attacks, clashes and so on.

If there are bitcoin mixing techniques that can provide totally private transactionsn (in fact, we have not had such perfect bitcoin mixing services, and I do believe what theymos wrote in his guide), I believe there are good people readily to use it. I don't see reasonable to make a conclusion that all users of bitcoin mixers or crypto mixers are bad ones.

I think that we should already get used to the idea that the cryptocurrency market will not be able to remain in the shadow for too long and each country will to some extent exercise control over cryptocurrencies.  This of course will lead not only to total control of cryptocurrency in the world, but also legalizes the activities of each cryptocurrency user, which will entail the requirement to provide personal data.  Already today, almost all trading exchanges, as well as various projects require KYC to provide each user.  Nevertheless, even such exchanges are in demand, in contrast to decentralized platforms.  Thus, it can be assumed with an accuracy of 100% that there will be no anonymous transactions in the future, because they will be prosecuted, as there will always be a suspicion of their criminal identity.

Anonymous transactions will always exist, either by a service or by technology improvements.
Controlling and regulating are 2 different things and if you think governments can 'control' the cryptocurrencies then good luck, it's pure bullshits. The point of failure starts when the money hits the bank account but who told you Bitcoin can only be used with an exchange platform to convert it to fiats? If I choose to use BTC, it's not be patronized to tell me what I can do or not. Can they "control me" to buy x,y,z? Nope

As for regulating, it's a good excuse to collect more taxes, nothing more, and creating a legal framework is step 1. We were using Bitcoin for years without legislation. If it's about to say Bitcoin is legal, well BTC has always been legal (since nothing was saying it is)

there is an unfortunate byproduct though. interfacing with any centralized service is becoming increasingly risky due to all the new emphasis on AML compliance. closed accounts, frozen funds, and selective KYC scams are becoming all too common. some exchanges (like bitstamp) are beginning to go much further than traditional banks re customer due diligence.

It is impossible to ban. Why do people think that everything can be banned. How on earth will they prove you using a mixing service?
They can only speculate. They can prove nothing.
Government can't stop crypto. Crypto will always win and the government will always lag behind.

Exactly. Despite government's best efforts, they won't be able to take down the whole crypto ecosystem by storm. That is because crypto is decentralized by design, greatly minimizing the risks of third parties. Still though, centralized crypto services providers are not exempt. I believe that current mixing services have been an easier target for governments because they're centralized in every way. In contrast, privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Monero and Grin haven't experience any disruptions from government actions whatsoever. Which is why, I believe that the best route towards privacy and anonymity would be via the protocol level.

This means that mixers should rely on the Blockchain network itself instead of a middleman or entity. We already have such solutions via CoinJoin-enabled wallets like Wasabi and Samourai. Even Dash has built-in mixing with its masternodes, while Monero enforces it by default. Zcash hides transaction information via the use of Zero-Knowledge Proofs, while Grin relies on Mimblewimble. With many diverse forms of privacy and anonymity, it'll become impossible for governments to put an end to this movement anytime soon. In the event that Bitcoin mixers become illegal, people will always find a way to preserve their privacy.

As for Bitcoin's legal status, it has always been legal like you've said earlier. I believe that government's discussion of Bitcoin's legality is more of an excuse in order to tax the whole crypto ecosystem. Most governments believe that crypto is used for money laundering and tax-evasion. While that's not largely the case nowadays, it's true that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be used for such purposes by criminals. But for some reason, they prefer Fiat on top of Bitcoin for many of their nefarious activities. In the end, governments will have to join the revolution or be left behind in the dust.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't worry too much about Bitcoin mixers as long as there are other alternative routes towards achieving privacy/anonymity. Whatever governments do with centralized mixers, will not disrupt the entire crypto industry. That's because most people don't even use mixers, leaving us with only a small portion of Bitcoin transactions on them. Just my opinion :)

Good question but at the same time another question rises on my mind: Are HYIPs considered illegal? Are pirate websites considered illegal? Finally what they did against it? Nothing, HYIPs are mostly registered in UK and torrent websites are run in Russia because it ignores DMCA complaints.
What if they'll ban bitcoin mixers? Of course it will turn on Tor websites, so almost no benefit over people who use mixers for bad things. Not a big catch so I think they'll keep things the way it is now.

centralized services are the lowest hanging fruit, but privacy coins can be targeted too---namely, by attacking liquidity/fungibility. the japanese government has been quietly pressuring exchanges to delist privacy coins as a prerequisite for license approval. in order to regain UK banking through clearbank, coinbase was required to delist zcash. privacy coins are noticeably absent from the coins binance.us is considering listing. (https://medium.com/binance-us/exciting-developments-coming-soon-for-binance-us-f79f86bdd9c6)

this won't kill privacy coins of course, but destroying market liquidity has huge negative effects on utility. this is why bitcoin is overwhelmingly still the dominant currency used on darknet markets.

That's certainly true, mate. Even if governments cannot take down privacy coins in their entirety, their actions against centralized exchanges could have a negative effect over their liquidity in the long term. The more pressure there is from governments worldwide, the worse it'll be as people won't be able to trade privacy coins regularly. Of course, we still have decentralized exchanges and the upcoming atomic swaps feature from the LN. However, they don't have much liquidity compared to traditional exchanges we've been accustomed for a long time.

