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The bitcoin mixers — ChipMixer and Wasabi Wallet — have received 56.5% of the 30.4 stolen bitcoins, i.e. 17.18 bitcoins (currently worth about $192,000), according to Elliptic.
The Twitter hack took place on July 15, and at the time, the bitcoins were worth about $121,000. The price of bitcoin has risen in recent days.

Elliptic said it tracked the bitcoin through its transaction screening tool and found that the hackers have sought to launder the funds gradually.
Bitcoin mixers mask the blockchain transaction trail, making it challenging to follow funds and to know where the funds are spent or cashed out.

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

https://i.imgur.com/Ls783HL.png

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/73567/elliptic-twitter-hack-bitcoin-mixer

https://www.elliptic.co/our-thinking/what-does-the-twitterhack-mean-for-crypto-aml

If anything, I'm actually quite surprised that some of those hackers/scammers risked moving out the funds(14.4%) without actually mixing/coinjoining them lol. It just shows that some of those scammers probably don't have the slightest idea on what they're doing and some just got lucky tricking security-illiterate Twitter people by using the typical giveaway scam.

Not surprising.

The use of coinjoin/mixing services is the new getaway for hackers since centralized exchanges are more regulated now and often asks KYC. They've been using it more and more since 2019 as shown in the study made by Chainalysis

I wouldn't be surprised also if we see another round of posts/articles accusing mixers/coinjoin services of aiding money laundering.

I believe Chipmixer, being centralized, is also capable of blocking those btc's if they wanted to but that would put a huge dent on their reputation.

They do bad things and they certainly have enough knowledge to mix their stolen coins from victims. I quite surprise that it is a bit more than 50% of hackers use mixers. mk4 is right that tech gurus can solve their issues with Coin Join. People who care about privacy have their reasons to use mixers or Coin Join but governments have reasons to try attack mixers (and we don't know they really want to protect victims, attack hackers or they do this for their interests only, maybe mixed purposes).

It's a no-brainer for those who know what they're doing to do some mixing before transferring it over to an exchange, but my golly I can't believe that some of them actually had the guts to do a YOLO and send directly to an exchange without mixing first. Though of course, there's a possibility of stolen identity but still, the exchanges should have been alerted of those coins coming in on their platform to at least freeze the coins and check who is behind the possible transaction and be the hero of the day.


This is not new considering that all they do is just mix coins and make it untraceable, regardless of whether the coins they receive are tainted or not. This is the main reason why governments are having their eyes peeled on mixers and regulators keen on passing some regulations against this kind of service as they see it as a form of money laundering tool that is easily accessible.


Pretty sure ChipMixer will hold their ground. They're in hot water for similar things for years now but they remain operational and still going strong amid all these scare and whatnot.

Pretty interesting data and infographic.
What does "Cashed out" mean?Does it mean that they have sold the BTC for fiat money and have withdrawn the cash or it means something else?
I assume that the category of 11% "Other" means depositing the coins into some cryptocurrency marketplaces.Why the Elliptic team doesn't want to share the names of those crypto exchange platforms?
I'm sure that they can reveal them,since they managed to discover the mixing services.

They are hackers and thieves, for sure they are aware of the usage of mixers and even thought of it as part of their plan.

Probably it's the first choice.

It's likely that they were able to exchange it for fiat already and that makes them harder to track since they've used a mixer for those funds.

The question is why use any method other than mixers at all, I mean exchanges. Just check? But this can lead to the fact that they leave traces.
Or it really is part of their plan. Given the scale of the hack, these hackers don't strike me as dumb. Although there are indeed contradictions in their actions.

