Bitcoin Forum

What is the essence of bitcoin mixers? Does it really make sense to use them only to those who conduct illegal activities?

Some people enjoy their privacy, and Bitcoin is no longer that private.  ;)

It is far from necessary that you have to conduct any illegal activity in order to use Bitcoin mixers.
Given that all Bitcoin transactions are recorded on the blockchain, this makes it possible to track you using various tools, such as blockchain analysis.
In other words, finding out the exact primary address will not be a problem by going through the chain of records in blocks.

Who needs this at all?
On the one hand, why should anyone follow your money at all, on the other, there are such as the police, special services and criminal elements.
All of them, for one reason or another, may be interested in your money, and if you take into account the fact that using the blockchain analysis you can track your wallet and other wallets, you can create a template for your actions.

This is not a complete list of projects that produce blockchain analysis:
https://blockseer.com
https://scorechain.com/
https://walletexplorer.com

Using a Bitcoin mixer is perhaps the easiest and most legitimate way to make your transactions almost completely anonymous.
I say almost because there are some nuances in the work of the mixers themselves.

Bitcoin is not monitored by banks, has low fees and is almost anonymous.
Obviously, the criminal elements will use this method of transferring funds, and alas, we can not do anything about it. However, as mentioned above, mixers will be useful not only to crime.

Do you want every person you transact with to know your entire Bitcoin history? Because that's what they can do if you don't break the chain somewhere. You may also trip a company's terms and conditions and get told to go away such as sending them coins that were involved in gambling.

If you have the option of keeping your past private then there's nothing illegal about taking it.

Why are you not trying to see by yourself what mixers do?

Start by printing your bank statement, erase your name from it but leave all the transaction details that show how much you've paid and to what accounts and share it on the internet with everybody! Do you feel comfortable doing this?
If not, you've just understood that you need a mixer even without being a criminal, if yes....I'm happy for you!

The endless debate of Bitcoin mixers and illegal stuff... :D

@OP
I can twist the question for you. What is the essence of the HSBC mixer? Does it really make sense to use it only to those who conduct illegal activities?


Privacy is a human right established in the universal declaration of human rights.  Why stop people from exercising their rights when they're not hurting anyone? Most people use a mixer to protect their privacy for whatever reasons they have.

On the other side, darknet users usually send their coins to centralized exchanges

I would say that best thing to use for your privacy is to use wallets like samourai, and NO it is not used for illegal activities.
Anyone can use them and it is legal.
Watch out for some fake mixer phishing websites

They provides better privacy. Having better privacy for good reasons or bad reasons (illegal as you discussed) totally depends on each people. About mixers, not all mix services are good enough to provide you privacy, some of them do neither provide better privacy nor protect your money. They instead are scam services and can steal your money.

You can also use CoinJoin transaction to have better privacy.
- CoinJoin: Bitcoin privacy for the real world (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0)
- [Guide] Decent mixing methods (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5146241.0)

and why do you think that?
i don't see any changes in the level of privacy that bitcoin offers. it is as private and at the same time as transparent as it has ever been. if anything it is harder now to analyze the blockchain that there are so much more people using it compared to years before.

Another thing you need to be conscious of is whether your mixed coins have the telltale signs of being mixed. Though a third party service won't know the origin of your coins, if they can clearly tell they have come from a mixed transaction then they might get arsey. Binance Singapore have been giving Wasabi coinjoined coins the boot because of that.

I guess news like this https://www.coindesk.com/us-doj-calls-bitcoin-mixing-a-crime-in-arrest-of-software-developer is where the FUD comes from.

BTC is a fungible coin, even tho "some experts" claim that some coins are tainted and should be worth less or nothing at all. As @gentlemand said even going so far as to reject them from their business.

I guess this whole anonymity concept scares state officials (because of some valid but mostly silly reasons imo) and also taint people that want their anonymity to be taken seriously.
FIAT is less transparent than crypto but at least they got used to it and want us to think they know how to keep tabs on most of our financial activities.

VPN and using Tor is just for hackers and scammers ? NO ! ...pretty much same thing

This is incorrect. The fact that Bitcoin is traceable (under certain limits, especially if no mixers are involved) makes it not fungible, hence stories with wallets closed because of "unapproved" BTC transactions, see
So coinbase closed my account for gambling... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1231723.0)
gEMINI CLOSED MY ACCOUNT WITH no EXPLANATION... WHY? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5172361.msg52070591#msg52070591)

You are right, maybe I should rephrase to "should be fungible" instead.
That's what I was saying, that some businesses reject tainted coins (exchanges,casinos...  even some mixers. LOL)

Also (somehow) similar with FIAT. If you receive $100 that you know came from illicit activities (i.e organ trafficking, drug smuggle etc) you are obliged to turn them in. Tho in this case they have to prove you knew where they came from.