Given that Bitcoin is a transparent cryptocurrency by design, it's no wonder why most governments have given it the "green light". Centralized exchanges are largely dominant in the space, providing the most liquidity for Bitcoin worldwide. As long as a cryptocurrency is easy enough for governments to track down for taxation, it'll have their backing for years to come. I believe that most governments have started legalizing Bitcoin because of this reason.

As for centralized mixing services, they're just the tip of the iceberg as there are various workarounds to obfuscate Bitcoin transactions. It'll be impossible for governments to try to put an end to privacy-oriented transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, because of the many decentralized solutions existent today. What they could only do is force developers to implement backdoors in order to allow the government to see obfuscated transactions at will. But I believe that'll never happen, as the community strives its best to protect the censorship resistance of most blockchains today.

Nonetheless, with Bestmixer being shut down by the authorities, it's only a matter of time before governments start cracking down on other services as well (like Chipmixer). Hence, the only solution to "mix" your coins safely would be via non-custodial solutions like Wasabi or Samourai. Just my thoughts ;D

The existence for bitcoin mixers or any cryptocurrency mixers is really hard. The primary factor being that they are always in the eyes of governments and higher authorities.
For mixers to survive they will have to be regulated by central bodies which will then in turn destroy their purpose of anonymity and privacy.
So yeah, I think they will have to be run illegaly and will be considered illegal by the governments.

People act like authorities just recently have started their crack down hunt, but it has been like that for a couple of years now. It's not just a matter of finding their servers, but also to have a solid case built against them.

The latter specifically is what takes authorities so long to actually raid them, even when they already know where the servers are located. In other words, many aspects come into play here.

I am quite an enthusiast of Wasabi but the liquidity isn't always there, which is why I still prefer centralized mixers over anything similar to Wasabi that's available right now. ChipMixer does its job extremely well.

That's certainly true, mate. While liquidity for non-custodial mixing services is almost non-existent, I believe that it could improve over time as more people become concerned for their privacy. This is similar to decentralized exchanges where they have a very low liquidity compared to centralized alternatives. We just need more adoption for decentralized privacy solutions in order to effectively counterattack government's efforts. It's so easy to take down traditional mixing services because they're largely centralized. But that's not the case with decentralized alternatives as they have wide-spread support worldwide.

ChipMixer could be doing extremely well today, but this may not last for long. After all, it's still a centralized mixing service with the risk of a single point of failure. On-chain solutions would be the best way to go, in order to achieve true censorship-resistance. Once governments find out that ChipMixer allegedly laundered criminals funds (I hope that's not the case), they could easily target it in the same way they did with Bestmixer. Hence the only path towards complete privacy/anonymity would be via the use of Monero or Tor + non-custodial mixers (if you're using Bitcoin). Just my thoughts ;D

bestmixer was very low hanging fruit for two reasons:
1. operated from europe, including the netherlands
2. explicitly advertised itself as a money laundering service

keeping servers in europe? that's just mind-blowing. :o the easiest way to get servers seized is to keep them in the USA or europe.

in truth, american authorities have never actually gone after mixers before. however, FINCEN's recently issued guidance (https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/new-fincen-guidance-affirms-its-longstanding-regulatory-framework-virtual) does deem centralized mixers as MSB, so this could be a sign they will start pursuing mixers that don't comply. still, i doubt it will be easy. we're talking about entities hiding behind private registrations and shell companies, with servers in multiple countries---likely countries that don't have a MLAT with the USA. even if they get the servers, the site can be repropagated pretty easily.

The chipmixer itself was developed for the purpose of creating anonymity which I usually refer to it as confusion because it blocks every means of transactions from being able to be seen. If we really want the cryptocurrency space to actually have some level of good projects and free of scammers, I am not sure that projects like this cheap mixer should be regulated.

It has its own good will though but scammer too have actually hijacked it and that is why some transaction that would have been traced easily through exchanges using kyc is being blocked by chipmixer, so regulation is needed even if it is going to defeat that objective of anonymity to an extent, we need the space to be free of scam first and we need those who are using it for scam to be exposed.

it depends on which way will the global legislation turn
if it stays like today with each and every country deciding for itself wherever it recognizes bitcoin or bans it  bitcoin mixers will flourish
by the way , I'm pretty sure a good part of the mixers are run by the governmental agencies
this way it is easier to monitor potential criminal transactions and if they missed an opportunity to set up or at least sponsor several mixers
means they are doing a bad job   , don't wanna give them any ideas if they don't :D
but if bitcoin is adopted more and more and it becomes a handful to monitor
more than sure they would either ban or control the mixers

I kinda get the idea behind that thinking, but has there been any evidence that lead you to being so sure that governments are running mixing services?

I'm not sure how they can pull something off like that, because that would mean they are financing the activities they are trying to combat, and that's an illegal act by itself. On top of that, if anyone is caught like that, the news of that will spread like wildfire and make trustless mixing become the new primary source to have coins mixed. In other words, they will shoot themselves in the foot.

I think it makes more sense to just continue their current plan of approach, which seems relatively effective given how they have forced a few mixers offline already. It's a game of patience in the end. They need all the time they have to build a case against each entity they're chasing after.

I am sure the governments of the world have better things to do? What exactly will they get out of this?