I posted a topic detailing how mixing services must be doing more harm than good to crypto by exchange dirty funds for a clean one. A lot of people query my post citing that the fact that bad people use it doesn't make it a bad services but the truth is that most people that patronize the services use them to clean stolen crypto. It is a matter of time before many of this service providers being charged for abating crime and money laundering

I don't control any stolen coins and I don't have private keys to any coins that haven't been "multiple times" mixed for storage.  Lots of people just want to be safe and own coins that are NOT traceable to them and they never tell their friends they even know what a BTC is.  I have always found a way to avoid KYC and AML stuff, and I have both bought and sold for fiat.

finally, these guys are going to be fished out! these bitcoin mixers are good at keeping transactions very secured and anonymous but i bet there are other solutions that can go beyond the ordinary and locate these wallets and where the bitcoins are sent to. Will be happy to hear what really comes out of this follow up!

Have you read the thread that the twitter hacker and his accessories were already arrested? Relatively young fellows so they may not fully know how to hide their stolen funds. They don't put all those stolen funds to mixer services. Some they cashed out without using this service, so maybe this was the reason why their movements were traced. Not too smart on their side. But the question here is - are they going to return those stolen funds to the users that were screwed by their fraudulent activity?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265910

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/twitter-hack-arrest.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/31/tech/alleged-twitter-hacker-arrested/index.html

Its no surprise because if you do consider yourself a hacker then you arent just dumb to cashout those coins without using any mixers or not trying to erase your trails.

Seen that some of the coins are still unspent but it would just be heading on the same way if they do want to cash it out then theres no way that someone can track them up.

with just using up some mixers will already do the job done.No hacker would be careless and letting themselves to put in the danger of jail rails.

Just wondering what the "other" part meant? Does that mean it was spent on something? Cause unspent and cashed out parts are marked already. Also, it's not really surprising. I'm more surprised they had a part of their funds cashed out without passing through mixers. Hell, I would've mixed them all after obtaining them quickly.
Okay, that is news to me. The fact that they were that young and was able to provide such a scheme like this is quite amazing enough, but the fact that they were also too young to cover their tracks lead them to their death sentences. I'd like to know more details about how they were found out though, aside from the words "leaving hints" which can be pretty vague.

https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FKhnZqFW.png&t=615&c=G9T9F-Ux_J1PvQ
So there is actually about 14.4% of the fund (2.8% cashed out and 11.8% on other) is spent without going into Bitcoin mixer? I am wondering how did that happen, are the scammers not aware of the risk of being caught when using Bitcoin or something?

Is there any way to lock their funds from chipmixer or from any exchange?
They should not get our golden BTC by hacking from others.
Because they stole from Bitcoin lovers.

No, they can't because bitcoin is decentralized, not like USDT or some centralized cryptocurrency. [UPDATED] PSA: Most Stablecoins Can Be Frozen, Even in Your Own Wallets (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204055.0). No one on the network or from any government can freeze or lock your bitcoin. In the other words, you have keys, you have your coins. Remember the story is different if you store your bitcoin on exchanges, not on your wallets.

To ask for btc was very strange decision, they almost blocked now. Why not to use something private?

They were probably very self confident thinking no one will disover what thry are doing and no one will track theur lead. Unfortunately this just shows that in many cases hackers and scamers still have pretry easy job. The big mistakes were made by Twitter two and they will need to explain a lot of issues in their security
Bitcoins that were going through mixers will probably never be traced

Unfortunately, this is a big disadvantage of bitcoin transactions, that hackers can manipulate funds depending on the degree of their immersion in the sphere. Of course, mixers contribute to how you can cover up the traces of your transactions, but this is not the main problem in this area. More bitcoins are lost when people simply forget their passwords and keys to their wallets.

Why are you repeating this false statement after I provided you with evidence to disprove it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5261046.msg54762107#msg54762107) in your last thread? A minority of funds which pass through mixers are stolen or otherwise tainted. The majority of coins being mixed are being sent directly from exchanges, by users trying to protect themselves from centralized exchanges' mass surveillance.

Bitcoin is decentralized, but exchanges certainly are not. Centralized exchanges freeze accounts and seize coins all the time for a variety of reasons, legitimate or otherwise. If there is a suggestion that some coins are stolen, then many exchanges will freeze those coins. Binance, for example, frozen a bunch of funds which were thought to be related to the Cryptopia hack.

