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At least 4,836 Bitcoin (BTC) of stolen from Binance exchange in May 2019 was laundered through crypto mixing service Chipmixer.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-hackers-bombard-chipmixer-to-launder-at-least-4-836-btc

This is bad for Chipmixer.  If the authority decided to investigate on this and targeted Chipmixer to shutdown regardless of the investigation, they can easily do it since they have a proof in their hand that a mixing service had been used to launder a hacked BTC.  I wonder why Chipmixer did not suspend those transactions.., Did they failed to track that those BTC were hacked?

This is a very stupid move and it might lead to the hacker being caught a lot quicker. A mixer service takes your coins and mix them with other people's coins, but the larger the amount of coins being mixed, the higher the chances that those coins might be mixed by the coins being send. It is rumoured that mixing services are less anonymous with larger amount of coins being mixed.  ::)

So let's hope this backfires on them and that they dug their own grave by doing this.  :P  The companies tracking these coins, might just have received a jackpot from these hackers bombarding a single mixer service with a lot of coins.  ;D

Bad news for Chipmixer, they are the only legit established large sized mixer left after the closer of many. This move would certainly bring them in for investigation as it's a criminal case.
This could lead to the end of bitcoin mixing services and enforce more regulations on exchanges and tradings.

Indeed, for sure Chipmixer will cooperate to the authority to trace the hacker.  I believe Chipmixer will protect their name and will have a wise decision regarding this incident.  Mixing service have records of their transaction though they keep it private.



It will definitely backfire to the hackers.

Chipmixer is in a bad spot right now, if they give the data to authorities, they will lose some customers, both criminals and just people who don't trust governments. If they don't cooperate, they will risk getting closed, and they will have reputation of a service that launders dirty money, and some users might be scared that the coins that they get will be tainted.

They can't openly collaborate with the authorities, otherwise nobody will use their services anymore.
And BTW which authorities are you talking about?  Are you sure there is at least one authority investigating the case?
If it's just the singaporean authorities, I don't think Chipmixer will care very much about them...

Yes, when I read this thread, the same thought occurs, it's a bad situation to Chipmixer
If I were the owner of Chipmixer I would not know what to do, but honestly, I think I would be at Binance side and trying to help them in this case, because anonymity is different than illegal

They can't also cooperate unopenly. If somebody were to leak it (like a former employee) it would be even worse for the mixer.
Should they stop mixing stolen coins? Should they let the police know? Should they contact Binance and lock the funds? All these things will undermine the goal of their business, which is providing anonymous and safe mixing services. Hackers or not, they are clients who are paying Chipmixer to do their job. This job is not to trace every coin to its source before mixing it.

This surely is a bad light for Chipmixer now, although I believe that they won't openly cooperate and maintain full control of their mixing operations, but the main question is until when? They are a decent mixing service and a trusted name at that department, although once people knew that the said mixing service openly gave all the necessary info as to what happened to the coins and where it landed, I doubt people will still trust the said service. This is what my fears are for mixers, and was just a matter of time before news like this one surface. FATF, FBI and other agencies would come at Chipmixer's front door knocking and asking whether they want to cooperate or not, and I hope they know how to handle such issue.

This is not good anyway for the Chipmixer, this might be the big reason for them to be close or shutdown in the end.
Also their bounty participants are in danger too because of this things. 4836 bitcoinBTC was not a joke actually, it is indeed a huge
amount that has been stolen.

If we follow Clain’s report on their website (https://blog.clain.io/binance-hack-2019-deep-dive-into-the-money-laundering/) it does talk quite a lot in terms of likelihood. If fact, of the 4836 BTCs it has allegedly identified as being sent to Chipmixer, it only (currently) used a stronger more assertive vocabulary for 183 BTCs, stating that those are “surely” ("certainly", I figure they mean) identified as hacker funds, in contrast with  814 BTCs termed as “likely”.

Semantics is important, and although they may well have a good trail on something, when performing an accusation of this nature it is important to be certain and not likely certain.

Interestingly enough, back in March 2019, Clain studied the hack on a Japanese exchange called Zaif (see https://blog.clain.io/applying-machine-learning-for-thorough-investigation-of-zaif-hack/). Their investigation leads them to believe that, out of the 5957 BTCs stolen, 875 went through Chipmixer’s tumbler, and at least 1549 (mixed or not) ended up in Binance deposit addresses, with amounts below the KYC threshold of 2 BTCs used by Binance for withdrawals...

How would they even know before the transactions began coming in that the big sum of coins was off the Binance hack? Even if they knew, once it went into the mixer, there would be nothing stopping the hackers from getting 'clean' coins in a matter of minutes. Also, for obvious reasons, the hackers would've used the TOR mirror making things even harder to crack.


This is practically impossible for ChipMixer as it would question their ethics of remaining as a legitimate mixing service. Then again, 'locking the funds' wouldn't be possible as the output private keys with the clean coins would've already have been claimed at any time.

Yeah, that would be nice! But I am not sure there's such a small variety on Chipmixers that your own coins will be mixed with each other, thus leaving traces. I guess a big amount of money is riskier than a small one, but still... It's sad if the hackers won't be found, it can be a black spot of Chipmixer's nice reputation. Unless Chipmixer helps the authorities since in this case, it's clear that the money is used for illegal activities... But in that case, the company might lose some of its customers and customers' trust in general. So it's a difficult situation, and it would be best for everyone apart from the hackers if you're right about the vulnerability.

Chipmixer was a great platform though, I know they will make a move to clean this issue. They should have an official statement and do an action to resolve it as soon as possible. If there's proof that the hackers aren't from chipmixer, then it will be fixed in a little amount of time.

Excellent point. Everyone is reacting to the clickbait headline number, but the reality is much less clear.

Another important thing to note is that exchanges (like Binance) and DEXs are routinely used to launder the proceeds of hacks. So let's not crucify any one service for something we all know is happening across the entire ecosystem.


If Chipmixer operates the way they claim, they don't have more data about the hacker than can already be extracted from blockchain analysis.

It will not be first one taken down and organizers get big penalties.  This can happen to anything that have central point of failure. Even cryptocurencies that uses coinjoin to make their transactions opaque.

Most of you are saying it's bad for ChipMixer but I would say the opposite. It's a good opportunity to prove how robust is the mixing process. In the end, it will make ChipMixer's reputation stronger and attract more people who are used to use BTC tumblers.
Such articles are helpful


Big penalties? Have you ever see a mixer webmaster going in a justice court? What the hell are you talking about with Coinjoin

Muh, mixers are just stupid. Its only good for criminal use. No decent user needs that at all. U might need to trace back all ur coin txs in case...

Of course, chipmixer will follow on what they believe is right regarding to this. Even binance or any government approach to them, they will not give any data related if they care on what they're believing and the purpose of chipmixer, or else their users will start to shrink just like bestmixer.

I'm not a criminal. I for example use a mixer when I need to make a purchase in Bitcoin and buy these coins through my local exchange. It gives me a peace of mind knowing that it provides me a layer of privacy I didn't have before.

Exchanges increasingly start to look at what you do with your coins after withdrawing them-- their banking partners can demand them to boot you off their platform, and they will definitely not go against that.

An example is Coinbase that has booted hundreds or maybe even thousands of users, all because they withdrew coins to a service their banking partners don't agree with. Mixers come in very handy here.

Just wait until exchanges decide that mixers are the service they don't agree with and start booting users who use them. You may not be able to trace the coins but you can see that they went through a mixer.

Sooner or later some agencies will try to shut down chipmixer. I hope they have a backup plan for that.

So far we have seen two mixing services succumb to the pressure of the government. Of course authorities will do their best to shutdown Chipmixer, however I do believed that Chipmixer is not stupid enough to let that happen to them.

Definitely they have been monitoring everything but I doubt that they would cooperate unless the authorities have all the information that they indeed Chipmixer got all that 4836 BTC and where it went. But if ever Chipmixer's closes, there will be another services that is going to pop, that how businesses evolved.

That would really suck, and affect the service initially, but I'm sure that mixers will find a way to make their mixing process look more like an organic form of economical activity commonly taking place on the network already.

The thing however is that you can't just ban mixers simply because you can't prove that the coins have gone through a mixer. If you boot someone just based on the assumption that he used a mixer, that's very bad business.