What can I say...we are living some interesting times! And really hope those 60+ year old law-makers who can't even open their yahoo mail without help will retire soon or will be replaced with someone who is more familiar with the subject and the crypto ecosystem :)

Some people think that simply using mixer service will help them totally hide with perfect privacy and ignore steps that they should do. From the Guide and FAQ of Wasabi, they emphasize importance of steps before and after mixing. They tend to forget the steps after mixing and recombine mixed coins.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WasabiWallet/comments/avxbjy/combining_mixed_coins_privacy_megathread/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't using a mixing service the same as sending an encrypted email to the police proving you killed someone?    You are innocent only until computing improves.

Eventually, the police will crack that email; the same way a path through the mixer will prove you owned coins.  I'm not sure exactly how encryption methods work, but they have to be more difficult than recursively following a blockchain.  Any changes to your patterns now cannot affect the copy of the blockchain everyone already has;  the same way improving your encryption now cannot affect the confession email sent to the police in the past.

This goes for any blockchain.  Brute force and eventually quantum algorithms will expose transfers.

This is also incorrect. Bitcoin is fungible coin within its network and it should be so only in own network, because it doesn't have value outside the blockchain. No matter how bitcoin could be named outside blockchain, the place where consensus rules are important and are being followed, it continues to work as neutral network that doesn't care whether a person a criminal or not. More importantly, it's a permissionless network, everyone can participate and make transacions with any coin, bitcoin will be equal to another bitcoin. By giving control of your private keys to the intermediaries, you are losing your right to participate in the network on permissionless level. You are losing your ability to transact freely and can't decide by yourself what coins you want to be spended. In this case, bitcoin might become non fungible coin for you, because you're outside the network and its consensus rules.

Thanks everyone for the answers.
But after all, Bitcoin mixers are a third party, like exchanges, where are the guarantees that they will not rob me?

If you are using a centralized mixer, there are no guarantees. You have to trust and try your luck for them to not scam you. That's why you want to minimize the chances of getting scammed - if you ever need/want to use a centralized mixer - by using a trusted mixer.

You can also just use CoinJoin to mix your coins, since they are, AFAIK, trustless and even got recommended by theymos, through Wasabi wallet, in this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5146241.0) post.

That's the theory. He was talking about the real world, where even using a decentralized system can get you busted in the real life by centralized organizations and govs. For them, that doesn't matter. If you receive illegal coins, you may end up in jail. Bitcoin being a permissionless network or not.

No one gives you any guarantees as in the weaker exchange. But, mixers are a business depending on whether people will use their services or not.
Obviously, stealing coins from someone else will pop up and leave a shadow on the mixer’s reputation. Therefore, you should choose only trusted and time-tested mixers.

Here are a few of them:
/en/][banned mixer] (https://[banned mixer)
Bitcloak (https://bitcloak43blmhmn.com/)
Bitblender (https://bitblender.io/)
Chipmixer (https://chipmixer.com/)

2020 List Bitcoin Mixers Bitcoin Tumblers Websites (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2827109.0)

Or, as advised above, you can use the CoinJoin method. Its meaning is to unite several transactions in one pool. Note that if you use this method, the transaction trace may not be completely deleted.

The above mixers are not a recommendation! In any case, you need to conduct your own analysis and make a choice.
Pay attention to the reputation of each individual mixer, do not neglect to read reviews.

ps:thanks TryNinja and DdmrDdmr

From where did you assume [banned mixer] is "trusted and time-tested"? Have you at least used them before?

It also seems that they have been banned from the forum, for some reason: [banned mixer] (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=933078)

edit: and Bitblender...

That one close nearly a year ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=436467.msg51242960#msg51242960

A good worth reading thread here on the forum on the topic is this one: 2020 List Bitcoin Mixers Bitcoin Tumblers Websites (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2827109.msg28964833#msg28964833)

If a person is commiting a crime, then there is a high possibility for him to end up in jail. Thats for sure. The bitcoin network doesn't give you a right to act illegally, it merely doesn't care in case you do so. But that doesn't make the network itself illegal and transacted bitcoin nonfungible. Each bitcoin that was tainted by authorities still has its credible monetary properties and can be transferred and exchanged for another bitcoin. This is a fungibility secured by consensus rules of the network, no matter what other organizations say.

I think you're right, I was a little hurried with the approval of time-tested.
Perhaps it’s right to add a branch link 2020 List Bitcoin Mixers Bitcoin Tumblers Websites (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2827109.0) to my comment.

You should definitely avoid them if you have clean Bitcoins. There are two reasons for that. First is they are very expensive. You will get much less out than you put in. Second is you might end up with Bitcoins someone pay to hire a murder with.

It wouldn't be a very good mixer if you could tell the origin of the coins you ended up with.

Most coins that go through mixers are clean, but they have a lengthy trail that would identify everything you've ever done in the past. That's the main point of using one.

