Bitcoin Forum

I haven't used mixers so don't know if exchanges like Binance freezes your accounts because they've been funded from mixer linked addresses. I'd like to know what happens to your coins if you can't unlock the account.

How's it possible proving it's your funds by tracing where it's sourced from when it's from mixing?

There was a case (https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-returns-frozen-btc-after-user-promises-not-to-use-coinjoin) about a year ago, when binance froze the account of a user cause the funds were from a coin mixing service. It was later unfrozen.
Centralized exchanges can freeze your account for different reasons according to their ToS, which you agree to when you sign up. And they are regulated, so they comply to government policies.

What you see in your account is just numbers put in by the exchange and not really the coins, if anbaccount is frozen, the number of bitcoins in it would likely stay the same, but what is done with the actual coins can not be ascertained.
Of course the exchange would be able to provide the funds, should your account need to be unfrozen.

Ideally, do not use centralized exchange to transact or to store funds, especially if you are privacy inclined.

If you plan to use Binance as it is today which is more "adherent" to regulations, you are putting an obvious risk.

In 2019, binance had problems with a customer who used coinjoin wasabi (https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/ecud4w/binance_freezes_btc_linked_to_wasabi_coinjoin_and/), luckily the funds were returned with some agreements (https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-returns-frozen-btc-after-user-promises-not-to-use-coinjoin). Just my assumption based on Binance's statement that "they don't tolerate Coinjoin", this may also apply to other bitcoin mixer services. Even now it will probably be stricter.

The government will always watch Binance as a centralized exchange. Binance itself will check from where the funs comes and they can easily freeze your account if they think you use mixers or gambling sites or other things that they consider illegal. Binance can do whatever they want to protect their business so I suggest you not use mixers to deposit the funds. I suggest you send the funds to the mixers and then send it into another wallet, convert it into other coins and then send it to Binance. At least, you do not directly send it from the mixers to Binance. But I am sure if you dig for more, you will find how to solve that.

That looks dangerous. Some official exchanges definitely prohibit it, and it is certain that your assets will be frozen. Avoid the use of mixer transactions. It won't be accepted in a good exchange.

If I were you I wouldn't take the risk. There are enough precedents that centralized exchanges like Binance give a closer look at funds coming from mixers. It is not that exchanges do not like deposits from mixer addresses but they are always compliant with the law.

Remember the case of Helix? The CEO was charged with money laundering and mixers are even branded as illegal by the government regulators. If an ordinary exchange account requires KYC in observance with AML policies, it means mixers are services obstructing the efforts.

I see, but It's better we have a list of those exchanges that have some hard rules against mixers because there are some exchanges that have not to comply or don't really care when the funds are coming from mixers. they only focus on the funds that are coming from online gambling sites. If your account will be freeze by sending it from the mixers then it's better to avoid those kinds of steps because it is hard to unfreeze it again if you don't have any valid reasons.

Most exchanges has ToS that either allows them to restrict your account or bar you from using the platform completely in the case of having deposits being associated with mixers or anything that goes against their ToS. Mixers have a distinct pattern and behavior that makes it trivial for exchanges to identify them, but it still doesn't break your privacy. If you are using a mixer and a centralized exchange, then you should probably reconsider your priorities; centralized exchanges will do anything to track their customers. Using a mixer merely makes their job slightly more difficult.

You want a list? Here is one: All centralized exchanges.
Don't fool yourself thinking that just because a certain centralized exchange (or any other centralized service dealing with bitcoin deposits) is not discriminating against its users it won't happen soon. They are all similar and sooner or later they will start doing the same.
For example Binance that is being discussed here didn't have such strict rules about KYC verification, last much out of nowhere they started tightening their grip and changed their rules.

The fact that Binance has become strict in terms of KYC as they made it mandatory, of course that's based on legal guidelines. They want us to be transparent with all our transactions, they don't want us to become anonymously transact with crypto.
So, there will be a huge risk accompanied with your asset when you're dealing with crypto that came directly from mixers.
Prevention is better than cure. Take everybody's advice than lossing your money.

Once they tackle another case about crypto mixers transactions, It would be expected that they'll going to put a mandatory restrictions to it the next time.

As far as I know they don't do that right now but they can if they want to. I heard news about coinbase banning accounts when you receive coins from the foreign casinos or send coins to the foreign casinos and they are probably having an eye on the mixers as well. But keep in mind, coinbase is operating in the US which is a paranoiac country. On the other hand, I don't really know which country binance is operating in right now. Last time it was Malta but that might have changed. Not sure.

You should make yourself familiar with dex op, especially if you use mixer already. Another alternative would be to 'swap' your BTC to something like RBTC and then swap it back. If you don't mind wasting some fee and risking your coins, I'd not recommend it though. I used Sovryn bridge to swap my BTC to RBTC in the past, it was OK, but definitely not the first choice to 'clean' your coins. Those exchanges might start collecting those bridge address and block them too.