Every mixer is unfortunately a target, but the 'positive' side of all these agencies chasing mixers is that the mixers are pretty much forced to become even more anonymous (relatively speaking) than they already are.

Result is that mixers will be more difficult to shut down and that we as privacy respecting users can still use them to get rid of taint.

The moment agencies figure out that there is a new mixer in town, they are trying their best to get it to shut down. In other words, agencies of all sorts have been after ChipMixer and other mixers for a long time now. The weakest ones have been taken out unfortunately, where the strongest ones will gain more dominance and thus have more financial resources to not fall victim to governmental raids.

The long term problem I see is that with more advanced tools to their disposal, agencies will be getting better at what they do. They are catching up real fast, while most people here believe governments are still ignorant and don't understand Bitcoin. They just play stupid. They know what's going on.

Very astute deduction. Which is why I don’t send any coins into any mixers.

What will happen is mixers will be considered tainted coins by many different governments.

So it would be very wise to not send a coin into their accounts.

Chipmixer might be in the hot seat right now but I guess they are doing some contingencies before their dreaded situation happens. They should know that sooner or later, they will face such situation like this and they should be prepared for it. Now, that they are in the limelight, they should do a swift action on this matter.

How sure and reliable is this information? With regard to the fact that cointelegraph posted this article doesn't really guarantee that the bitcoins were the ones stolen from binance. I think we should take our time to further analyse this info well before drawing possible conclusions.     

So do you think that cointelegraph wasn't a reliable source of information?
The news was already on other bitcoin news site.

Try to read this also mate.
https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2019/08/150394-chipmixer-bitcoin-tumbler-used-to-launder-funds-stolen-in-80-million-usd-hack-on-binance/

Kind of an abuse of the chipmixer, an attempt to further obscure his identity and we may get stiffer measures from government authorities to attack whatever useful tool they can lay their hands because of abuses like this. It also underscores why the demand for 'virgin bitcoin' has been on the increase in recent months

Somehow the main purpose of a chipmixer is being abused here. It may have come useful if one wanted to conceal his identity for legitimate reasons - I know that sounds criminal in many instances but not in all

Let's not be so fast to assume facts, and take the PR with a grain of salt. The title and article is structured in a very clickbait like structure, but the true story is far from what is being represented.

Not really. Chipmixer doesn't know anything about the criminals, there is no KYC that is forced upon them and then only thing available to them is the information available on the blockchain.

I agree - this will be proof of how solid the service is they are offering, and I doubt anyone in the Chipmixer organization will ever be forced to show up to court.

yes, there should be no usable data left in ChipMixer system to link the ins and outs
but ChipMixer system possibly still maintain all previous deposit addresses (HD wallet)
and it can be used as proof that chipmixer did receive those hacked coins

I agree, for now it certainly draws heat to ChipMixer and may reduce its users
but in a few months if nothing happens to them, this would boost ChipMixer's reputation

I can only speculate that maybe they did not know that the coins did come from the Binance hack. Or they wittingly know it but just decided to mix it anyways, at the end of the end its all business.

What do you mean by the 'only' one legit mixer? There are still a lot of tumbling services around. But I would have to agree that it bring attention to them that could affect their services negatively. If they are going to be investigated, what will they give to the agencies? They don't back up any logs for that matter  Plus they give you fresh new mint coins as well (as far as I know.)

The only information Chipmixer has are the input addresses, which isn't a lot of information, and due to the large transaction size, it'll likely be found out anyway by the authorities. The bigger the amount is you are trying to mix, the easier it is to track.

Let's see what happens to them, they haven't been shut down when the other 2 large mixers got shut down, so I doubt they will face anything bad from the authorities. This will just showcase their strengths.

I doubt they monitor their transactions all the time and would be able to know the coins are from the Binance hack. Chipmixer is the most popular mixer now, and it'll be a shame for them to shut down - other mixers are still fairly new or just don't work as well as Chipmixer.

I don't think that they have any real choice here. If the feds are involved, then they need to cooperate with them. Else, they will just get destroyed, like BTC-e and numerous other cryptocurrency ventures. If they could limit the damage, by giving only a part of the information (like past 3 months data), then they may be able to retain a fraction of the user-base. But at the same time, there is no guarantee that the feds will allow Chipmixer to continue its operations, as now it is proven that criminals are making use of its services.

Also, it is quite possible that the feds will push for mandatory KYC verification for the Chipmixer users, which defeats the very purpose of using their services. I am feeling quite skeptical about them, and I have a feeling that they probably won't survive for long (irrespective of whether they are ready to cooperate with the FBI or not). 

to be honest this article looks to me like another chain analysis service that is trying to advertise their services and take some customers to make money. otherwise all of their statements on their website looks like pure guesswork which they give validity to by using buzzwords such as "network science" and "machine learning".

I am amazed why those hackers decided to use the Chipmixer coin-mixing service when they are aware that the transactions can still be traced. I am hoping that there can be an official investigation to this and something can be done especially in tracking these people who are the real scumbags of this industry. As to Chipmixer, the last among the many, let's hope this can never lead to its own downfall.

This could be the case, we are not sure why they singlehandedly mention chipmixer, hmmm. And probably just promoting their service and what why to shill for your company than mentioning in your investigation one of the best mixing services right now. This could be just a promotion for all we know.

That's the purpose (to anonymize transactions) chipmixer is here for, isn't it?

And I doubt, chipmixer would suspend those transactions, since it would go against the purpose it's providing.

I think this is the best case for now. Everyone is saying this is bad for Chipmixer but first of all, there is no proof that they aided this activity at all,,, and like you said, more than 1500 BTC went to Binance and Binance did nothing. And immediately used it to process withdrawals for its customers.

So,,, Bitcoin fungibility wins.

First they would have to find who they are/where they're from, unlike btc-e/wex they don't deal with fiat currencies, so they have no legal entities to search for. And they'd have to prove Chipmixer knowingly accepted stolen bitcoins.


The stolen bitcoins were traced to Chipmixer, but tracing where they went is another matter. Yes, they mixed more coins than usual after the theft, but it can only be said mixed coins from Chipmixer are more likely to come from the theft for a while, telling which ones came from the theft will not be easy. Blockchain analysis companies probably work with exchanges, payment processors like Bitpay, etc. so depending on how many of Chipmixer's users spend coins where their identities can be deduced it will make the job of identifying the stolen coins easier or harder.

It is a really bad news for chipmixer as a service as they are put under the bus by this act, with mixing service closing left and right because of pressure from authorities and with his new update the authorities will be putting too much pressure to one of the only surviving good mixing service, even if they reveal the identity of the hackers it will hurt their business, how they are going to respond to the authorities is the biggest suspense here.

Well, maybe this is a nightmare for chipmixers if binance really demands chipmixers, even though chipmixers are just a service, but because the services can launder money, they can be dragged into the case of hacking Binance. Especially if the country where the chipmixer stands is a member FATF (http://"https://www.fatf-gafi.org/about/membersandobservers/"), this will be an initiative action for the government of the country to further investigate cases like this. But here I hope the chipmixer will be fine because I also need a mixer service, but if something bad happens then another mixer service might be affected.

If Chipmixer is set up properly, the most the US government can do is seize their clearnet domain. Even if they can get their hands on servers, proper encryption should leave all funds intact. The service could be restarted within a few days in that case.

When fiat money isn't involved, the US government isn't that great of a threat.

Give me some realistic calc for how much % u ll end up holding tainted coins after the  mix pls - I'd never ever put clean coins to risk !

That's not how bitcoin works.
There are no 'clean' and 'dirty' coins.

There can be UTXO with an illegal source, but after the next transaction they are not traceable anymore.


Image, you have 1 'dirty' bitcoin (input A) and 1 'clean' bitcoin (input B).
Now you create a transaction consuming both inputs and creating 4 outputs (0.5 BTC each; output W, X, Y, Z).

Which 2 outputs are 'clean' and which are 'dirty' ?
That question can not be answered.

Same applies to cash:
1 'dirty' 10$ bill and 1 'clean' 10$ bill. Now you exchange them to 4 5$ bills. You can't say which of them are 'clean' and which are 'dirty'.

