Bitcoin Forum

"ChipMixer" one of the most popular signature campaign on the Bitcoin forum has been seized by an agency today.
15 March, Europol (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) Sezied total assets 1909.4 BTC which current market value $46M from Chipmixer.
The agency has already shut down the Chipmixer website, the agency also alleged that the Chipmixer website has laundered a total of 152000 BTC ($3.8B) at different times since 2017.

https://i.imgur.com/0CKOCZn.jpg

Germany and U.S. Seize Over $46M Crypto Tied to ChipMixer Investigation: Europol
 (https://cryptonews.net/20671659/?utm_source=CryptoNews&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=shared)

ChipMixer.com has been seized (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5445014.msg61917399#msg61917399)

Sad News especially for bitcointalk community.
I have been following the news in various articles, and I have noticed conflicting reports regarding the fact that the authorities were able to identify those in charge of the project.  This prompted me to think about the possibility of using forum data to verify identities. Or maybe identify the advertising campaigns that chipmixer launched since 2017.

I must say if something bad happens then we should not promote it. If Chipmixers were used for Money laundering then they should be shut down. I agreed with this. WHY? because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it, almost replied most of the OPs asking about the legalization of BTC, Blockchain, when will BTC dominate Banks, When will people use it as a normal currency, When do people stop afraid of P2P transactions. Questions to these questions also lie in their good and bad use cases.

No doubt everything in the world is used with its good and bad impact, the one which has more fruits in it dominate over the other, than why, feel sad for these project (ahh if I am not wrong as I am not accusing anyone just a thought) does the team know about it? maybe not if not then really it's a sad reality but nothing we can do now, all we can do is promote good use cases of blockchain and BTC, not the bad use cases which harm the beauty of BTC.

They apparently got that information from his devices. Theymos wasn't bungled for IP address data (I hope).


Well look at it this way. They shut down Chipmixer, right? (And I'm still wearing this stupid signature until next week probably)

Did they simultaneously clean out all of the bitcoin doubling scams, Bitcoin exchange scams, Bitcoin services which just take the users' money and don't return it, scam casinos like 1xbit, the KYC scams, and the bitcoin address stealing malware?

No, of course not. Why? Because they don't care about any of that stuff.

Governments that are hostile to crypto are two-faced just like Harvey Dent - on one side you have them fight "money laundering" (including bogus assertions of laundering that are actually just a user protecting their privacy), and on the other hand, they don't give a rat's ass if their population loses all their Bitcoins to scammers vacationing in Malibu.

Just some food for thought. Everything they do is heads - as in "good".

Pretty sure those same authorities would describe all mixers as money launderers, including the one you're advertising in your sig.  Governments perceive privacy as immoral because they want to know everything about you.  Mixers make that difficult for them.

I can't help but ponder the timing of this take down.

We have a US bank going under, which they say is the biggest collapse since 2008 financial crisis (that led to creation of bitcoin) and we also have bitcoin price starting to rise as the US banking system is feared to fail catastrophically in the near future.
All of a sudden Justice Department decides to shut down a very old business while releasing a statement listing all the negative/illegal things they claim has been done using this service (which they are actually saying is done using bitcoin).

I don't believe in coincidences ;)

That's really sad! But such risk was always there when Bestmixer was shut down by the same enforcement authority. It's quite unfortunate that a huge amount of fund was seized and apparantly there's no way to receive it back now if someone is not involved in criminal activities.

More and more mixing services are being targeted by the enforcement agencies since 2022 and multiple mixing services were shut down completely since then.

It does not matter what BTC is used for, many countries would never make it a legal tender because of it is a decentralized currency. But you should understand that there is a difference between legal tender and legal. BTC is legal in most countries around the world, only in a few places is it illegal; and in the places it is legal people spend it like a normal currency through merchants that openly accept payment in BTC.
Fiat is used for all kind of bad purposes, but nobody preaches to people how they should use it, Fiat is even easier to use for bad purposes than BTC because it is harder to trace the criminals. I do not want people to use BTC to do bad things, but the beauty of BTC is in its freedom, and we can't dictate to anyone what to do with their coins.