     You know what op, Just stay clear from centralised exchanges if you value your privacy that much (I thought you value privacy since you are using a mixer) just to be safe from all the headache and hassle. Although there can be a wide variety of reasons as to why an account can be frozen, it won't be because of some trivial matter. Either they really disallow such a thing or maybe you have touched other things they disallow. One look at the rules they set first before depositing would be a good preventive measure tho.

I hope you have good records for where your funds come from if you face this situation. Binance recently wanted to list their stock publicly but has since faced a backlash in certain countries and are facing investigations. What happens to the coins? They'll stay in Binances possession until you can win a court case that will force them to return the funds to you - either with or without proving the source of the original payment. I cannot think of a real legitimate reason that people would choose to use mixers, which are essentially pure money laundering tools, unless they are trying to hide funds so you might be in a tough situation. It's always worth reading the terms of a site before you use it and you might just have to accept this as an expensive lesson for the future.

I had once in the last 6 months money sent to Binance from funds mixed at ChipMixer. Those funds went from CM (I want to make it clear, the mixer not the campaign) to an address of mine and after a while (I don't remember if it was days or weeks) to Binance.
It's not something I do often since the risk is there, but I've done it exactly as a test. Of course, it was not big amount of money (since that's how tests are done), but in my case it worked.

It was before this late Binance-KYC drama, still, maybe my test does help somebody.

Most exchanges believe that mixers are used for money laundering so they don't allow assets coming from mixers, of course they have the means to track those assets coming from mixers and they are of course able to freeze your account for this or any other reason, as long as you read the terms of the user agreement and agree to their terms before registering You can do nothing but write to support and petition for your account to be unfrozen if you provide sufficient evidence that your assets are clean.

There was a case about it one or two years but I don't think if they really do that because that's pointless and there can be many ways to bypass this strategy, generally, due to the governments and the related organizations the exchanges are forced to take every hard and be more careful about the coins they receive, but not accepting coins from mixers can not be a solution also we can not say people are doing money laundry just because of using the mixers, many people are using the mixers all the time just for their own privacy.

I think that Binance exchange is one of the largest exchanges in the world, that's why trading on this exchange is called centralized trading and is heavily vetted by the exchange. and that Binance can do whatever they want to protect their exchange's reputation, so I would advise against using mixers to deposit. you should send money to mixer and then send it to another wallet, convert it to other coins and then send to Binance so it will be safer and more legal of your assets.

OP, if you don’t want to take the risk. There are other ways to move your coins from a known public wallet to your personal, private cold storage, which probably should be private enough, and isolated from meddlesome people and blockchain eavesdroppers. 8)

Avoid the use of centralized exchanges which demand the ability to spy on you and dictate your behaviors. If your exchange discriminates against mixed or otherwise obfuscated coins, then it's time to find a new exchange.

There will be a huge risk to your assets when you deal with exchanges which arbitrarily lock accounts and seize funds.

Yawn. This argument has been debunked more times than I can count. The majority of funds being mixed come directly from exchanges or trades (i.e. people just trying to stop exchanges spying on them). There are thousands of completely legal and legitimate reasons someone would want to maintain a bit of financial privacy. If you don't see the need for privacy, then please list every address you have ever used, every transaction you have ever made, your real name, address, email addresses, social media profiles, bank statements, and internet browsing history. No? I didn't think so.

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Mixers, coinjoins, and generally maintaining your privacy is not the problem here. The problem is centralized exchanges which want to spy on you and tell you what you can and cannot do with your own money. Moving away from a system like this is the entire reason bitcoin was created in the first place. Stop buying in to their rhetoric that having zero privacy is "normal" and that anything you do to try to reclaim some privacy is a problem to be addressed. Privacy is normal, and any exchange which demands that you sacrifice your privacy so they can spy on you and dictate how you use your own money is an exchange which should be abandoned immediately.

If crypto exchanges begin to rigorously analyze all transactions, they could very quickly run out of a significant portion of revenue, as only virgin mined coins can be considered 100% clean - and we can only guess how much BTC has gone through various mixers, casinos or been hacked. I remember reading before that as much as 13% of BTC wallets were tainted with BTC that once went through Silk Road, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the percentage of those that went through the mixer was much higher.

I personally wouldn’t dare send larger amounts from the mixer directly to the crypto exchange (CEX), because I don’t think it’s just a question of where BTC comes from, but also whether someone sent $100 or $10 000 - small transactions probably mostly go below the radar.

This is another good point.

If you look back far enough, then according to centralized exchanges most bitcoin in circulation has been "tainted" in some way - be it from a casino or sportsbook, darknet market, scam, hack, DEX, mixer, coinjoin, or any of the dozens of other completely arbitrary reasons they decide a coin is tainted. If we go far enough in to the future, then every bitcoin in circulation will be tainted in such a way. If there is a coinjoin with 49 clean inputs and 1 tainted input, then all the outputs are tainted because you cannot determine where the tainted coins went. If you consolidate 100 clean BTC with 1 tainted BTC, then you now have 101 tainted BTC, since you cannot determine which coin is the tainted one.