Sorry - talk with ur (potential) bank or finance Institute that should hanlde ur coins in any future, where Adoption must go - or ur coin will join the Liberty Reserve history and Exit the gene pool

Learn: Due dilligence is what u CAN do with minimal effort.

Physical cash is different. 

 ???
I won't let anyone handle / control my coins. Ever.

If you believe that banks are going to control and manage your BTC in the future, you didn't understand the philosophy of bitcoin yet.
Be your own bank implies to not let a bank manage your coins.


Bitcoin is a mean of payment, and not a speculative object. While quite a lot people see it as such, the utility behind it is what will change the world we live in.
Decoupling from banks does not work if you let them manage your coins.




I think there are quite some things regarding the technical aspects of bitcoin you don't understand.

My argument is valid.

i don't get one important thing about this whole article. how do they even figure out that the transactions belong to ChipMixer mixing services? it is not like they brand their transactions with their name! they can very well belong to any other exchange services out there.
they never explain this important part.

That's actually not that hard.
ChipMixer splits those coins into chips having fixed sizes.

You can determine whether they went to ChipMixer by looking at the outputs created. If you see X BTC being split into 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, etc.. UTXO's you can be pretty sure that they sent their coins to ChipMixer.

However, whether the coins were sent to a mixing service is not a privacy implication at all.
It would be problematic if you could trace which coins were sent back in exchange. But fortunately that's not the case with ChipMixer.

If what you said is how mixing worked then I don't there is any privacy in it and those hackers will definitely going to be apprehended. Chipmixer should also helped in exposing the hackers as this will help in reducing laundry of Bitcoin and funds as this is one of the major reasons why those with bright mind and those that want things to be done right refused to support cruptocurrency adoptions. As for those blaming chipmixer in doing the mixing, remember that the interest is to make everything Anonymous as possible.

Good - I wish u good luck.

Original BitCoin was designed to work with ANY counterparty - and sorry - does include banks

This is why bitcoin has got a bad name as these mixers enable to turn "tainted" coins into "clean" coins without asking for any proof. If this laundering of money is proved, then like bestmixer now chipmixer will be seized to shut down. It was this year when I learnt about mixers and felt they operate with a license but the main purpose of using these mixers i just to launder money else why would anyone use them and how can they be called legal?

It is called Bitcoin, not BitCoin.

And it works with any counterparty. Feel free to let a 3rd party control your coins - and therefore your money.
But this definitely won't be the future for the majority, and there is zero sense in that.

Counterparty - by the way - implies that you can transact with anyone, which is always the case. Even without giving full control away.
Letting someone else manage your funds, does not fall under 'work with any counterparty'.


Why would i need luck ?
I am using BTC as it is supposed to be. You'd be the one who needs luck if you are going to let a 3rd party control your funds. You are giving away all the benefits bitcoin offers.




I heavily doubt that.

The operator behind Bestmixer obviously didn't know how to run such a business.
The people behind ChipMixer are way more competent than those of any other mixer around (past and present).




Maybe because there are people around who care about their privacy ?

I mean.. sure.. there a lot of people like you who give their whole privacy away just for a few bucks (e.g. KYC for shitty tokens worth nothing).
Or by browsing with tracking cookies, or by installing the amazon browser plugin basically giving away your privacy for 10$.

Not everyone is like that.

If you follow where the outputs are being spent, and if the hackers aren't smart enough about how they sell or spend the bitcoins, or if too many of Chipmixers' users spend the mixed coins through services with KYC (or by buying physical products or services in their name), then eventually it might be possible to state with increasing likelihood which outputs are clean and which have a higher probability of being dirty.

Bitcoin is a very good enough privacy system, esp at high txs throughput and proper only - fresh public address handling -  but it will and never should be an ANONYMITY system, cause such attracts only criminals.

Not necessarily. There are proposals to increase the anonymity of bitcoin.

While coinjoin is fine, there are better solutions available, such as payjoin (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-April/016888.html).




Not really.

By combining 2 'dirty' and 'clean' outputs, creating 4 new outputs, it is not possible to call any one of them 'clean' or 'dirty' anymore.
The whole concept of 'dirty' coins simply does not work. Coins do not exist. Only UTXO do. And UTXOs are being 'destroyed' in each transaction.

So for few bucks you earn from your signature campaign, you are ready to personally attack members to defend your campaign so would you ready to even take the blame if they turn out to be criminals?

Your website (as you now talk like you own it) is involved in a criminal activity so don't defend it blindly. What I do is none of your concern as I don't support criminals nor will go to the extent you went. You want to launder money, you do it but when you get caught, you can't blame the Government because you want to PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY.

I thought you were a decent member to talk to but sorry to say you can't even talk properly.

You use Paypal: Paypal is involved in criminal activities
You use a bank: Banks are involved in criminal activities

So you do support criminals, don't defend them either

Most coins will be tainted soon or later if someone uses a mixer it doesn't mean he is a criminal, as well.
You guys got brainwashed too much and sometimes you have weird reasoning with double standarts

You can't be serious :D

^Your reasoning failed the moment I saw your signature and this comment.


Glad you admitted that being involved in such shady businesses helps promote their reputation.

I see that a lot of people are pointing accusing fingers against ChipMixer which to me is misconception and a campaign of calumny against the services ChipMixer is offering and moreso is diverting of attention from the real culprit here which is Binance that fails to put necessary security measures in place to protect other people's asset. Its just like blaming the church for receiving tithe from people who came to worship there. Another point to note is that, if the hackers didn't use ChipMixer they would surely use another service...

Honestly I do not think Chipmixer has something to do with this money laundering nor they are with the hackers. As we all know Chipmixer is a service that any of us can access.  It is probably automated, that disable it to stop any transaction made in it so I guess it is biased to accused them that they condone criminal actions.  I think it is best to see the next move of Chipmixer if they will cooperate with the investigation or not before saying anything against them.

I also want to see what Chipmixer does now and see them helping in the investigation. Since there is an allegation of such a huge amount involved, they should be cooperating while the members here are deviating the topic and personally attacking members to defend Chipmixer. Hope that Chipmixer replies soon.

i do not see Chipmixer as an accomplise and therefore should not be shutdown or even dragged into the Binance Hack as they render services to the general public. Mixed multitude subscribe to their services and it is not possible to say who does an illegal transaction within their framework except if they are being alerted to awaken their consciousness and halt such transactions when and while they still can. it may not be a good story to tell about the company but then let us be realistic

https://i.imgur.com/hivdC1x.png

Source: https://messari.io/organization/clain

It is a private company that has nothing to do with governments, you are looking at everything very wrong.

There is no obligation for a mixer to investigate where the funds come from and it is not the fault of a mixer if someone misuses the mixer

They will never cooperate with the authorities, because no logs are kept, so even if they subpoena them for the information... then they still cannot give any information to them, that they do not have.  ;D

As one of the previous posters also said, the main reason why people still use mixer services, is the fact that they are not sharing information with the authorities. If they do that only once, people would stop using it and there are no way to hide that, because that would be used as evidence in a court.  ;)

^^I find Clain's allegations pretty valid and even though it's not proved, this would be investigated. A mixer was most probably the best option for the hacker and if by any chance Chipmixer was infact involved, I don't see how can they not be blamed when the same happened with Bitmixer.


https://www.zdnet.com/article/bestmixer-seized-by-eu-police-over-laundering-of-200-million-in-cryptocurrency/

Earlier it was said here that there are some efforts to increase the anonimity of Bitcoin. But I'm not sure it's possible.
At the begininig we had bigger anonimity and that didn't last. With high pressure for regulation I don't think that turning back at the starting point is actually possible. And wouldn't be very good for reputation of Bitcoin either.

Apparently yes. Well, and in general, why should the service do this?After all, they do not need to worry about stolen bitcoins.It's not their concern is to find out the origin of bitcoins that were transferred to the mixer.

Of course that's bad news for chipmixers. The best crypto mixing platform in my opinion. Whose name is tarnished because of a greedy hacker. They wash Bitcoin for their stomachs. But unfortunately anonymity limits the authorities to find out who exactly the hacker is.

I do wonder though, how can you be sure as government that coins are related to a mixer?

But even if governments at one point in the future can 'taintmark' your mixed coins, what if mixers will end up offering a service where you deposit Bitcoin on-chain, but are paid out in Bitcoin on the Lightning Network? How will they taint the satoshis moving off-chain? It's practically impossible. Governments won't be able to figure out what Lightning node related to the mixer paid you out with a widely enough deployed network.