We all know out of all the countries to bitch about something USA will be first. They have the most deaths by gunshot then any other country in the world and you can legally carry an automatic rifle in some states. Now money laundery is the problem.  ::)   ;D     It actually amuses me.

I think people should be free and I am pretty damn liberal. Places like Chipmixer I support because they are still around even after other places were shut down and all these exchanges and other legal stuff. They don't even care they just do what they please and "antigoverment" they are a tool of decentralization in a world where the god damn governments and "legal authorities" are constantly trying to constrain us with their endless bs and greed. For me it's like a tool that supports ultimate liberation.

obviously this is just my IMHO , I have no evidence
from the point of view of an operative  , it is a very logical thing to do - infiltrate or even run a mixer
as for shooting themselves in the foot , those who control mass media control the minds
have you heard of any public unrest because of the news that governmental agencies sponsor drug traffic to have a source of "black cash" for ops , even have their own countries dedicated solely to cultivating drugs , like Afghanistan?
any news like that are not news unless they are on the news , forgive me the tautology
nowadays we are living in an artificially created socium where  independent media is a myth and stereotypes are implanted through movies , shows , tv and internet
do not overestimate the anonymity or "independence " of the mixing services , if you run such a business and men in black approach you and gently ask to cooperate if you notice something
fishy coming into your wallets , and keep it quiet , or else ... would you say no?

I wouldn't be surprised if there were honeypots out there. Let's not forget that Bestmixer.io was shut down by the FIOD (Dutch police) and run from Europe -- much like Hansa. Remember what they did? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansa_(market)#Compromise)


This (https://www.wired.com/story/hansa-dutch-police-sting-operation/) is what a Dutch police said about the operation:

... Which I was eerily reminded of when I saw "YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS" courtesy of the Dutch police, plastered on the Bestmixer seizure notice. I really wouldn't put it past those sneaky bastards to run a honeypot.

For another thing, it's hard to ignore the sheer stupidity of the Bestmixer admin. Operating servers from Netherlands and Luxembourg in the year 2019? It really makes one wonder. ::)

I am aware of Bestmixer. It's however a mixer they have just sneaked into without actually providing any of their own coins to be withdrawn by the users of that mixer, which is more what I was referring to. Perhaps I was reading it a bit too far. In that sense yes, there may be certain still operational mixers where government agencies are filtering every bit of information without the actual operators even knowing.

That was weird indeed, but at the same time it wouldn't really surprise me if the admin overestimated himself and underestimated the authorities. In the end, mixers will only find out that they messed up when they're caught and shut down. Only the unaffected mixers have time to adapt and relocate their servers and whatnot.

Exactly. Right now, crypto is in the grey area where there's regulatory uncertainty. Given that there isn't a law specifically against Bitcoin mixers, it's safe to assume that they're perfectly legal nowadays. In the event that governments decide to take action against these services, people will always find a way to obfuscate their Bitcoin transactions. This is thanks to the decentralized and open-source nature of crypto. Which is why, I believe that government's efforts against crypto will turn out to be in vain over time. As Bitcoin grows in user adoption, it'll become more difficult for governments to stop this movement.

With decentralized solutions such as non-custodial mixers (Wasabi, Samourai), decentralized exchanges (bisq), and even LN's atomic swaps, governments will have a hard time trying to stop each and every individual from using these means anytime soon. The more centralized mixing services are shut down by governments, the more decentralized alternatives will emerge. It's like a cat and mouse game. In the end, governments will have to allow Bitcoin to flourish or be left behind in the dust. Just my thoughts ;D

sadly, FINCEN issued guidance a few months ago (https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/2019-05/FinCEN%20CVC%20Guidance%20FINAL.pdf) claiming that mixers have always fallen under bank secrecy act jurisdiction. this requires mixers to complete FINCEN registration as an MSB and to do ongoing suspicious transaction reporting! of course, no mixer has complied with these rules---that would be insane.

anyway, this suggests that bestmixer may not be the last mixer to be targeted by law enforcement. as i've said before though, these are run as hidden services with encrypted wallets and no connected bank accounts, likely from jurisdictions outside of uncle sam's reach. it would be very difficult to shut down a determined and honest mixer operator.

It's rather disappointing to see governments interfering with crypto's growth in every way. But it's to be expected since they want to control their citizens after all. The recent regulations by the US' FinCEN might not have a direct impact to mixing services which are geographically distributed worldwide (like decentralized mixing services). Which means that only centralized mixing services which have servers located in the US will be the ones mostly affected by these regulations. I doubt that the US would want to go against decentralized alternatives as well, since it's harder to enforce regulations on them.

Despite this, I believe that the impact against mixing services will be minimal since not many people are using them. Governments have managed to stop Bestmixer, but the BTC ecosystem remains likely the same. They may be wasting their time, as only a small fraction of people use mixing services to conduct their private transactions worldwide. The big players are privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Monero and Grin, but they're even harder to tackle with. Which is why, government's efforts against mixing services and other privacy solutions may tend to become in vain over the long term.