It's very important to clarify one fact and dust off a wrong assumption and narration of the situation from the paragraph above.

-Chipmixer signature campaign is different from chip mixer itself even though they promote the company it is 100% normal for anyone in this forum to have the right to promote whatever services their wish unless it is a proven scam then the community will not support it.

-for certification's sake, it is the company that was seized and not the signature campaign, and as far as I know, the campaign is still ongoing until otherwise from the manager.

How did they do it? How do you seize assets of a company that literally specializes in ensuring that assets are mixed well enough to not be traced? I mean, I understand how you block a website, but seizing assets and closing a business down is a whole different thing which required either Chipmixer's cooperation or very impressive investigative work of the authorities. I've never used mixers because I've never felt the need to do that, but I do believe that some people can use mixers for privacy reasons rather than money laundering. Then again, it's not like a company can check which reason its service is being used for, and mixers are very convenient for financial crimes, so I'm not surprised that the authorities cracked down on it.

Of course this is the most shocking news I heard today. Some of the other mixing services still advertised on the forums still seem safe, but they are on the government list. I don't know how these kind of things can affect bitcoin, but I don't think anyone should blame bitcoin even though it is used in many illegal activities by some people.

I don't expect the government and its authorities to blame bitcoin in this case, but I do expect the government to blame those who misuse bitcoin for their illegal actions.

Mixer avatar? Checked!
Mixer signature? Checked!
Doesn't that make sense? Checked!


Speaking of, has anyone come up with some smart quote to replace the now not working links?
I tried to play with it to add a in memoriam or #privacy forever but it went so bad I just kept the old one.

Sad stuff for the bitcointalk community, as their campaign's revered as one of the biggest campaigns here. In any case, I don't really have much of a say in this other than I fear that they may go after other mixers in the market, because as of now what I get from this coordinated pincher attack against chipmixer is that the government sees cryptomixers as "bitcoin mix, bitcoin can't be traced anymore, mixer bad, mixer money laundering" awooga bullshit.
Which begs the question of why in the hell are they specifically attacking mixers when the problem is still at large? Scammers, thieves, all of those entities still roam free and are still availably tricking people out of their hard-earned money! Stopping mixers from operating isn't gonna solve the problem, and for me this is just a lame attempt just to say "hey, we're doing something please praise us". This too, now that you pointed it out, I'm beginning to formulate some conspiracy theory in my brain that leads me to think that they are attacking mixers and will continue to attack the industry to tip the balance of power in their favor once again, since all of their banks are falling down under whilst bitcoin isn't showing signs of stopping.

Only time can give the right answer. Based on the seizure it looks like the authorities have got solid evidence against the mixer service. If not it isn't possible to seize and shut down the service all of the sudden. One of the reputed service provider accused and shut is completely unexpected. Most of the participants of the promotion were much experienced users, they could've never thought of being into a campaign that had promoted an illegal service support system.

This is also a good wakeup call for all the other centralized services and altcoins (eg. Tether, Ethereum, Ripple, BCash, ...). The governments could shut them down all the same and make the same exact claims they made here (used for illegal activities) and arrest the centralized authority of them (like arresting Butterin and seizing his tens of millions of premined ether).

Oh my Gosh!
This is sad news for all privacy enthusiasts that have developed an enthusiasm for the Chipmixer Bitcoin tumbler site. I could remember some years ago (probably 2-3 years from now) it was BestMixer that was seized by the authority and also read when Theymos advised the use of 2 or more privacy services when anonymity is the top priority.
This brought up a question, apart from anonymous and no KYC exchange like Crypton Exchange is it possible to have a Bitcoin tumbler site that cant be seized by the authority?

Maybe! But nobody knows, as last time i checked the report on which they were saying one of the mixers (that still promotes here) has been used for money laundering by NK and i can see it is still running (no hate or offense just sharing the fact). But as you well said everyone has their own agendas and these agendas are in favor of the economy. I just want to say we can bear this loss, maybe not the ones who have worked but things will sort out, i feel also sad but that the way of the globe.