You only get to figure out coin movements when people cash out to the main chain, which there is little incentive for with more and more places to spend your coins at. It takes less than a minute to install a third party Lightning wallet and to accept payments. Perfect to conduct a transaction and then be done with it.

I hope that is the case with Chipmixer and the feds may not have enough power to close them down. But one thing is sure. The FBI is going to demand user logs from the Chipmixer team. I don't know how the owners will respond to that. If the incoming/outgoing BTC addresses are given to the FBI, then it makes much easier for the feds to trace anyone who had used Chipmixer services earlier (Since the "clean" coins in most cases would be going to KYC enabled exchanges where it is traded for fiat).

I agree that fiat currency is not involved and therefore the threat level is low. But in case of BTC-e, almost 45% of their crypto funds were also seized by the feds. They have the capability to seize wallets and steal the coins within them. My guess is that if the authorities can prove that Chipmixer is regularly used by criminals to launder their money, then they will be able to create issues for the team, even if they may not be able to close down it completely.

Bolded the part that highlights the difference between Bestmixer and Chipmixer. I'm very interested as to what will come out of this, but if past precedent were to be followed, authorities won't have grounds to shut down Chipmixer regardless of their capability to do so.


If everything is as it should be, they would respond by saying they don't have the logs. When a mixing session ends, all data associated with it is deleted.

Chipmixer should have been told in advance by Binance which addresses to flag. But there is no system in place to do that... If they knew they could simply have kept the coins hostage. And after verification return them to the right owner minus a fee for having helped.

No authorities, that will never be universally accepted. Only a community based opt in solution will.

I don't think it will happen. They really need to cooperate with the authority this time or they're fucked. This case involves hacking of a large exchange with a large amount of money, this is not a joke. It's more riskier to get shutdown than to cooperate with the authority. At least this way, they are doing the right thing. I think they will do this in a private matter.

the day mixing services start taking coins (sent to their service for mixing) hostage is the day their business dies. it should not matter where the coins come from, even if it seems against morality. because there would be no stop to that, anyone else could then report any bitcoin they sent to others as being "stolen" and demand they be frozen (assuming the other party is going to use a mixer, like in a case of a face to face purchase where the buyer runs them through a mixer to increase his anonymity).

So the burden is not on Chipmixer, they are services and will accept everything that comes to their tumbler. It's more complicated than taking the coins hostage and sending it back to the right owner. I think Chipmixer will be cooperating, however, what can they give to authorities if there are no historical data on their back-end?

What the heck are these posts? ChipMixer is obviously NOT going to cooperate and it's not like the government can "wake up" next day and say "yo, let's shutdown this mixer" that easily. Bestmixer was clearly acting over-confident with all their "best mixing algo" bullshit and "exchange/mining only funds" (and charging a lot of money in fees for that). They were a lot of marketed words and no real security/privacy. Their case has nothing to do with ChipMixer.

If anything, this just shows how ChipMixer is legit. If they got almost 5k BTC in deposits and didn't run away with the money, then we can easily say they have good intentions.

So, an unknown firm claims some coins went to chipmixer with zero real proof and you claim that the website is involved in criminal activity ?
And we should shut down the mixers for this...

Well, I have some bad news from you., we should shut down the entire system because the ones that hacked binance claim something else:


So, who to close down first, blockchain huobi , kucoin yobit , bitmex or chipmixer? ;D ;D


Well, some people think that we should have kyc on the forum, kyc when you buy coins, kyc when you use the toilet...
So, there you have it!

i'm not worried in the least about that. the issue at hand seems more about fungibility. if someone flooded chipmixer with the binance hack outputs, it stands to reason that those outputs are being recirculated to other chipmixer users. where does that leave them, with ciphertrace at al watching every move?

tbh i don't care from an ethical standpoint---i take the position that if you can't protect your coins, they deserve to be stolen. mix them, spend them in good health.....i don't care. i just think people are understandably concerned that they're gonna be clocked by third party services for spending coins associated with that event. (yes i know they are entirely different outputs now, just not sure how blockchain analysis companies are viewing this and therefore how exchanges are reacting to related user deposits)

i'll be avoiding KYC services with chipmixer derived funds, at least for now.

Personal attacks ? Where ?

The whole thinking of dirty and clean coins simply does not work. There are no 'coins'. That's the point.

And i would defend any reputable business which is being attacked by people who don't know the technical details of bitcoin and therefore making wrong accusations.




No, i do not own that business.

So, in your eyes.. everyone who cares about his privacy is a criminal ? That's some weird logic.




I am able to argue properly.
All i see in this section of the forum is some heavy misunderstanding on how bitcoin works. And this leads to wrong conclusions.
Whether it is how BTC technically works or how everyone caring about his privacy is a criminal. That's just plain stupid.




That's definitely possible.
Bitcoin never had any anonymity. Bitcoin was (and is) pseudonymous.

But with future improvements, BTC can definitely be a more private coin. I am not talking about full anonymity, but about enough anonymity to not get spied on by your neighbor or the store next block.




My point is still valid.
It is simply not possible to distinguish between clean and dirty 'coins' (coins do not exist in BTC) after mixing.

Instead of simply stating 'silly argument', what about explaining how you would distinguish between them in the example i gave earlier ?

They have done that . not only on chipmixer but also on other mixing service but how can the mixers know if the btc came from binance hacking ?  Also , mixers are still going to accept any btc and they wont care if the coins came from illegal or not     .

Many mixers have been shut down on the past  and i think one of those reasons why is because of the crypto/btc laundering .

Yes - and again: the burden to prove clean history is just there, because it is doable with not MUCH effort and also because tooo many dumb shit already happened within CRYPTO per se - that's the Price now all have to pay

Chipmixer will not be shutting down because they’re not guilty, even if the government wishes to shut them down they’ll have to first check under which jurisdiction it falls and then pass a order against it which of course can be challenged. To be fair Chipmixer owes no explanation to anyone they did their service the best way they could they received those coins, and they processed it as any other routine transaction it’s sheer bad luck those turned out to be hacked coins. @TryNinja you’re absolutely correct Chipmixer is legit, and by honestly completing this transaction Chipmixer has proven it can be trusted with any amount.

In our thought that should be the norm.  But the authority often time being rude to the extent of wicked, is not that considerate.  They can create scenarios and issues that can setup anyone to look suspicious.  In short they can stage a conspiracy to be able to execute their full control towards a scenario.  Pushing the idea of "being used to launder money" is enough for them to escalate the issue and shutdown anyone.  I just hope this will not happen to Chipmixer.

You clearly said people like me sell KYC details for $20 for some shitcoins just because you want to support a site that supports money laundering. I don't know what was the reason you had to make a remark about what I do as that's not your concern.

Tainted cryptocoins' concept does exist even though they are difficult to trace but it's not impossible. You can choose to believe or ignore it it's your wish.


I never wrote you are a criminal or anyone who cares about privacy too. I only said that Chipmixer appears shady by being involved (if proved) in this money laundering which means it's involved in a criminal activity. Tomorrow other hackers/criminals will use the website and Chipmixer will still be safe according to the forum members is a weird logic as nobody is above the law. Exchanges have shut down for not complying with KYC/AML policies so I don't think Chipmixer too would be able to run smoothly if they get involved in such shady deals. And that's my opinion ONLY.






Caring about individual privacy is separate as you are not a business. Here the main subject is Chipmixer.

I said that people wouldn't use a mixer unless they want to launder money else paying extra fee just to avoid their coins from being traced but the point is that even these coins can be traced. Nothing is impossible. I did not call them criminals so don't change the meaning of my words as that's being stupid.

People who want to protect their privacy and who want to use mixers can do so at their own risk but that doesn't mean people like me who want to comply with rules as much as possible are stupid or fools or I don't care about privacy.

Well, it is a good news and also a bad new, bad news in the sense that it would now be difficult for people to trust this chip mixer to convert their unanimous transaction into a private one which is its main purpose because I wonder how they could easily detect that it was hacked through chip mixer, and the good news about it is that gradually are getting to that stage where hackers can be detected easily, of them to have even known that this is what was used to launder such amount of btc from Binance.