Nonetheless, I believe that the crypto ecosystem will adapt itself over time as people continue to build and improve upon it every step of the way. People will always find a way to gain access to privacy methods, no matter government's interventions against Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency known to date. In the end, decentralized solutions will prevail because of their true censorship-resistance. I look forward for the massive adoption of CashShuffle (for BCH), Wasabi and Samourai (for BTC) in order to bring liquidity for privacy-oriented transactions. Just my thoughts ;D

Bitcoin mixer is very possible for money laundering. but for someone who wants privacy for the transaction this mixer is very useful. but of course the government does not want privacy of one's transactions. whether for the benefit of the government or to prevent dirty money that can escape the government track. but certainly this mixer is not in line with the government system.

Bitcoin mixer's is still have a very effective use into every single cryptocurrency user, because it helps them to transfer their money anonymously. And also yes! it can be possibly use into money laundering, but I think simply using the bitcoin will make you anonymous, no need to use bitcoin mixer if you want to launder your money, they just want to close bitcoin mixer for their own good.

I am not sure but ya it will happens in future. The government of some countries will banned bitcoin mixers in their country to stop spam or fake.

You would think so but the truth is they understand very well what is at stake here, you want to have the freedom to do whatever you want with your money, and guess what? The governments do not want that, they want to know exactly what you're doing and when you are doing it, this is why governments around the world have been pushing for the eradication of cash and suddenly out of nowhere someone invented a digital version of cash, so it is understandable that they will do everything that they can to control it.

I don't think so. It's not illegal to change my notes at the bank is it? It is not illegal to run a cash business right? The same things can be done without a mixer if you are referring to breaking the law. A mixer is not needed to break the law since someone with a cash business might not claim for tax. A mixer would be only to mix crypto and I still don't think that it would help with evading the law anymore then trading up notes with people.
You will still need to say how you are making money, you cannot just hide it and then thats fine. Authorities will ask where is your cash flow so you have to show then at least something. I'm no criminal but if I try think really hard about how to be one, I really don't see a mixer as being that attractive anyway.

There is crime everywhere and I don't think they should close the bitcoin mixers because it helps man of bitcoin users to mix their coin and protect their identity. Bitcoin mixers is just one of the many ways to make a crime, I don't think they should close it.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions are already being perceived as illegal, and promotes illegal transactions like money laundering, and in fact, terrorism. Bitcoin mixers is only going to act as a further disadvantage to the industry, and will cause more raised eyes towards the industry. This might in turn cause the government to further their plans towards banning cryptocurrencies.

I don't like this mixer idea. It really does help in money laundry and all illegal stuff.
From my view, it should be illegal.

But, this isn't irrelevant. When some one want to take his money to laundry, he wouldn't care about the law enforcement. This existed before btc and mixers and will stay the same way.

Unfortunately, regulation already forces some exchanges to delist anonymous coins, and large exchanges. This is alarming and suggests that all Bitcoin mixers will fall under the control of regulators. However, this is a cryptocurrency, probably mixers will exist no matter what. I think the stronger the regulators will press, the more active will be the development of this kind of mixers.
It is possible that in the future we will come to a crypto world in which everything will be completely centralized.

I don't think that mixers will become illegal, at least not at a global level but they will definetely become more strict regulated. I guess that also depends on each country on an individual level and how are the previous experiences. The biggest threats for governments are illegal activities like money laundering or financing of terrorism so every service that offers possibilities to hide traces or identity will be strongly monitored.

The main purpose of BTC mixers is to maintain privacy. I think privacy is right that everybody has. For example, when someone is transfering a large amount to another person,
he may don't want the money to be traced to the original source. Also BTC provides decentralized payments, so it cannot be controled by the governments. Which leads to the most important question- Is BTC becoming centralized? I think that BTC mixers will stay legal because of the revolutionary idea of the BTC. Only the large corporations ,who are influencing the BTC ecosystem, are capable of forbidding the BTC mixers.

Exactly. We could say that Bitcoin mixers are a double-edge sword. They can be used for both good and bad things. Mixers are useful for preserving one's privacy, or for laundering money. While criminals mostly use Fiat currency for money laundering, Bitcoin mixers can become attractive to them if prices stabilize across the market. Of course, the ends don't justify the means. I believe that if centralized mixers want to survive within the mainstream world, they would need to comply with government regulations worldwide. By implementing KYC/AML measures, centralized mixers could remain in the space for a long time. However, this would greatly defeat user's privacy as we know it.

As of now, Bitcoin mixers don't represent much of a threat to the government because they're not widely used within the mainstream world. Once they're used in mass, then expect for governments to take further action against these privacy services. Only then, decentralized solutions will survive as people adopt them for their own benefit. Decentralized mixing services would be completely censorship-resistant, making it harder for governments to take down anytime soon.

Nonetheless, as Blockchain and crypto expand their popularity within the mainstream world, governments will try their best to limit their growth (or stop them in their entirety) in any way possible. It will be up to the people, whenever they will continue to support these innovative technologies or not for the foreseeable future. Time will tell us if Bitcoin mixers are a failed idea or not. Just my opinion :)

Well, in my opinion only people with shady business who will use a mixer, if you are working right why would you hide your traces? if you can answer this question * from where you got that money? * then you are clear to go, if not then your business is not that clean.
a mixer is a money-laundering machine.

Governments are intending to ban crypto themselves not only only mixers. Yes mixers do encourage money laundering as they mix up any trail of btc whatsoever so may it be hacker's money all of them do go through a mixer once before they come out clean. If government comes on banning things then cryptocurrencies at a whole would definitely be the first thing they would be banning.