I am unaware of the companies have a policy to keep a track of the mixing services being performed , if they do then I do think it will be really easy for them to hand over this information to the government , at the same time for the future these services should actually make a policy like that , which won't compromise the privacy and at the same time keep logs of everything for the safe situation.

Mixing services are helpful when you are using them correctly , but if used incorrectly it may cause loss , uncompensated , causing the negative marketing of these services, they need to save the backlash from the government.

The fact that this Twitter hack happened at approximately same time means many people together worked or maybe it was just one, so even if the Government can track the Bitcoins being sent without the mixing services they can might as well make sure the guy spills out the beans .

Since in many countries Bitcoins is protected by the law , This means the Government have to intervene and make sure the people get back their money 💰 , got that they need to hire people who are familiar with the Blockchain technology like Bitcoins ( another reason why it is important for Colleges to include Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies in ).

I don't think these services are being used by people who are just involved in the negative marketing . Maybe they just needed some privacy at a moment?

Thanks but I emphasized the importannce of private keys ownership in my post. For any reasons (mostly from hack investigations, money laundering investigations) governments can force exchanges to freeze BTC in accounts that they have proofs of relations to bad and illegal activities according to their laws. In such law enforcements, exchanges have no option to choose and they must freeze related accounts.

Well not surprised at all, we already had a talk about this in another topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5262481.msg54807738#msg54807738), that was an expected move although I thought they will use mainly mixers or non-KYC exchanges, and not cashing it out directly lol!

If they do, then you shouldn't be using them. Why would you try to increase your privacy by using a company which tracks, links, and de-anonymizes your deposits and withdrawals?

How? How can a mixer keep logs of everything you are doing while at the same time claiming that your privacy isn't compromised? That sounds like all the free VPN providers which harvest your data and sell to third parties. As soon as logs are kept, your privacy is zero.

There is no way to differentiate between the "correct" use or the "incorrect" use of a mixer. As soon as a mixer starts monitoring and spying on their customers to make sure that every deposit is "correct", then all privacy is out the window and there is no point in using that mixer anymore.

Mixers are like encryption. The majority of people using them are using for perfectly legal reasons. Yes, some a small minority people use them for illegal reasons. There is no way monitor who is using it and stop them from doing so without completely breaking or rendering useless the entire system. No, ordinary people shouldn't be force to give up their privacy under the guise of "safety".

I wont say lucky trick buddy cause if the twitter hackers could make such foolish move (cashed out 2.8% of the stolen coin without the use of tumbler for all the coins) it prove that they are still baby hackers and the twitter employee which their credentials was manipulated and used to access twitter’s internal systems need to be question. Unfortunately, things like this usually die down cause thorough investigation to be performed.

It could be part of the plan but hey, we have some good news and I think also a bad news for the update of this twitter hack and scam.

Twitter hack: Bognor Regis man one of three charged (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53617198)

I just noticed that BBCs SSL isn't secured.

Actually, if you read correctly the blog post from Elliptic.co, it says that only a low percentage has been sent to exchange platforms, but not only, from this low percentage, some bitcoins have also be sent to casinos and merchants.

Looking at the graph it represents about 10% which means ~$12k only. So it's about $12k split between exchanges, casinos, and merchants, a relatively ridiculous amount.

On the top of that, the guy surely sent to exchanges not strict with AML/KYC, maybe accountless exchanges, or the one without KYC, to small to have a surveillance.... Bought a few stuff with merchants not able to block/track those bitcoins or to late because the items have been delivered.
I don't know how casinos work regarding AML, so won't comment, but maybe depositing BTC and then withdraw without playing?

Seeing how big was the hack, getting only $120k is so ridiculous by the way.