I wonder why chip mixer too would allow such transaction to take place within their services without investigating, if the close chip mixer now, that would be sad news and at the same time bring regulation to the cryptocurrency industry.

Is there any word from Chipmixer yet about this issue? I do read almost response on here.Some saying they wont got affected and some do say that they are on a big trouble.
For me I don't see for Chipmixer to oppose if government would something ask about their cooperation connected to the incident.

They won't oppose but the main argument here is that they are anonymous and won't get caught. It will depend on where their business is located. TPB managed to avoid being taken down for years by switching servers from country to country but eventually the government got them.

Chipmixer can be anonymous and keep their clients private now but they won't be able to hide forever and continue to operate the business. There are fees and taxes. They aren't located on no man's land.

They got the founders, but the service still operates. They could survive if they were fully anonymous, but it is tricky to do that right.

And that's a personal attack ?

Tons of people here give sell their KYC for even less than 20$ (not in BTC, but in worthless tokens).

A mixer is there to give people privacy. To break the link between UTXO's. While it can be abused by criminals, that doesn't man that it is a bad concept.
Hell, cash is also being abused by criminals.. and still we are using it. Same applies to medicine.




So.. please give me an example.
All you do is to allege it is possible, but you can't even 'trace' my simple example:

1 dirty UTXO: A
1 clean UTXO: B

Transaction:
A (1 BTC)+ B (1 BTC)  -->  C (0.5 BTC) + D (0.5 BTC) + E (0.5 BTC) + F (0.5 BTC)

Now, please tell me.
Which UTXO's are clean and which are dirty after this transaction ?


If you can't even answer this question for such a simple example, stop claiming it is possible the way you describe.




You do realize that ChipMixer does not take any fee ?
It is completely Pay what you want.

You keep on claiming things without even properly understanding the technical details of bitcoin.
Generally tracing UTXO's is possible yes. But if properly mixed, there is no link between pre- and post-mixing. And if the user isn't super retarded, there won't be a possibility to further trace the money.

Seriously, you really believe that?
I use mixers and I actually paid taxes for my crypto earning this year.

Do you know why I use mixers? Exactly for privacy!
Because I don't want to buy a cup of coffee and have the barista see I have 2 or 5 BTC in my wallet.
I don't want to go and sell a guy some bitcoins and have him find out I have more than 10k in my accounts.

Let's not even talk about this situation:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5665849/meet-the-strippers-tattooed-with-barcodes-so-sneaky-punters-can-tip-in-bitcoin-without-their-partner-finding-out/

Anyone could then link your address to their codes and then find out a lot more about you.


Yes, you just did, you called me and everyone using a mixer a criminal, as money laundering is a crime!


It actually means that you have no right to try to tell me how I use my money and what services I use as long as I don't do anything illegal.
Is asking the cashier to change a 100 bill to 2 50 euros bill a crime?
Cause by your f logic is still is.

rofl... Blockchain analysis against chipmixer would not be really useful if Skilled chipmixer user practice good mixing and coin control discipline.  Such type of chipmixer user would easily make any blockchain analysis moot.  Article uses flow based / side channel based analysis and were somewhat flawed, for the follow simple reasoning and case study:

1) an anonymous minded bitcoin user (User A) deposit a small portion (how small? see 5) with multiple portion of 4836 BTC into chipmixer, withdraw (at step 3) all the private keys, importprivkey to his/her wallet and did rescanblockchain 550000 on into x number of private key

2) User A then do nothing other than peek into mempool and when it's small, send each chip separately into address generated by getnewaddress() bech32 to minimize fees and speed up transaction in the future.

3) User A limit the chip size to approx 4 btc, with majority of chips ranging between 1btc to 256mbtc for better blockchain obfuscation and decreases the selectivity that may easily be identified using flow based analysis

4) User A realized that should x be rather large and were denominated into chip of various sizes, it is unlikely she would need to send output to any addresses with change; further more,

5) User A realized by amortize each payment amount in btc carefully to avoid detection, based on observed chipmixer intput / output histogram / distribution it would further obfuscate and make future payment impossible to correlate to the very large input.

Future outlook is quite bleak for Chipmixer. Even if they co-operate with the authorities, the chances are that they will be forced to close down. In fact it surprises me that the authorities allowed them to operate until now. If I am not wrong, they have been operating for more than two years and that makes them the oldest Bitcoin mixer that is currently active.

TIL ChipMixer is only up today because the government lets them stay up.

Well then, it just proves that Chipmixer is really working if they cannot trace a single thing about it.
Let us not put it all with that company, some of the exchanges are also being used as a way to escape this kind of hacked coins specially DEX's or maybe some local ones with no KYC until you hit a number where they need to submit some information in regards for the Money Laundering Act.

I will follow this and if there is really no trail then I would be using Chipmixer myself and maybe I could also offer it to some people in the crypto space.  ;D
This is not Chipmixer problem anymore hence, it is Binance who have lowered their defense.

Do you even know where its physically located? Under what jurisdiction it would fall in? There are still plenty of places where Bitcoin is unregulated, therefore it doesn't exist from a legal standpoint. Think, game money, or game items. They don't "exist", yet there is people out there willing to pay real money for those particular bits of information.

See, if they fall into one of these countries, no one can order them do anything.

My speech would be the same even without my signature, even if it was a competitor site in my sig. But that wasn't about me, but about you. I tried to make it short so you get the point but you didn't.
You also used Liberty Reserve, a payment processor owned by scammers that helped scammers to scam more. So as you see it's not because a website/service can be used to scam that every user is a scammer.

The funny thing is if I invited you to the restaurant and offered you a handbag you wouldn't say no. Despite I paid with mixed coins  :D:P :-*
(Just teasing)

I'm going to tell you something that's a bit funnier than that...
http://archive.fo/6Uxuq#selection-5615.0-5614.2

Talking about signature and getting paid to promote "criminal activities".  ;D

I don't know if I should take that as a a good news or not because the hackers just increased their chances to be caught by mixing such a big amount in one go.
It depends on Chipmixer whether they would have stored the information necessary to catch the hackers.
If the hackers get traced then Chipmixer wasn't a good mixing service after all and the hackers did not get traced then it just proves how good Chipmixer is at it's job.
It will be fun to watch what happens next.

who's gonna force them? the USA government could take down their .com domain pretty easily if they wanted to, but that's about it.


the funny thing is, binance is always being used to launder stolen coins. it's one of the go-to venues besides DEX and mixers because it's so easy to spin up lots of unverified accounts and cash out anonymously.

That's the negative thing for mixing websites. How could we give guaranty that hackers haven't use any other mixing websites. It's not mistake of Chipmixer, there is more mixing website who is providing same services. If chipmixer could traced hackers it's good thing. I don't think hackers mix their hacked fund a a time. So it's not very easy task to identify instantly because hackers could send fund from different address. Hackers use Chipmixer due to reputation, nothing else. They might mix by other website if they want. So directly we can't blame any specific mixer website.

Not the same BS again. No one seized BTC-e's wallets, only fiat currencies were either frozen or seized, and it was less than 45% (no one outside BTC-e themselves knows the exact figure). And BTC-e was easier to locate given that they hosted their website in the US and needed more infrastructure than a mixer.

That is true. 2 BTC per account. 4000 BTC will just be an easy walk in the park.
Free users with 2 BTC limit each 2000 gmail accounts is free and then just buy prepaid sim cards for the authentication of gmail. Voila! You have lots of money in just a manner of time. Come in and out with different currencies or you could put it all in USDT and no one will notice it.  ;D

There is no need to put it in just one BTC wallet address again. Scatter it all over the crypto world.
I guess hackers do know about that, but due to laziness in creating a lot of accounts then mixer will be the best and effortless thing to do.

I am not sure about this, but I believe that your claims are wrong. As per their last communication (which was made almost a year back), they announced that the FBI had seized 38% of their funds (not 45%, sorry for that) and the majority of that was cryptocurrency. And secondly, I don't think that the website was hosted in the United States. It was located in a third country (other than the US and Russia). Wex.nz was registered at Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore. So I suspect that their domain was hosted there.