LOL you must be joking right? Can you really be so ignorant? If you want the government to keep tracing you and know where you're getting your money from and what you're spending it on be my guest but don't criticize people who want to be wiser.
Maybe you feel safe now because there's nobody knocking on your door or sending you letters but this may change one day. Now your government doesn't care but if Bitcoin ever hits 100k USD you'll not be a normal citizen. Bitcoiners will be seek as cash cows for some of the more corrupt governments.

But wait, are you using crypto to hide how much money you have? why Jeff Bezos net worth on Forbes? no one can take your money from you, if you hide and they catch you, you will pay far more than what you were avoiding, can you live while hiding? like a criminal?

To be sincere, the governments don't care about what you and I think. Mind you, the decentralization aspect of cryptocurrency was the reason why some government are against crypto and the idea of mixing coin is to stay total anonymous which the exact reason some governments are against crypto from the beginning.
What guarantee you that most of the tumbler users are not countries where people are to pay tax on crypto?

I personally don’t support it too because it will end up making the real bitcoin look like it is the one being used for illegal and unlawful transactions, people will not hold the mixer itself., but it is the currency that the government would blame for making illegal activities financially become high.

Bitcoin already has some level of privacy and I feel that is enough so that government can still have some spaces to be able to go after those who are using the cryptocurrency system for bad activities like scamming, money laundry, defrauding of people and many more. But with this mixer, any transaction that it is being used for is kind of close off the radar forever and the government may never be able to track down any illegal activities reported to them.

Not possible, even if governments could somehow take control of bitcoin someone else will devise a way to avoid that and then we will use that cryptocurrency, this is one of the few instances in which having so many altcoins will help us, that way even if governments can block or seize most coins that are similar to bitcoin there will be a few coins that survive and can carry the responsibility of bringing freedom to all of those that want it.

That's certainly true, mate. The main intent of governments worldwide is not to stop mixers, but the whole crypto ecosystem in its entirely. This specifically applies to privacy-oriented solutions, as they tend to be much more difficult to track or trace for taxation purposes. Cryptocurrencies like Monero, Grin, and other privacy-oriented ones are at high risk from being attacked massively by worldwide governments. The same thing applies to Bitcoin mixers, and non-custodial mixing services. Believe me, the only reason why most governments have been legalizing Bitcoin is because of its transparency. With this, governments will be able to effectively tax every transaction made on the Blockchain with ease. As long as crypto can be taxed, it'll see the green light from worldwide governments.

Now, imagine if Bitcoin would've been an entirely anonymous cryptocurrency. It could become a threat against governments and central banks for the mere reason that it cannot be taxed with ease. Their excuse will be that they're trying to prevent money laundering and other criminal activities when that's not the case. Hopefully, as the crypto ecosystem becomes bigger and stronger over time, governments would be unable to effectively destroy it in its entirety.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't worry too much about Bitcoin mixers since they only represent a fraction of the blockchain network's value. The real deal would be privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Monero and Grin with a large number of people using them. If governments decide to ban the exchange from Fiat to a privacy coin, then the previously mentioned cryptocurrencies would become completely worthless within the mainstream world. Just my opinion :)

I know with bitcoin when bitcoin price still with $200 and I use bitcoin as my payment transaction for sending and receiving in investing project, maybe when bitcoin $200 about 2015 years but until five years later bitcoin still illegal in some country in the world, although bitcoin have increase price year by year and know have raise up.

Illegal activities are the main reason why government think that way. mixers will help you to hide your transactions, making it private from everyone. Government will think that this might be use in illegal activities, they might not support it since it is against their law, it is to prevent possible things to happen in the future.

The main concern of government when it comes to cryptos is the anonymity. They suspect that this will lead to illegal activities. So most of the countries are banning untraceable currencies like Monero and now the focus has shifted towards the mixing services too. Sooner or later, such regulations had to come. As the crypto trading volume has increased, government has started taking actions.

If you are paying your taxes and following the law of the land why would any government targets you. The corrupt governments can manipulate things and with bitcoin you can have the financial freedom you are seeking away from the government if you want to, but if you are converting into your fiat currency make sure you pay your taxes.
All the government needs transparency from their citizens to have a complete control over them and privacy is a dream and hence i am sure we will not see any legal mixers.

You might be right with what you said but the main concern of the government about crypto was the liberation involve which was also what make them believe crypto will be a threat to the economic or lead to obsolete of national currency. An example Libra coin which is totally centralized but the government are somehow against it.

True but their actions are hollow, someone that is using monero to hide his identity is not going to care much about the legal status of his coins since the governments and its agencies are not going to find him anyway, this creates a problem for the government, how can they possibly enforce such laws? And until they find a way to trace those that are holding monero their actions will carry no consequences, also many of those using those coins are not doing anything illegal with them they just like the privacy the coin gives them.

I think, after you look at what happened to popular mixers a couple months ago, you'll see that the authorities will love to take down mixers, because they believe they provide more harm then good.

Bestmixer was supposedly ceased by the authorities and they where hacked which forced them to shut down their operations and it ended up having a domino effect on other mixers as well.

It's rough for mixers now, the government doesn't care about privacy of people who use the mixers and they definetly don't care about the people who use it for illegal purposes, so why wouldn't they try shut it down?