Hacker looking for which one wallet most easy and looking hard to detect the owner, always have hack cases every time but bitcoin keep stronger on higher price, We must careful how to keep safety our assets in exchange wallet or saving in ledger nano offline wallet. Will depend on our hand how to keep safety our assets and hold for long term.

That 2.8% cashed out means, the funds that has been sent directly to the exchange without mixing and exchange is to fiat. These are only small amount to avoid the KYC verification.
While the other 11% I believed is the funds that was sent split into exchange, gambling, and merchants.

They could actually disclose further info on which specific exchanges the scammed Btc landed, but I think it wouldn't be necessary anymore since the suspect has been caught already.

Ah, and this is another piece of information that will put mixers and the possibility of having a bit of crypto anonymity in a bad place. It's quite obvious that smart hackers will seek to anonymize their coins one way or another to erase their traces. What kinda creeps me out is the way you can link some addresses so easily together ;D

Turns out they actually sent coins directly to Coinbase. Not only that, but they sent to Coinbase accounts which were fully verified with copies of their own IDs, used the same email addresses as they used on their OGUsers and Discord accounts where they were selling the hacked Twitter accounts, and logged in to Coinbase from the same unobscured IPs that they used when breaking in to Twitter accounts. A simple request from law enforcement to Coinbase and now three people have been arrested. Not exactly the smartest move by the hackers. :D

Coinbase is an open book as far as privacy goes. Everyone should be working on the premise that anything information you send to Coinbase and all your activities on Coinbase are available to be examined by your respective government and/or law enforcement agencies.

That was insane! these guys plan it all well but those who are tracing them are doing some good job. This is some challenge and most of the people in the industry of crypto are watching this event. this is some historical tracing right here man, I wonder who will gonna win. I also think those scammers are not moving their BTC so well, they are easy to be tracked.

wasnt that florida kid 17? i thought coinbase minimum age was 18. or was it just the other 2 that were arrested had coinbase accounts.

gotta read up on it a bit more. peeps saying this 17 yo dude was some hacker genius. seems only that some twitter employees are just stupid instead. but then so was that kid..  didnt he (or maybe it was one of the others) reuse addresses or something? very noob, much fail.

As far as we know it was just the other two. The details of how the FBI linked the attack to the 17 year old aren't entirely clear, but are likely due to the fact the OGUser forum was hacked and the FBI obtained a database of all usernames, email addresses, private messages, and IP addresses.

Apparently he got access to a Twitter employee Slack channel, which had login details for one of their tech support tools pinned to it. The digital equivalent of writing your username and password on a post-it and sticking it to your monitor.

You can read more about it here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-alleged-twitter-hackers-got-caught-bitcoin/
You can see the indictments for the other two, which detail how they were tracked down, here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1300121/download and https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1300126/download

thanks for the links. good reads.

i cant tell you how many offices ive been to where login/passwords were posted in the plain sight of customers/clients/patients. tell management, later see nothings changed. maybe moved the post it note to the plant next to a monitor instead of the monitor itself. or etc.

even as simple a thing in view such as an internal phone list (usually has names/positions/direct numbers) is a hackers ticket to ride via social engineering.

*sigh*

They could be good at whatever social engineering they used to get those emails and passwords but since Bitcoin is known as the money of the deep web and that currency that terrorists were using it was the obvious choice for these kids. They had no idea how to spend coins anonymously and the greatest proof to that is in the way they exchanged Bitcoins using Coinbase. I'm pretty sure they'll strike a deal and trade those coins for short jail time. If they don't they're dumb.

that $120k (now $150k?) worth of coin? i doubt the prosecutors even care about that, its chump change to the feds (well imo). these guys will be made an example of.

I don't expect the scammers to do otherwise. Only a fool would steal money and not plan on how to find a way to spend it before even going ahead and now we are not talking about amount stolen on the counter or in the drawer which could run into several hundreds but thousands of dollars at this time. It's actually disappointing that situations like this is only making the case for those are the other end against bitcoin mixers as a way to hide their ill gotten wealth rather than what was intended for a way to promote privacy.