Still, I could be wrong. I was one of the users who lost my funds when Wex.nz went down and after that I did quite a bit of research about them. But there is a chance that the information that I got was not accurate.

it could be only limited to Commodities, the rest there is a possibility they will make their own digital money system, seen from the strong China in the trade market, they prefer to make technology large-scale benefits and benefit the country, for sure they prioritize technology such as the blockchain

It also would depend on how long the mixing service held the coins for in order to perform the mix. Some coin mixers may cause a longer delay in order to assure that the coins were successfully mixed well. Not sure ChipMixer's procedure for this (or if they have this built in)

ChipMixer does not mix like Kakmakr thinks they do.

The procedure is:
1) You deposit BTC
2) You get 'chips' worth your BTC
3) You can split or merge those chips (e.g. split a 0.4BTC chip into 2x 0.2 BTC chips; or merge 2x 0.8BTC chips into one 1.6 BTC chip.
4) You want to withdraw these chips -> You get private keys worth exactly the amount of the chip

The UTXO's you get with the private keys have been created before you deposited into chipmixer.
Therefore, if you do everything right it gets close to impossible to trace the money back to you.

You could wait one month before creating a transaction. This would circumvent any chain analysis. Especially if you do not send the whole amount at once, but only small percentages.

Very informative post. Many thanks for posting this. I don't expect someone (or more probably a group of people) who managed to rob $50 million to act stupid. They might have studied the algorithm used by Chipmixer in great detail, before using its services. So I would say that the feds will not be able to trace the coins back to the individuals, unless the Chipmixer guys had included some spyware algorithm in the system (which is very very unlikely).

So what will the feds do next? They are going to blame Chipmixer for sure, and will try their best to close down the mixer. If the Chipmixer owners refuse that, then the feds may go ahead with domain seizure. BTW, I haven't heard any updates on this for the past 7-8 days. Does anyone have an updated status on the status of the investigation?

What investigation?  :D

A so-called "cryptocurrency analytics platform" called Clain with 8 employees has made claim  (pun!). Nothing more.
They could, of course, take spend their time and analyze the transactions they claim they have discovered and follow the coins but, they don't have nor the resources nor the motivation for it, they have achieved their PR goal, no they will go silent till they can make some outrageous claims again and gain even more publicity.

A real investigation if when official agencies move in and in this case, the binance hack, we haven't heard a word from them yet in two months.

That's an odd assumption since the US government has never openly targeted mixers like that.

I also don't think they care in the slightest about the Binance hack. No American victims, no customer losses at all -- why would they care? The US government is probably more interested in shutting Binance down than helping them recover stolen bitcoins! :D

Eh, there might be investigations under way, and the thieves may slip up somewhere along the way when laundering their ill-gotten gains, and we'll only get to hear about it when they're arrested.

From what I have heard, Binance has agreed to some of the demands made by the American authorities. They are ready to exclude American users from the main platform and may restrict this group to an exclusive platform for the US users where KYC is mandatory. But as we all know, even exchanges with mandatory KYC requirement are not 100% safe.

I agree with what you said, and I don't have any doubts regarding the real intention of these people. But I think shutting down mixers such as Chipmixer may be more of a priority for them, rather than going for the exchanges such as Binance. They target exchanges only when the owners openly challenge them (for example, the case with BTC-e / Wex.nz).

Yup, one of these days, Chipmixer will be targeted by the US government. Remember they went after almost all darknet sites that deal in drugs. It would be easy to shut down the site. It should be more decentralized.

Chipmixer is at the risk of compromising there privacy code, if they opened up about the hackers who are sending money through them. If Chipmaker exposes them, other clients wont be able to trust the company and thats doom.

I would bet 0.25 BTC that Chipmixer already targeted from US Fed since 2018 or perhaps earlier.     
Chipmixer operator(s) are likely very well isolated from server and targetable network infrastructure,
and are able to remotely relocate services to front-end .onion or .com website with ease.  There is   
little incentive to target just yet because even if Feds can do something, the amount of bitcoin that
could be take from hot wallet / server would probably be quite insignificant, because there is no need
to keep large amount of chips/private key on server until someone lack of
privacy-fool (invites side channel / volume analysis ) output a large amount to chipmixer for any
reason.

They'll go after anyone who serves Americans and doesn't throw a shitload of money for paperwork and compliance costs. That's why you see so many exchanges downright banning Americans from their platforms.

so what's the end game of targeting them---de-anonymizing users, as opposed to shutting the service down? with proper encryption, even server compromise would probably leave wallets intact (as with BTC-E in 2017). so if the feds come after chipmixer in the open, it would just be a drawn-out game of whack-a-mole, unlikely to net any proceeds.

Am i the only one who thought that mixers were build for this purpose? I mean now we suddenly DO want to know who is using money to what?

Bitcoin was hijacked - like the Internet at ist beginning - by ppl who wanted to stay anno and go anarcho. There is a lot Money to be made ...

But Bitcoin was too transparent / even should use IP addresses for proper P2P .

As we know that when it comes to tax, the US government will never joke with that, now that they see it will be impossible to control bitcoin or make it stop, then the best way for them would be to go after these exchanges.

Honestly Binance tried to avoid them and protect its users, but if US will complicate things and make them loose the trust that their user has for them as regards their privacy protection, then I think that they have done the right thing separating the US citizens into a different platform, so it is left for the citizens to willingly submit themselves to the US by using those platform, anyway, they have no choice because they are virtually now controlling all the exchange that they probably have in their country.

I have been thinking of these mixers, are they actually bullet proof?
Are those algorithms un hack-able , I mean if these hackers will go unpunished because they used this service and it can be proven that they are the owners of hacked coins?

No. There has been a paper posted a while ago that deanonymized almost every mixer (except Chipmixer (perhaps due to it not being vectored properly by the researcher)). I lost the link but i'll search for it in a bit.

And of course you also have the good ol' fed's raiding you if you're hosting your servers in Europe/US. See what happend to Bestmixer. INTERPOL claims they got ALL the transaction data from that mixer.

Edit: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5117328.0

Regardless of whether or not ChipMixer is at "fault" of this or that, I certainly wouldn't use them for a long time to come, as pretty much every amount of BTC that goes into a "chip" for an extended period is going to be from a hacking.


It sounds like you just skimmed over the article and hastily came to a conclusion that aligns with your own economic interests. Clain are very thorough and wouldn't publish things that aren't true, because that's not the nature of their business -- their business is knowing things with certainty and being able to prove them.

It was actually quite entertaining reading all the ChipMixer sig sporting posts in this thread. I mean, you guys occupy nearly 50% of every thread in this section anyway, but it was funny to see you all come to the defense of ChipMixer. If I were you I wouldn't say peep about this issue. But that's just me.

One thing that hasn't changed is the fact that ChipMixer IS a money laundering service. Period. Yes, there are negative connotations associated with that term, but it remains a fact.

The arguments I saw for legal use of it were a bit ridiculous. You don't want a barista to see how much BTC is in your wallet so you use a coin mixer?? Same thing with privacy concerns: you want to hide the origins of your coins for "privacy", yet you don't mind mixing them with some coins from known hacker addresses? Really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Sure, there may be some legal use case scenarios but as of right now the overwhelming majority of use is to obfuscate the origins of stolen funds.


Serious blockchain analytics companies hoping to provide actionable information to clients like Binance don't need to think of coins in terms of "clean" or "dirty." They are going to follow all 4 outputs and see where they go. The process is much more complicated than just deciding "clean" and "dirty." It involves making observations and identifying patterns based on larger amounts of data than simply a single transaction.

Vou, that is what I was wondering. This means that crypto can not be anonymous, everything can be relatively easily tracked . And according to link you provided, trackers do not even need to have servers in their hands. Someone who has knowledge of the workings, can easily brake the " code" .

Yep. But crypto* itself can very well be anonymous. It's just that Bitcoin isn't designed to be that way from the very beginning.

If you look at other cryptocurrencies, such as Monero. - https://getmonero.org/ this coin for example is completely untraceable by design, and can't be "Broken".

No, it is not.

It is a mixing service to increase privacy. Nothing more.
Just because some people might abuse it to launder money, it doesn't make it a money laundering service..




What would be an alternative to that ?
With BTC, you don't have any other alternative than using a mixer. Without proper coin control and much effort, you will always be traceable. Using a mixer is quite easy and handy for that.

Nothing wrong with that IMO.