Thist is a pure exaggeration, I wouldn't call the fees that Chipmixer (https://chipmixer.com/faq) charges expensive:

Is Pay what you want too expensive for you? ;D ;D


Common, not this BS!
There are also chances you might end up buying a used smartphone over ebay that belonged to Osama bin Laden. (we all know he is not really dead)

The most expensive mixers that I know has a fee of 0.5%. I believe that's less than what exchange would charge for your withdrawal. Well, probably there are more expensive mixers out there but I doubt they'll use them if you can pay as little as you want to (0.001 BTC at most).

What bitcoins do you consider clean? I mean if they weren't recieved through process of mining by collecting a block reward, then these bitcoin can't be called "clean" and even they may have history of transactions via CoinJoin or third-party mixers. Moreover, imagine the situation when there is no more newly mined bitcoins. People will have to deal with old bitcoins, which probably have been used in illegal activities many times. What can we do about that? Isn't it better to have an option to obfuscate linkability of coins in order to avoid a scenario in which all the coins in bitcoin network would be called illegal?

I believe that in his case, clean equals to coins that went through enough unknown/"safe" sources to not be marked as coming from "ilegal" sources. I mean, even some mixers (or self "mixing" attempts) can be tracked back to the origin of their coins (A > B > C > D > E > F > G), so they could be determined "dirt" by companies doing analysis. But still, chances are that you will go through some "dirt"  coins from time to time.

I understand your logic, but I don't agree with it. Or at least I don't agree with the labeling "incorrect".
As you know, everything is relative. And while I agree that to the network all coins are identical, I think that what matter most is the way humans are seeing them.

You're right, I shouldn't have called your opinion on that matter incorrect. That was just another point of view, not even opposite to mine. I was trying to explain why it doesn't matter for the network what people say about it. It is just works in a way it was designed. By applying the same rules as we have in centralized systems today, authorities are trying to discredit the decentralized idea of monetary network by manipulating opinions and views of the people who even don't use the bitcoin network yet. They will continue to manipulate and continue to taint all bitcoins until bitcoins become dirty. But the rules of the network will still be the same and we will still be able to do transactions like we did before. To make the long story short, tainting bitcoins is manipulating and trying to convince people not to use bitcoin. The same idea lays behind the "danger" of bitcoin mixers.

Binance has a negative attitude to such bitcoins that were previously received through the mixer. And all funds are blocked by the exchange. Until now, there was no such practice of confiscating such bitcoins from the owner, they were simply returned to the sent address. This describes a case that occurred in December last year: https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-returns-frozen-btc-after-user-promises-not-to-use-coinjoin

Should I really care? When you get paid with cash do you think about the things those bills were used to pay somewhere in the past? I sure don't and I believe you also don't do it.
Bitcoins are like cash. Some of the bills in your wallet probably came through the hands of drug dealers and it doesn't make them tainted. Why should mixed bitcoins be tainted?

I use mixers all the time and I am not involved in any kind of illegal activities.
I trade bitcoins with a small group of persons and don't want anyone of them to know from whom I bought or to whom I sold. Mixers help with breaking the connection between sellers and buyers... as you can see, nothing illegal here  :)

When you go to the bank to set up an account you deposit fiat in the form of notes (maybe even a cheque or two). Later, you draw out money (usually from an AMT)  you are usually asked how you would like the funds, high value notes, small value notes, or a mix of both.  The notes have come from some one else.  They may or may not have a chequered past,  but you accept those notes with out question.  It's no different to a coin maixing service for crypto.  I'm surprised other alts haven't jumped on the band wagon. 

Bitcoin to alt --> Mixed ---> atomic swapped to another alt then mixes again and back to bitcoin.

Well you really should, with the pandemic going on and all lol.

In all seriousness though, it shouldn't matter in most situations. Taint analysis requires a fairly sophisticated process for accurate results, and that usually means they're fine-tuned enough to detect if 'dirty' coins changed hands.


You may want to cite a source. All mixers that have been shut down so far were not shut down just for being a mixer.

You'll need to count the fees. I bet all this process will take more than 2% of your total tx value. Not to mention there is an increase of risk for each process.

Just use a mixer that breaks your coins connections completely by giving you a set of private keys for example if you start from bitcoin, that should save some money and decrease the risk.

presently, it's somewhat trivial for blockchain analysis companies to monitor multiple blockchains for atomic swap contracts and equivalent value mixing transactions.

taproot will fix this by allowing users to obfuscate the underlying atomic swap on-chain. it can be made to look like any other standard transaction. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/etagx4/please_explain_taproot_and_schnorr_signatures/fffljnl/

if you do the bitcoin > 3rd party swap service > monero > 3rd party swap service > bitcoin thing, make sure to do some layered monero transactions in the middle. otherwise the swap service may have enough data to link your transactions together.

traditional letter-of-guarantee style mixers are mostly broken, but there are still bitcoin mixers that can provide strong privacy guarantees.

the problem with some privacy coins is they aren't really that private. stay away from dash: (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/battle-privacycoins-why-dash-not-really-private)


zcash and monero have their privacy drawbacks too: (https://cointelegraph.com/news/remaining-anonymous-which-crypto-privacy-solution-works-best)