Exactly. Governments truly don't want people to gain anonymity, because of money laundering concerns and tax evasion. They believe that privacy solutions within crypto land, would encourage people to perform such nefarious activities. While it's true that crypto can be used for money laundering and tax evasion, the mere reason that prices are volatile would greatly defeat the purpose. I believe that's why Fiat currencies like the USD and EUR are still used for said illegal activities than crypto itself. Privacy-oriented solutions either via mixers or anonymous protocols should be embraced by everyday people in order to protect their sensitive transaction information being exposed towards malicious actors. After all, privacy is a human right. Some people may say that they "don't have anything to hide', but the truth is that this "is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say" (according to Snowden).

Right now, Bitcoin mixers are the target within worldwide governments. But they'll not stop until they put an end towards every single privacy solution within the blockchain industry. If successful, privacy-oriented coins and mixers will no longer exist within the future. Fortunately, it's becoming harder for governments to tackle crypto's anonymity in part because of its distributed and decentralized nature. In the end, we'll have a stronger Bitcoin capable of withstanding anything on its path. With privacy solutions such as Mimblewimble, Dandelion Protocol, and even CoinJoin-enabled wallets, anyone can still obfuscate their transactions within the Bitcoin blockchain. Hence, governments efforts against centralized mixing services like Bestmixer will turn out to become in vain over time. Just my thoughts ;D

Bitcoin mixers are really good for anonymity and crypto world need it. Of course it can be used for both good and bad things, they can be used for preserving one's privacy or for laundering money. Now it is threat to the government, so we can't deny that sooner or later governments will take actions against centralized mixing services.

Bitcoin Mixers aren't actually that bad when it comes to hiding your identity but technically this is really bad for a long future of bitcoin because every satoshi earned through illegal sources is mixed in these mixers and comes out absolutely clean. Moreover, these mixers actually give governments a solid excuse to ban cryptocurrencies as they can be used for money laundering and illegal activities. Even thought these mixers are in spirit of cryptocurrencies as the main agenda of cryptocurrencies is anonymity but still it will be not be a good going if mixers continue to tumble people's money.

This just brings us back to the old question of is it worth it to screw over random's privacy in order to catch the bad people using those services?

How far is the government allowed to sneak into our lives and monitor us to justify them catching criminals and stopping crime?

I'm still under the impression that mixers are not at fault here and it's instead the government's fault they aren't able to catch the criminals. Mixers are still traceable btw, especially if volume is high enough.

Mixer is centralized, the place is easy to takedown, atleast the website. But not for cryptocurrency, they can't takedown it, they can only banned or block it with ISP. But if you use vpn that crypto can still accessed.
Back to topic.
Yes that is absolutely illegal, because you like hide people transaction from surveillance government.
The mixer only service like that. They don't know who the customers. So maybe any customer is the corruptor.
That is like help him for criminal.

Completely agree with you, mate. Unfortunately, Bitcoin mixers have a bad image/reputation among governments worldwide. While they can be used to preserve one's privacy, they could also be used for money laundering and tax evasion. It's like a double-edged sword in my opinion. Things are even worse for centralized mixing services as governments can target them easily. It greatly defeats the purpose of obfuscating transactions for the simple reason that there's a middleman behind everything. That's why I believe that decentralized solutions are the way to go for preserving one's privacy. It could either be via the use of privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Monero and Grin or simply non-custodial mixers like Wasabi or Samourai. There's no other way around it. You could also try switching to new Bitcoin addresses every time you make a transaction.

Following these and other practices, will allow you to obtain full-fledged privacy over your transactions without worrying about the government's intervention. The more people use decentralized solutions, the better as there will be more liquidity for transactions to settle quickly. This, in combination with decentralized exchanges will truly provide freedom for one's funds.

Nonetheless, time will tell us the fate of privacy as oppressive governments devise laws against it. If they win, then we'll be doomed for sure. Just my opinion :)

It is just like what Bittorrent and Piratebay are doing as far as file-sharing is concerned. They are not breaking any laws by sharing the files themselves. But the users can make use of the software/website to share files that can breach copyright rules. Megaupload of Kim Dotcom was shut down due to the same allegation. It didn't helped that they never did any piracy on their own.

Let's just get it straight. I don't have any doubt that the majority of the coins that are mixed using these sites are "dirty" (i.e originating from exchange hacks, scams such as PLUS token, revenues from dark market drug trafficking.etc). Unless the owners of these sites can show the authorities that they are taking precautions to prevent the flow of such dirty coins to the mixers, they will be considered as illegal by the government.

I dont think that would happen in the near future. Maybe some strict countries like China and the like will do it, but worldwide? No. Most of countries' government even didnt care about bitcoin. it is just that some people hype bitcoin so much that they think government hates bitcoin. I mean, I dont hate bitcoin, I love it so much that is why Im here but let's be honest, most governments really didnt care about bitcoin's existence.

Mixers are pretty much about covering the money trail of your crypto coins whenever you spend them, which means if the government or anybody is on that money trail..it means it goes cold as new coins are sent out to the specified wallet leaving all coins sent to other wallets which to be honest is something that the government will never support or legalize.