You are totally right, As i mentioned everything has its own Bad and good uses but i do not want to blame of offend anyone or do not want to make any statement that i regret after so, let's bear this.

hehe, is it used for money laundering? If yes, then I will be happy too if the same happens. I think i should add few more words as i re-read my post and it looks like giving the vibe of hyyyy wow this is banned and business will run. but that was not my impression i was trying to say, bad things have a bad end. if the mentioned one has the same then i am ok with bad end.

---

note* i am not an expert or high-rank member of this community i shared my thoughts according to my mentality and knowledge and idea about technology no doubt Mixers has a hell lot of good uses but that uses if being used for the wrong purposes then its a shame and in that usage, a platform end is also sad. If any of my words upset or are no right then i seek forgiveness because my intentions were not to offense someone but just to share my thoughts.

If Chipmixer is a known mixing service that has been seized by Europol then let's have that thought that everything can be seized and turned off by the authorities, Europol or Interpol.

The amount that they've taken from the service was really a lot of money.

Was it them or it was bitmixer? I'm not sure if it was also blender.io? I can't remember the exact one but yes, it was another mixing service.

things some people will never learn

mixers ARE flagged as money laundering services and a higher risk of facilitating illegal activities ..

mixers are not a privacy tool. regulated exchanges actually watch users that have mixed coins far more then they watch regular users
you are not hiding by using mixers, your actually ending up being spotted and seen more by using them

you need to realise that laws are real.. and that using privacy coins and anonymity services does not absolve you of a law nor make laws dissolve.
laws dont disappear. they still remain

it just means it takes longer for people doing illicit things to be found. where by the only safety is if you play with such small amounts you just get lost in the noise and become not worthy of chasing

money is not 100% fungible
when you get an income from an employer, its treated differently by the tax office to money you got from a loan, lottery win, relative, investment account. or street hustler/drug dealer

yes swapping and mixing does produce more varied % of fungibility the more its mixed to create more noise and limit the % of risk of relating to criminal funding.

but at the same time using a popular advertised service known to be used by the dark markets actually cuts throw the noise and gets funds flagged more.. and by using a service with a higher majority of darkmarket users.. innocent users end up with a higher % of that dark money being passed to them

i do laugh when people want privacy but then advertise/promote where they throw their funds publicly
these comedians like to shot themselves in the foot

This is historic news, it is not surprising though. In this day and age, it is surprising to learn that Chipmixer was even online for more than a few years. It is intriguing to learn that all of the user data was stored the whole time and more intriguing to think about how all of this data will be handled. That is also quite a tidy sum of bitcoin collected and I feel sorry for those that are now caught up in the mess. It will be a tough journey getting those back.

get the hint chip mixer is dead....
.. your not going to get paid next week. the funds are gone

no reason to promote them for another week
feel free to change your signature any time you want

Read the campaign thread. DarkStar is holding the week's campaign payments in escrow (and I mean *this* week's).

In fact, the address contains 1.30807482BTC, which is sufficient for at least 3 weeks. If this week is paid, what will happen to the rest of coins for the coming weeks? It is approximately 1 bitcoin.

This is actually one of the sad stories I must have heard today and this was similar incidence that occured with Bestmixer and now it's chipmixer and I still wonder how government just comes from the blues and present some accusations without even giving a prior notice that's if they didn't give at all.
I also fear what the fate of other mixers would be because it now seems the government has placed mixers as targets and they're the very industry that is prone since tye source of their customers funds isn't mixers concern, and they also make it very difficult for government to track or monitor the financial activities of it's citizens and hence they're trying to bring down those mixing firms.

It's most likely going to be sent back to the chipmixer,  I don't see any reason why it should be promoted for now since the site is not working.

Surprised after seeing some of the news here, I continued to read several articles to find out more and indeed now the site has been confiscated by the authorities and whether this will be sorrow for those who have been using ChipMixer/.


Well it's true because the mixer is about their privacy to mix coins but the government clearly considers it as money laundering in their mind, this is excessive for me and indeed the government just wants to get involved with all the big money from all transactions in the mixer, really the government continues scraping bitcoin in any way so the government always legalizes what is not in line with it.