Yes.. and you see all 4 outputs going to an exchange, 4 different accounts. And now ?
There is nothing you can do.

If there is not much more data than just this one (or maybe a few more) transactions, there is simply nothing you can do.
Of course.. mistakes made by people decreases the privacy. But without any mistakes, there is simply no way.

And saying 'bla bla there are companies which can do that' without providing any evidence or explaining how exactly they would achieve that, just makes it sound ridiculous.

I don't think that the IRS will be satisfied if Binance conducts KYC for the American customers. Back in 2017, record number of people were renouncing their US citizenship and the authorities just hiked the exit tax and renouncement charges by manytimes. Also, a lot of paperwork was added to make the process more tedious and cumbersome.

If the exchanges make KYC mandatory for just the users from the United States, then it will give unfair advantage to individuals from the other countries. I don't think that the American authorities will be happy with such a scenario, although they are not losing any tax revenue in the short term. I expect the regulations to become more intrusive as well as more extensive, as the popularity of Bitcoin increases.

Agree, whatever happens its bad for them.
Its hard to protect also from hackers to use such service because its impossible to monitor all hacked coins from all exchanges out there. So its just matter of time until any service that offer mixing getting in such situation.

did you actually read the findings? only "183 BTC were identified as hacker funds" out of a pool of bitcoins 30x as large. what the hell are you talking about?


how would you know---independent verification? of course not. this company clain didn't even exist a few months ago! you have no idea who they are and no one has verified their claims.

by the very nature of blockchain analysis, their reports are almost entirely guesswork, based on a massive number of assumptions.


could you elaborate? when all 4 outputs have been moved through many distinct wallets/addresses and become distinctly different outputs, what happens then?

You're playing a game of semantics. "Mixing" is just a pleasant substitute for "laundering."


An alternative is moving your coffee purchasing funds from your bigger wallet into a smaller one. Simple. The barista isn't going to know the bigger wallet is in your control. Neither is anybody. Does anybody use BTC to buy coffee, anyway?


Of course there's something you can do, and that is follow all 4 outputs.


They're only going to publish what they can without giving away their secrets. Of course you are going to fight against them, but just because you don't understand how it works doesn't mean it isn't happening.


From the article (https://blog.clain.io/binance-hack-2019-deep-dive-into-the-money-laundering/):


Only 814 BTC had been output from ChipMixer as of the publishing of the article. That's the difference.


They've been in operation since 2017:

https://betalist.com/startups/clain

Not one word from anybody (except ChipMixer sig wearers) claiming - much less demonstrating - that their findings are untrue.


You're downplaying the complexity of their endeavor. Like I said, this is a company that is in the business of knowing things. They don't publish guesswork, and whenever something is uncertain, they state so.

Ah, i see.

So anyone who wants to remain some privacy and mixes his coin is automatically laundering money.

Good to know that keeping things private is a crime in your eyes.




Remaining private 101.

Good job  ::)

No.. honestly.. are you serious about that statement  ???




Follow where ?
They already reached their destination.. They are being exchanged into money or another currency (e.g. monero) at that point.. from 4 seperate accounts.
You can not follow it anymore.

Please elaborate how you keep following them  ;)

In some cases that may be true, but the primary use case of mixing is retaining privacy, what others use mixers for is up to them.

---

If blockchain analytics companies are able to identify, preferably with certainty and not probabilistically, stolen bitcoins, good for them and for the victims. But usually they can't be 100% certain unless the person they're after gives them enough hints.

Hacker-owned BTC is now the vast majority of its use case volume, if it wasn't already. I'm sure a few people use it for non-criminal purposes, but they are in the minority.


As far as opsec for interacting with a fictional coffee barista is concerned, yes. Just think about it for a second: You have a bitcoin stash that you are very concerned over. Now move 0.01 BTC of it to a different, day-to-day wallet that you use to buy your coffee. How is said barista going to know the stash wallet belongs to you? Even if they did (which they don't), what are they going to do about it?


Certainly. If coins are being mixed in say, the manner of CoinJoin, certain patterns may emerge where half of the CoinJoin outputs are going. Maybe down the road the joined coins all reach the same destination, such as a common Binance deposit address or something. The thieves probably aren't that stupid, but its really not that hard to visualize a scenario where commonalities emerge between the destinations and/or movement patterns of mixed coins.

Bottom line: You are promoting a service thats overwhelming use is to help criminals launder bitcoin. No analogy to medicine or food or water changes this. ChipMixer confiscating the funds and returning them to Binance might.

Do you have anything to back up these statement ?
Or is it just 'your feeling' ?




By monitoring the address the 0.01 BTC are coming from.
With regular transactions going out to addresses which then are used to buy said coffee, it is not hard at all to combine one with the other.




Again.. allegations without anything to back them up.
So.. ChipMixer scamming their customer would make them 'good' in your eyes? That's a delusional point of view.

Yes, I already quoted the segment of the article which backs this up:



OK, so what are they going to do about it? Fictional coffee barista is also a robber and going to hold you at gunpoint for BTC they think are under your control? This is a ridiculous scenario. Can you please come up with a better one where your privacy is so important to you?


"Allegations" that thus far have not been disproven. Ball's in your court to logically refute Clain's article, which makes perfect sense to everybody reading it not wearing a ChipMixer signature and defending them in this thread.

I can't remember ever shedding a tear when a scammer got scammed. It would certainly mean they value ethics over money if they returned the stolen coins, would it not?

I'd find it much more compelling if somebody not promoting ChipMixer could counter Clain's claims, then perhaps it would consist of something more substantial than just casting doubt.

Coin mixing services should probably consider blacklisting proven stolen coins? This could however make things hard for Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency users in the future. 
Guess there should be website that quickly list addresses with stolen coins so that Bitcoin wallets providers can investigate & blacklist them, then automatically prevent new addresses from accepting such coins.


This shouldn't affect Chipmixer ...Afterall most physical/online companies and people at one point in time receive tainted currencies (like cryptocurrencies or other kind of currencies) unknowingly. 

first of all, let's note that clain has provided precisely zero evidence for anything---you are just eating up their blog by the spoonful. nobody has verified any of this, and there are no reports of outputs being flagged by third party services.

second of all, assumptions, assumptions, assumptions:



how could anyone demonstrate their findings are untrue when they have provided zero proof of anything? no verifiable data whatsoever? how does one poke holes in data that isn't public?

oh, but if you want more info about clain's consulting fees and their "capacities for crypto compliance", see the end of the blog for more info. ;)

Why is the chipmixer services need? i don't see the relevant of their service if it can be mostly use for criminal activities, who knows this is what many hackers use so that those stolen coins will be hard to trace, funny how their signature is been paraded by top members of this forum.

What's even funnier is that they insist the majority of bitcoins being mixed through ChipMixer are legally obtained. Bestmixer was shut down precisely because the majority of its coins came from illegal activity. Why would this trend apply to Bestmixer but not ChipMixer?

If these ChipMixer guys continue to believe their sig payments aren't coming from illicitly gained bitcoins its because $350 a week will do that to some people I guess. Regardless, they are in no position to be casting judgment on others at this point in time.

Bestmixer actively advertised the use of their mixer to evade the law, Chipmixer does none of that.


Some recommended reading as this has been answered again and again:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy#Why_privacy
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy#Examples_and_case_studies

Really doesn't matter at this point.


Both of these links say don't use centralized mixing services.

They do, but not because of the risk of them being shut down by the government, but because there's a risk of this mixers stealing your coins. This risk is still there even with trusted mixers (although it is very low). We can believe that chipmixer will remain fair to its customers, but the decision is ultimately in the hands of its owners. Sometimes a good dog bites. Anyway, i'll say it again, it doesn't mean they will be prosecuted and/or forced to cease activity.

When I said the same thing about Chipmixer, the signature bearers started stalking me (yes, earlier I worked in another mixer campaign but even back then I did not use one to protect my privacy nor did I go about defending them) as they just don't want anyone even point a single finger at Chipmixer (in case this allegation is proven true). They said that even if it's proven, nobody can do anything to Chipmixer which I highly doubt so expecting them to even address it is of no use. I'll only wait to see what happens to mixers in future as Government should definitely not let criminals go free because "some" people want to use mixers for their privacy. When Cryptopia was hacked, nobody even found out any information about the hacker but here atleast they are trying to find out information about the stolen coins.