Government banning bitcoin mixers is reasonable since most of the time mixers are used in illegal doings in the crypto world because it can make your transaction untraceable and if that money came from illegal thing like scamming or whatever it is, mixers are mostly used by money launderer scammers out there so it's totally fine if they ban or consider it illegal in the future.

It's already hard enough for me without mixers to prove banks that how did i came up with my bitcoins while being poor. Lot's of banks here in Finland have closed their doors from bitcoin related companies, most likely because they don't want to be associated with criminal activities (of yeah, the irony).

It doesn't actually help me to introduce more layers to that process when they are not sure if it's from a drug trading or not.
This is also the reason i don't touch privacy coins. I am just afraid that they freeze my account for suspecting illegal activities.

I think that they will be illegal just to make things even harder for us. I am hoping not though.

That's certainly true, mate. Most countries didn't seem to care about Bitcoin first, due to the lack of mainstream adoption. Even now with many people using the pioneer cryptocurrency, some governments have paid attention to it while others have remained likely the same. For example, the US has realized how big crypto has become lately, taking action against the whole industry in general. The government's SEC have played a large part in the diminished growth of ICOs within crypto land. On the other hand, countries in the third world (like Venezuela and Colombia), don't seem to care that much about Bitcoin at all.

Still though, if Bitcoin continues to grow at an unprecedented rate in terms of mainstream adoption, then I believe that at some point worldwide governments will take action against it. Right now, mixers don't have a lot of people using it, which leaves them under the radar of most governments worldwide. Once these privacy services become viral, you could expect every government taking proper actions against them. After all, most Bitcoin mixers are centralized. If governments have successfully shut down Bestmixer, then they could do the same to Chipmixer and other popular services known to date.

What really makes governments' efforts in vain, is a decentralized solution for the whole mainstream world to use. If people start using decentralized mixers more thoroughly, then there would be no way to circumvent privacy at all. Governments and other third parties will have a hard time trying to destroy decentralized privacy solutions and Bitcoin itself. In the end, they'll either join the revolution or be left behind in the dust. Just my opinion :)

For my opinion, the time has already passed when Bitcoin mixers were in full demand.  The fact is that almost every cryptocurrency user wants to legalize Bitcoin, because this will lead not only to the demand for cryptocurrency in society, but also to increase its status throughout the world.  Of course, the government will always look for the culprits of fraud and therefore the legalization of the cryptocurrency is inevitable in order to control the cryptocurrency market.  Therefore, you need to carefully monitor your actions and the services of those resources that we use.

Bitcoin mixers were widely available in the marketplace once and after the bitmixer drop out we are not seeing plenty of the mixers available and usage also had been reduced when we compare it from few years before now bro. Let's look for the market problems we are facing now.

The end of the mixer is inevitable. If we want bitcoin to be more widely accepted, all of our mixers must be turned off. The mixer makes transactions more difficult to access, which also means that when hacked, we will never know where our bitcoins move. For the same reason, the anonymous cryptocurrency has been deleted by exchanges from their trading system.

If the owners are willing to provide the logs then what is the use of advertising as bitcoin mixers, either they must advertise that they will be showing the logs if the authorities will approach them through a legal process and if that disclaimer is crystal clear for the clients who use their service then they can provide those details and everyone can use their service according to their terms. The problem with that is some government might target bitcoin traders because of ban in their country and if they produce court documents then you cannot release those sensitive information to those government and where do you draw the line is the question,

That's certainly true, mate. There are very few mixers within the crypto space, probably because most people don't care about their privacy. There's a misconception that Bitcoin is anonymous, when in fact, it's not. Only people that are "paranoic" about government surveillance resort to mixers. But even so, privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies like Monero and Grin offer a better degree of privacy than Bitcoin mixers themselves. Considering that most of these privacy services are centralized, they're easy targets for governments worldwide. We've already seen how the number of mixers available within crypto land, have been declining at a fast pace. After bitmixer when down, there are now very limited options for people to mix their Bitcoin.

Speaking of government intervention, I believe that their next target would be ChipMixer itself. They could come up with an excuse (like money laundering and tax evasion) in order to shut down the mixer in its entirety (even when the mixer didn't perform any illegal activities). Which is why, no Bitcoin mixer that it's centralized will survive in this world. Luckily, there are decentralized solutions like TumbleBit and CoinJoin that would be of great use to Bitcoin if put up to the test by its own developers. Personally, I prefer TumbleBit as it proves to be much more efficient than CoinJoin in preserving one's privacy. Even the Dandelion Protocol fits the bill nicely in achieving said purpose.

So, even if Bitcoin mixers are shut down by the government in its entirety, there's always other means for people to protect their coins against massive surveillance. Thanks to the decentralized and open-source nature of Bitcoin, privacy solutions can be built on top of the main BTC blockchain without fear of censorship or downtime. Once governments realize that their efforts were in vain, they could either ban Bitcoin in its entirety or simply join its cause. All in all, privacy is just the tip of the iceberg as scalability tends to be a real issue within the BTC blockchain today. Just my thoughts ;D

Sometimes it's a matter of jealousy from governments side where they want to tax everyone and can no longer do it from crypto perspective.
Other times are just protection against hackers, illegal activities and so on (bad decisions by people using it).

I aggree that in some cases there will be way more mixers shutdown if they are not regulated with some overcontrol by the government.
But i don't want them to become illegal and it will probabily not be that way.