Think I'd be supporting Wasabi or Samourai or any other but yeah, the fact they sent almost 15% directly to exchanges, and then almost 15% to Wasabi (it's got great CoinJoin but for the amount they were sending and with all eyes on it, I personally don't think Wasabi or any other CJ wallet right now has a big enough usage to be a good enough privacy tool just yet.

@20kevin20: mixers and any other kind of privacy tools don't need all these news, they anyway have a bad reputation in the eyes of media. Criminals use banks and audit firms all the time for billions and billions of dollars in crime but the banks' reputations are unsullied. Strange? Nah, just the way the world works.

  I don't know about this but I'm sure that they are smart enough coz they have broken some security of twitter, though it's quite a shallow dive from the hackers but still this is a breach, biggest breaching history in twitter I think. But I'm really wondering why they do not clean all of the stolen bitcoins with the mixers, worst is that they sent it directly to an exchange with a fully verified account, this is funny as hell, they could have used multiple mixers in cleaning. omg.


How come that no one will discover? it could if they used mixers for all, but they did not. What's running inside their head when doing this, if I'm the scammer I'll send the bitcoins that will enter to the wallet address every time I receive any, multiple transaction with mixer, it's okay to be expensive at least safe and hard to track. Yet the have left a bag of bitcoins unspent, now I'm believing that there is a 17 yr old boy involved to this, could have been better history , nah I don't support crimes like this just kidding  ;D

Oh, absolutely. I'm also a big fan of the code for keypadded doors written in the corner of "STAFF ONLY" or "RESTRICTED ACCESS" notices affixed to said doors.

Agreed. They are already talking about fines of up to $250,000 and 20 years in prison for the "lesser" of the two involved. The 17 year old is facing 30 charges, including one of "Organized Fraud (Over $50,000)" which carries up to 30 years in prison in Florida, and one of "Fraudulent Use of Personal Information (Over $100,000)" which also carries up to 30 years in prison along with a mandatory 10 year minimum.

All the talk about cleaning the bitcoin is more or less irrelevant. Even if they hadn't used this hack to steal bitcoin, the accounts on various platforms they used to communicate and sell accounts were set up with email addresses which had been linked to their real identities, and they did everything from their own home IP addresses which again had logged in to a variety of services linked to their real identities. They would have been caught regardless.

Probably yes they are overconfident or probably they forgot about the feature of transparency of BTC for a bit making those unmixed transactions, but it is kinda funny how that hacker never thought that a small transaction without mixers for conversion can pinpoint them and identify who they are.  The use of mixers was been nullified by this simple error of hackers.  I hope they get caught soon.

They are smart enough already to have mixed and use wasabi and coinjoin but one would take it back just when they were traced.  Yep just too overconfident they are not going to be traced. They sure know they are being traced since Jusin Sun put a bounty to whoever find them.

Thsi twitter hack though had put BTC on media, I think they helped the spread of information about cryptocurrency. Someone should still pat thier backs despite how stupid they've become after sending few BTC to coinbase and binance.

They care more about the information and the hacked accounts that they might have and especially the data harvested during the attack.
Many high profiles get hacked and no one knows whether the data were sold or not, imagine for example high political profiles data were leaked...

The crook will try to cover his tracks, but I don't think it will work. The case became too high-profile, so serious people took it on.

lol amateur hour. And the dummy already owned BTC300. I... can't... even...

Chipmixer is present again, but not the fault of the mixer as it's their service to mix coins regardless of the purpose of the clients.

Binance Hackers Bombard Chipmixer to Launder at Least 4,836 BTC (https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-hackers-bombard-chipmixer-to-launder-at-least-4-836-btc#:~:text=Aug%2008%2C%202019-,Binance%20Hackers%20Bombard%20Chipmixer%20to%20Launder%20at%20Least%204%2C836%20BTC,laundered%20through%20crypto%20tumbler%20Chipmixer.&text=At%20least%204%2C836%20Bitcoin%20(BTC,through%20crypto%20mixing%20service%20Chipmixer.)