Now, obviously exchanges cannot turn down every coin or they would have no business, so where do they draw the line? Coins coming directly from a casino are tainted. So what if I send the coins to my wallet first and then to the exchange? What if I bounce the coins between 5 different wallets first? Does the exchange look back 1 transaction? 5 transactions? 10? 100? It is all completely arbitrary and frankly stupid.

We should not be accepting these arbitrary rules and limitations which exchanges are dictating to us.

I have to admit that this reminded me of one conversation with a person who had a serious intention to invest in Bitcoin about 3 years ago, but after several months of research it was precisely this issue that emerged as crucial. One simply wondered for a reason whether it could happen that the BTC he buys would be marked as tainted in the future and that in that way he would be left without everything. The only thing I could say then (and to be absolutely sure that this would not happen) was the advice to buy BTC directly from the miners.


It may be the curse of any currency, because it is used by good and bad people, and perhaps the best argument to fight against being abused with the argument "you have tainted coins" is to stick to the proven fact that most banknotes are contaminated with countless illegal activities, and yet no one checks them when we pay with them.


Of course, we should not accept every nonsense that they try to impose (exchanges), but I think that they do not do such things because they want to, but because the law increasingly forces them to play detectives and look for anything suspicious. The problem is that they want to know everything, and when (if) they become more aggressive, users may start using DEX more.

Well, if you buy and withdraw from a centralized exchange such as Binance or Coinbase, then that exchange would have a hard time in the future refusing to accept the coins they sent you because they were "tainted" without admitting that either they are laundering money or the entire concept of taint is completely flawed and pointless, as we all know it is. Or the other option is to not use centralized exchanges at all. I have literally never once ran in to a problem with my extensively mixed or coinjoined coins not being accepted.

Absolutely it comes from higher up than the exchanges themselves, but the exchanges do absolutely nothing to fight it, and instead opt to sell out their users with zero resistance because that is what guarantees them profits. Can you imagine where we would be right now if the US government had said "You must KYC everybody" and every major exchange had said "No, we don't want to do that", challenged them in court, moved their businesses to avoid these laws, started offering real DEX and peer to peer methods of trading (not the fake scam DEX which still requires KYC like Binance), and so on.

The exchange didn't make these rules, but they are the ones who are implementing them without a second though or putting up the slightest fight against them.

I'm sorry I didn't reply quicker I didn't expect these numbers of responses. I've read them so thanks for what you've written here's what I've decided to do. If exchanges freezes accounts you haven't got a chance proving where they came from so they'll cheat to keep them. It isn't worth taking risks by sending mixed coins to exchanges even if you've sent them to your wallet first.

I'll use Chipmixer for mixing coins to my wallet instead of taking chances with exchanges. I'll try it soon for the first time.

Every centralized exchange has dangerous terms which are "suspicious transaction". So they might detect transactions from the mixer as suspicious transactions. Although this isn't the right reason to freeze our coins, they might do it. If I have to use a mixer for any reason, I won't make a direct deposit into the centralized exchange. First I will move my funds to my fresh address and then move to the exchange. Not sure if it's safe since they could track the transactions, but in case of refund, they would do it at in same address. So that I might get back at least. But I don't think usually they will freeze funds unless the fund wasn't stolen. And most likely they won't track if you use premium and reputable mixers.

Even using up known or reputable mixers but still im not really that confident on pushing transactions through those kind of system or method because i do feel uncomfortable because of the possible risk ahead.

Im aint doing illegal and do selcomly make use of mixers but same as you had mentioned which sending it first on fresh address then this is mostly
ive been doing so that at least i do able to recover up something if problem occurs.

So its really a matter of choice but most of the time they dont really actually make out some problems related into this one.

An exchange such as Binance won't flag such a transaction maybe only in special cases if the devs or say a compromised wallet owner can prove ownership then can they take necessary steps but I have used an exchange like flixio (trade.finxflo.com/trade) which requires you to whitelist both your depositing and withdrawing addresses before moving your coins to the exchange and failure to do so could amount to freezing or forfeiting such coins.

That's what I've picked up from the thread if you're mixing then the coins shouldn't be sent to exchanges because they've used suspicious transactions terms for freezing coins. If I'm going to use mixers I'm sending my coins to my wallet they'll never be sent to exchanges because I won't be taking chances.

You simply can't prove anything.

With or without mixing, your coins should be pseudoanonymous and it should be pretty much impossible to trace back.

Especially if you use a good mixer, this should be a non-issue given that the whole point of a mixer is to obfuscate your tracks.

I've found ]Jambler's (http://[banned mixer) website saying they've got systems checks so it's harder using stolen bitcoins. Can you trust it? Is it one of the most secure mixers?