It is actually not only made for evading illegal activities in the market. Some people want absolute privacy especially if they do really have allot of cryptocurrency. People knowing them spending too much would just put them in danger. That is why they need the mixers to fully secure their anonymity. In this case, if people want complete anonymity when gambling, then mixers are beneficial for them. Just for the sake of explaining why mixers are important and for us not to see it as something that protects illegal activities.

The possibility of illegalizing Bitcoin mixers in their entirety looks more closer than we've thought. There have been many governments against decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, while they only favor Blockchain technology itself. The US mainly, is extremely strict towards crypto and Blockchain technology looking for ways to stifle its growth. Last time, the US arrested a prominent ETH developer by giving a conference to North Koreans about Blockchain technology. The country believes that the technology underpinning Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is powerful enough for avoiding sanctions and performing other illegal activities. Most governments' concerns have been related to money laundering and tax evasion using crypto. A currency that they cannot control (such as Bitcoin or Ethereum) would be on their target list without a doubt.

That's why I believe that sooner or later, all centralized mixers will cease their operations within the mainstream world. The only thing that will prevail in crypto land will be decentralized services with no middleman. If people want to mix their coins or achieve privacy in their transactions, they'd have no choice but to use decentralized mixing services or non-custodial mixers. Luckily, we have TumbleBit, CoinJoin, RingCT, Dandelion Protocol, Mimblewimble, and ZK-SNARKS to achieve complete privacy over our transactions. That's more than enough to achieve financial freedom without governments' intervention. Since these technologies are decentralized by design, they can resist governments' attacks in every way (censorship-resistance). That's not widely possible with centralized Bitcoin mixers of today since they have a single point of failure.

Nonetheless, it's hoped that worldwide governments have a friendly stance towards crypto and Blockchain technology in general. As long as they're able to properly tax digital assets, they'll give the "green light" for the industry to grow without disruptions. Time will tell us the fate of Bitcoin as governments devise a regulatory framework that could either stimulate or stifle its growth within the mainstream world. Just my thoughts ;D

But we can't still remove the fact that it is being used in illegal activities that may become the reason for the government to ban it sooner or later. Even if there are so many people who only wanted to have a complete anonymity when doing gambling or any transaction even if it is not illegal, the government will only see its dark side. It is unfair but that's the reality.

I don't get the government stands on the money laundering part. There is a lot of ways where you can clean your money from dirty work like buying stock from the market. I guess in the end it's all about they can't benefit from it that is why they're banning it. And yes, if this continues to happen, bitcoin mixers are going to be considered as illegal by most of the world's government.

The fact is that today the cryptocurrency market is not controlled by the government and any financial transactions can be performed anonymously, apart from those actions on cryptocurrency exchanges where the user provided his passport data.  But if we talk about buying shares or other financial investments, they are controlled in almost every state and thus laundering money received illegally thanks very hard, especially if there is no specific assistant official who can contribute to this.  The government is engaged in the fight against illicit trafficking of funds because they cannot control it and cannot profit from it.

I can see centralized mixers being subjected to some kind of KYC regulations. There have been instances of mixers being used to obfuscate the trail of stolen coins, but such instances are very few, Chainalysis has some data on that: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/chainalysis-most-mixed-bitcoin-not-used-for-illicit-purposes.

Regarding decentralized mixers, Wasabi and Samurai wallets have something along those lines - this article might help shed some light on it - https://medium.com/cobo-vault/bitcoin-mixing-a-brief-research-into-centralized-vs-decentralized-390ea83fa6ad

I think so, mixers are being used to money laundering by many scammers, that's a very common way because of its simplicity. However, it becomes really serious topic any many associations which want to fight with such activities. For instance Coinfirm, leader in AML reports and reclaiming crypto, which is a partner of Ripple (and Binance) in analyzing cryptocurrency transactions to see if they were mixed and rate their risk level for AML compliance reasons. Next year may bring many positive changes when it comes to crypto crimes.

Exactly. The main reason why governments are against Bitcoin mixers is because they can't benefit from them whatsoever. Since Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency, it gives the power to the people instead of middlemen or third-parties. Once coins are mixed, it's nearly impossible to revert back transactions. While governments are able to shut down centralized mixers, they'll be unable to confiscate mixed coins because of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin. Even worse, non-custodial mixers like TumbleBit and even Bitcoin Cash's CashShuffle, have no single point of failure making them difficult for governments to stop them. At some point, it's believed that mixers/tumblers would be considered illegal by worldwide governments as they present the excuse of people using these services for tax evasion.

As long as Bitcoin remains a fully transparent cryptocurrency, governments will be able to track & trace individuals for taxation purposes. And if it stays that way, expect Bitcoin to see the approval of worldwide governments within the future. Other cryptocurrencies which are private by default (like Monero and Grin) will be entirely banned by worldwide governments. The reason of this is obvious as governments don't want anyone to achieve financial freedom. They will always spread lies to the people about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, related to criminals using these alternative payment systems for money laundering and tax evasion. With this false propaganda, it's no wonder why a large portion of people worldwide haven't adopted the pioneer cryptocurrency yet. Time will tell us what will be the fate of Bitcoin mixing services, as governments devise laws either in favor or against them. Just my thoughts ;D