I don't know what would be the implication to the mixers since this is a popular incident, and I've heard some mixers before that are popular in the forum that was closed or the owner decide to close. Anyone who knows, is chipmixer safe here, or they should worry on the possible actions of authorities against them?

You are talking about bitmixer, it was a decent one at that time. I don't blame personally any mixers since they are offering what it should be a legal service to their clients. But i preferred to see some serious monitoring of the addresses containing the hacked money and freeze them once the money was sent...

The Bitcoins stolen via twitter on that faithful day may have been a negative flag in the minds of people and deterred loads of people from approving of the blockchain driven approach they were onced presented with but I thank the authorities for restoring the confidence in the technology and stating clearly that the attack was not on the technology but on the psychology and minds of gullible individuals.

As I asked of someone else higher up in this thread, how could this work? As soon as a mixer starts investigating where coins are coming from, where they are going, and keeping logs joining deposits and withdrawals together, then they have defeated their very purpose and no sensible person would touch them.

It would be like trying to making every Tor node monitor all the traffic that passes through them and only allow what is deemed "acceptable". It defeats the very purpose of a privacy enhancing service if a third party can monitor and censor you at any time.

If you look at the data in the opening post, I am even more sure that Bitcoin from Twitter hack was indeed sent via mixers.
But this cannot be concluded that mixing services is bad, because it depends on the user. Mixing services for me provides
the privacy I need for avoid being targeted by hackers. But at least I understand why some people accuse Bitcoin mixers of
being used for money laundering, because the twitter hack that uses mixing services makes their reputation become bad.

It is the simplest way to maintain ownership of their stolen bitcoins cheaply and securely after using a mixer. Although governments have banned the use of anonymous money and spoke out about mixer mines for security and privacy, the mixer is a feature that makes bitcoin a good anonymity.
In the post only mentioning that more than 50% is sent through the mixer then I think the amount of bitcoins put into the mixer is very low. I wonder if the amount of money they have left is left in an old address or for public use.

No no, I did not mean to monitor every single transactions made.
The hacked money relied in known addresses, once a transaction was made from those addresses it should be blocked and the money seized (corporation with law agencies ofc).
Now the hackers could send the money to intermediate addresses then to mixers. I am not very familiar with programming but normally it is not hard I suppose to implant a program that check if a hacked BTC address was connected to a new one being used, or maybe an alert system to inform those services that the funds are being moved from a known hacked address.
The worst scenario is to monitor those addresses manually whenever a new block is issued...

Then you have to introduce a trusted third party who will investigate and approve or deny requests for various addresses to be blacklisted, which essentially makes your mixer no better than a centralized exchange.

And in this scenario, you will be punishing users like me who like to trade peer-to-peer. If I buy some bitcoin and am unaware it is related to a hack, as soon as I try to mix it (as I do with most of my bitcoin), it's going to be confiscated from me even although I have done nothing wrong.

jesus Christ... it's not the first time when I'm hearing this.. and as I can see it's those kinda things often happen to twitter security... sad to hear

Well involving a third party isn't a must, I add some suggestions that doesn't necessarily involve it. They can build their own program, an alert system doesn't have to access data, neither the manual option should be a problem.
For the scenario you mentioned, yes it can cause many problems. What I suggested is for huge and "famous" hack involving mainly exchanges...and another example is what happened to twitter. I don't see how could a normal user addresses be linked to the hackers.
I understand your concern but mixers should protect itself and its legitimate users. I assimilate it to a small exchange service that you can find in the street, taking $ from thieves that just stole the bank and giving them back $ with other serial numbers. That service risks to be seized and followed in justice...Just improve yourself and verify the codes when you hear that the bank near you has been just stolen!
I hope you understand what I mean  ;)

I always found it funny how they were trying to frame it as a bitcoin hack, when it absolutely wasn't. But I guess twitter needs to "step up" and defend their own when they screw up this big and btc was a good fall guy. Though anyone with any semblance of understanding of bitcoin could see through their bullshit.