A service that helps hackers (even if it's useful to some who use it for a genuine purpose) shouldn't continue to support such criminal activities.

This will indeed bring bad reputation to Chipmixer, but I am of the opinion that this will not be the first time they will be dealing with this kind of unwarranted event. If they are able to manage it, they will come back stronger and if it is otherwise, it might lead to the end of their operation.

People claim that honest users may want to use their services for privacy reasons but lets be real,  most people using their services have gotten their coins in a shady matter.  Usually theft, drugs, or other crime.

Wow, it's historical high of fund inflows through chipmixer, this news isn't really good because legal funds from legal and most famous exchange was laundered through chipmixer, red light shines there.
Btw I think they may share the history of bitmixer but however this mixer has serious ambitions, they were launched before bitmixer closed, interesting to know what will happen around them.

anecdotally, i have one sports betting friend who got his coinbase account shut down a few years ago for gambling activity. ever since then, he always runs his sportsbook withdrawals through a mixer before sending coins to an exchange.

i'm not sure what percentage of mixer usage this demographic occupies, but food for thought: all gamblers in the USA withdrawing bitcoins from casinos/books/poker sites need to somehow disguise the source of their funds before cashing out through licensed exchanges, who generally comply with the UIGEA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006) and interstate wire act. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Wire_Act)

How can you easily say that?
All of the things in here that are being made by a man can be used in good and bad things because we all differ on the perspective on how we will use that specifically. Let's be real here also, did you ever search about the advantages of Bitcoin mixing?  ???

Are there any sources of articles that can prove mixers are for negative things only?  
Did you ever think about Bitcoin that is being used for bad things also? Scamming, buying drugs, illegal guns and other crime. They're the same thing, the only differences are, a mixer is a platform and Bitcoin is the currency but both can be used in bad or good things.

this just in---some opposing evidence. ;)

chainalysis said earlier this year that 90% of mixed coins are not used for illicit purposes: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/chainalysis-most-mixed-bitcoin-not-used-for-illicit-purposes


there goes the theory that mixers are only used by criminals! the biggest users of mixers are exchange customers.

I listened to the entire Chainalysis webinar and nowhere did they say "most mixed bitcoin is not used for illicit purposes."

https://register.gotowebinar.com/recording/8980410054773689612

What they did say was this:


They also had these slides in their presentation:

https://i.imgur.com/d6fDEdR.png

https://i.imgur.com/2LI6KUe.png

So, however you want to interpret their findings is up to you; my conclusion is they don't have a very high regard for bitcoin mixers.

if this is true , then the hacker is pretty dumb
using one mixer to launder his coins leads to nothing good , it is wrong on so many levels
first of all , the more coins you have at a mixing service , the more chances that your coins will be mixed ...with your own coins
this defeats the purpose of using such a service , I highly doubt Chipmixer has 5000 btc to provide at least a 50% mix
secondly , this allows tracking agencie like Chainalysis follow the coins easily and governments to take action and arrest of freeze them as they please
and it could endanger the mixing services in general , since they can be accused of assisting criminals, sponsoring terrorism etc. and shut down

I don't see how this is really bad for Chipmixer because I believe laundering is part of what tumblers do, except the management will want to act Hollier-Than-Thou now by feigning ignorance. Otherwise it is a legitimate business for the anonymity they provide for clients. Criminals will from time to time get in the mix and patronize such services.

Hmm... so it is worrying. The total illicit usage may be much higher than 8%, because stolen coins are only one of the illicit usage types. The majority of the coins may be linked with dark markets and the vendors would use mixers to "clean" their coins before converting to fiat cash. And I can't think about any other safe destination for stolen coins. It is not practical to transfer the stolen coins directly to exchanges.

@CoinClarity Thank you for the clarifying information.


It is... Certainly less in 2019 but it's always been, more or less. For years it was almost usual. There was no 'control' or 'analysis'. There were hardly any experts. And the exchanges either didn't care or didn't have the needed resources.

After a few years, it began to change It's not something that's openly announced but I can tell you that the biggest exchanges (Kraken, Bitstamp and others) work together to fight against funds coming from a hack or other. For example, to block coins received, etc.

After that, it started to be public when some exchanges proudly announced: "We blocked the coins of this hack".
It has become an opportunity to promote themselves. But they really work together when necessary. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of exchanges that still don't care where the coins come from, or don't have the resources (like back in the earlier days)

Someone else (@CoinClarity?) was posting a pic about coinjoin transactions. It's possible to make your bitcoins looking not used with CJ

Those words are quoted from a news article. Who cares if Chainalysis didn't say the words verbatim? They published data that speaks for itself.


Moving the goal posts, are we? This is what you were trying to prove:


Can you at least concede that you were utterly wrong about that?


It's interesting that you chose completely generic slides summarizing how mixers work, when Chainalysis gave us actual data that disproves what you're saying. And you already know this. It's almost as if you're being disingenuous. ::)

Here's a more relevant slide:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5AA4EnYLe_N2JTeljaFjmzsfOXvALUprbJJ1D5oLdoii42ABTuGGYJQu42jBYSYRP3kP6HbW2wgF0SOP7KU1reRQLMneBt8laJJGXzp-TB-_1eDbNJ8Oyq-ZlD8WCR5Dq-Ciy5Sn

The author of the article is making inferences of their own. You just happen to agree with them because they align with your own economic interest. Deciding because its a "news article" it must be 100% factually accurate also falls into this category.


What does it say next to the words "Possible exploit" in this slide?

https://i.imgur.com/d6fDEdR.png


The data doesn't disprove what I'm saying. Just because funds came from exchanges or other sources it does not mean they weren't gained from illicit or illegal activity.



Its not a "more relevant slide." They are all relevant. You prefer this slide because you can use it to draw conclusions that favor your own economic interests, even if they are ultimately biased or incorrect.

Nice one.
If hiding ones identity with VPN is not considered a crime then this shouldn't be a problem also. I mean, even criminal hide behind VPN or tor to commit crimes, does that make VPN/tor users criminals? Of course not!
Most of us use VPN to protect our identities same way we use mixers.
Imagine a world without VPN, TOR, shelter, privacy or mixers

I'm trying to discuss the actual numbers with you. Bitcoin Magazine is a red herring, so please stop distracting people. I am asserting that according to the published Chainalysis data, only 10.8% of mixed funds could be linked to illicit sources -- and that should be obvious to anyone willing to look at the source.


That generic slide that's an ELI5 for how mixers work, which contains no supporting data? You're grasping at straws.

You said, "Chainalysis [doesn't] publish guesswork, and whenever something is uncertain, they state so." And Chainalysis has reported exactly how mixers are used, down to the percentage of each use case. So, why are you ignoring that data? Because it's completely at odds with your beliefs?


Let's put it this way: There is zero data supporting your assertions that mixers are predominantly used for criminal activity. The data from Chainalysis -- the only data we have on the subject -- does not support your claims in any way.


No, it's more relevant because it reports actual data rather than baseless opinions. This discussion was about actual usage but you seem uninterested in that now that the data doesn't support your outlandish claims.

Finally you presented the results in an appropriate context. "Only 10.8% of the mixed funds could be linked to illicit sources" -- yes, this is correct. This is not what you were saying earlier.


Not really. I'm pointing out that Chainalysis' opinion of mixers isn't as rosy as you think it is.


We were talking about a different blockchain analytics firm when I said that, although the same thing indeed applies to Chainalysis. Nobody is ignoring the data, I just ask that you not draw false conclusions from it.

I always wondered this.  But when hackers hack wallets for btc or other coins, how do they make it legitimate so they could sell it for real money?  So they use mixers but if they sell the btc to coinbase or bitstamp etc, aren't there going to be tax issues such as where did they get the btc from as how they earned it?


I mean if have btc and sell it for cash in person, well they can get cash.


But how do these hackers who hack this much money make it legit?  I mean if they don't have much money, well they can't create a business etc.  Always wondered how these hackers do these kind of things.

Maybe they laundry the money through a (fake) legit business (just like real-world drug dealers), or live normally without worrying about money (but also not going around purchasing Lamborghinis). They surely can't withdrawal all at once without drawing a lot of attention, but there are many ways of getting the money. After all, people do that in the real life with illegally obtained money.