Guess it's worth because there's still lots of cryptoheads that use twitter as a main source of news in the space. Oh well

this is not a surprise, in the future governments will be prosecuting the mixer owners because of money laundering, there is no way in the future that mixers will exist without them being illegally and accused of facilitating crime. And in my opinion in the future the exchanges will be obliged and report the activities to the governments periodically so that the governments control this issue of money laundering

You don't read correctly because nowhere it' stated a Bitcoin hack happened. If you re-read the original post and check the links posted in, you will see mentioned "Twitter hack", there's no point in changing the reality, to create another story of your own...
Even the poster to who you reply says "Twitter hack",the same applies to the company.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/73567/elliptic-twitter-hack-bitcoin-mixer
https://www.elliptic.co/our-thinking/what-does-the-twitterhack-mean-for-crypto-aml

I exclusively trade peer-to-peer. I do not know what address(es) the bitcoin I am going to be receiving is coming from until I receive it, and I certainly don't have the time to investigate several hops back from every address I want to trade with to ensure the bitcoin are "untainted".

I do understand, it's just I disagree with where you are coming from. If you look back far enough, almost every active satoshi in existence can be "tainted" in one or or another or by one algorithm or another. We should not be seeking to declare some bitcoin as "tainted" and others as "clean". Doing so undermines the fungibility of bitcoin, and therefore undermines bitcoin itself.

If centralized exchanges want to block certain addresses to protect themselves from liability in terms of money laundering then so be it, they are private businesses and that is their right. However, as a community we should not be encouraging other services to differentiate between different bitcoin.

Scammers must know Bitcoin transactions can be traced, so they decide to use coinjoin / mixing services to eliminate traces.
But what makes me confused is why only about 50% of Bitcoin are sent through the mixers, maybe they are not sure about
risking it all of them use the Mixers service.

17,18 bitcoin? hah, that's nothing. Back in when binance was hacked, at Least 4,836 BTC was laundered through chipmixer. More than one year has passed since then if I am correct and nothing has happened to chipmixer, so, believe me, this amount is just a drop in the ocean.
Persoanlly I couldn't imagine if any mixer would try to really enter this market seriously but Chipmixer just rocks, they are not only great but greatest in what they do. Will be interesting to see if they were caught soon after using mixing services and which mixer succeed in this situation.

I am not in favor of mixers and also not against them, but I can clearly state that mixers are not responsible for the hacks and so we should stop blaming them for the 'laundering' we are talking here about. It is the hacker, stealer or even one of us who chooses their (mixer's) services to go for, uses them to move our funds in such a way that nobody finds any traces to our money. They are doing their service and if they start revealing people, what is the point of having mixers?

Well clearly hackers have an it before executing of their activity. They have sought already this after receiving the hack bitcoins. Because mixers usually done anonymously then this is a better place for them to hide their identity and so that bitcoin will not be trace after mixing it.

Mixers function is to mix bitcoin from.of that other user to other user. And the mix will sort into one as the combination of btc coming from different users. It is most likely to get easy on sorting bitcoin into one user rather than having several users contributing to it.

But they should not assist the hackers, I am not sure is it possible to get the traces back for particular transaction by the mixers itself but if yes they then should report it to the appropriate persons to keep their reputation up so in future as well scammers will get afraid of using mixers.

The mixer can only be used to make those bitcoins legal. The mixer has been around for a long time and is the best tool for thieves to anonymize the money they've taken.
Currently, the ethereum network has a tornado cash, an application that anonymizes transactions similar to a bitcoin mixer.
Governments have been working against anonymous cryptocurrencies, but it is the need for privacy that bitcoin and ethereum have their anonymous tools.

But how can we achieve good regulation if we will not comply with the government standard?

Mixers is a tool used for scammers and hackers, although it is not its purpose but government has seen this risk and they won't allow these mixers to operate. According to this article https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-coin-mixers-legal-crosshairs/.. there are two types of mixers, the Custodial and the  Non-Custodial Mixing Services, and part it expressed that both has to gain license to operate, as you can read this part of the article.

Not surprising already knowing that these Bitcoins came from the Twitter hacking incident.

IIRC, its a teenager that has been accused of this incident. Mixers are the go-to site of these hackers when they are successful in hacking sites, exchanges etc. Can't blame these mixers though since they are just tools that the hackers are using when they want to transfer the funds.

What's surprising is they didn't transfer 100% of the total amount thru Mixers or I should say that 2.8% of the total amount has been transferred without using of Mixers.

The main purpose of mixers is to provide anonymity for anyone in the bitcoin space. They cannot sue these platforms because they are neutral to the funds of the users and it is in the users responsibility to use these mixers. Though, we cannot escape the fact that most people who successfully stole BTC use it, bitcoin is built with this characteristic, to provide freedom, and once we accept it, the responsibility should be within us to avoid being hacked and to keep our funds to a safe place.

It is really the only way for hackers and scammers not to be traced or could sent transactions anonymously because using a bitcoin mixer is a kind of software that let users to mix their bitcoin to other users for them, so it will difficult for someone to tell who is the real owner. It is why hackers can freely steal someone's wallets without getting caught.

I was surprised by the graphic that was made, they must be serious about researching this case. Mixer/coinjoin is a great way to do money laundering, many know that, but the truth is, there are still scammers who don't mixing but spend it directly. Based on this graph, it is highly probable that the money can be frozen if it cooperates with a company related to the money laundering place.

Hackers are aware that the bitcoins they hacked will be traced by victims and police officers so that they know what to do. Coin Join transactions with Wasabi wallet or bitcoin mixers are their best solutions. I am not surprised to see that article and the percents of hacked bitcoin were mixed through Mixer services and Wasabi.

Newbies don't know how to use coin control features but hackers know and sure they know more, about Coin Join, mixers and so forth. The article does not show after bitcoin mixing, what hackers use to do next. Mix again with Monero.

Only 2.8% of stupid hackers cashed-out hacked bitcoins.

Not the best example of using mixers for mass adoption, but indicative. I was also surprised that they decided to withdraw part of the BTC in a different way.
Another interesting point is that they decided to use two withdrawal routes.  Maybe they were afraid to risk putting everything through the chip mixer? Or they wanted to test all possible options.
In any case, this is a good test of mixer efficiency.

Probably the first speculation you gave. They wouldn't do that if they weren't aware of what's coming at them. And these mixers honestly wouldn't really mind where the people got their coins as long as it means profit to them. so they wouldn't lock it. They'd probably give a statement or two, but that's about the end of it perhaps.

Mixers were used to have more security to their holdings as well as for the purpose of anonymity. People using it a way to stay secure on the illegal business. For this we can't go check every address from which the transaction has taken place.

Some users have suggested for a block of specific address within exchanges, but that isn't a possible solution and that affect the circulation in the market. Rather than making large funds idle let it get circulated.

Mixer services are expensive and quality of mixing service you use is unknown. If you are not a technical guy and can not check their quality (if you know to that, you would have not use their mixing service), you simply believe in what they advertise and use their service. By that I meant, your anonymity can or can not be protected by the service you are using for your bitcoin transactions.

Use non-custodial wallets
Turn on Coin control feature
Use change addresses
Use Tor when you broadcast your transactions
Use Wasabi wallet if you need to use Coin Join.

Most hackers do actually,because this will save their asses from being monitored and trace.
Because this maybe just a trial if they will be track down and marked so they remain the 50% in case worst thing happen for future use.

if this transaction may cleared in the next days then they will send another 50% for completion .