Seems to target Mixers again. Occasionally we have seen crypto mixers have been Seized. This isn't a good sign for crypto users or those who care about privacy. Allegations of money Laundering are just a reason to shut down such a big Bitcoin mixer. But they don't like Bitcoin actually and just trying to create FUD. The bad news is they Seized the funds as well. I am not sure if still, Tor link works for mixing Bitcoin. Hope users won't be affected anyway since data hasn't been stored.

Do you guys remember a few years ago there was a very popular mixer out there? I forgot the name, but it was huge.

One day they just close up shop. They didn't get seized but they figured its better to close down instead of being arrested by authorities. Anyone remember the name? its killing me.

disagree with both of you


Europol or whoever else could target:

• city of london
• malta
• paris
• zurich
• frankfurt
• talinn
• copenhagen
• luxembourg
• amsterdam

...and probably several other money laundering centers if they really wanted to (maybe city of london and zurich might be technically less feasible, but w.e.)

the only difference is that money laundering taking place through banks in those financial districts will always be conducted by the politically well-connected, and organizations such as europol only exist to pretend to target high-level sophisticated criminals, not to actually do it.

All the charities, military/intelligence agencies, churches/mosques, NGOs, think-tanks and big corporates wash their dirty money through mainstream banks, the city of london and the various offshore tax havens across the world exist exactly to facilitate high level financial criminals


think about it. what industries, providing what goods or services, does the British pound actually even represent? there's been virtually nothing to speak of being exported from the UK for decades and decades now, the British government themselves would be the first to concede that "financial services" is all they really do (weapons are the only vaguely unique thing the Brits do, and it's inherently a very limited endeavor)

and so as an organization with alot of money, what possible reason would you ever have to do any business through London (or Luxembourg, lol), a financial services center that's sole business is it's own casino complex? crime is the only conceivable answer



maybe

it'd be interesting to see exactly who would get shut down from that bunch, supposedly Tether has some quite well connected (i.e. politically) people from the US involved

with Chipmixer, it seems quite likely to me that they've been doing increasingly less volume over the years, as Bitcoin adopters are likely to be getting gradually more risk-averse, are technically adept and fast learning. You'd be nuts to use mixer web sites at almost any time, the best you could hope for was to get scammed, because the other most likely outcome was that the websites were sucking as much information out of your mixing transactions as possible (and selling the data to whoever)

chipmixer getting busted this week is possibly even a case of "good day to bury bad news", what with all the bank busts (none other than Credit Suisse is apparently teetering on the precipice as we speak...). why that timing? if you want to get everyone to pay attention to bad bad crypto, you can pick a better week for it. they've had over 5 years to bust mixing websites, and they choose this specific week? ::)

Everything related to privacy is criminal to the government and this has been the major challenge in the decentralized asset market, what the government want, is control over the privacy-oriented developments and they're perceived as illegal.

The fun part is, whatever the government ban always thrives and let's hope Chipmixer will be back stronger.

Before they came up with this move, I am pretty sure that the authorities already have done their homework.
I don't think they will be enforcing such seizure without basis because the company like Chipmixer can easily appeal with the verdict.
But right now, this is indeed a sad news for all of us. Chipmixer campaign is one of the long running campaign in this forum.
And certainly, this site has helped a lot of crypto users in preserving their privacy. However, the government is seeing this on the negative side which is laundering at one aspect.
Mixers should now be on the look out as they can possibly be the next target of their government.

point is if its a stupid signature(your words)
of a shut down service (your words)
which this topic is showing is involved in illicit activity..

would you want to continue advertising it... well i guess money speaks louder then personal opinions

..
i do hope though that you are "stacking sats" (saving) so that one day those sats add up to a point where you can be self sustainable to not need to rely on those sig campaign/ other campaigns that promote things. and instead live freely thus not needing to put your personal opinions to the side for a income

If my memory does not deceive me, the admins received a request to view user data related to the Silk of Road case or the mtgox case. I don't remember exactly.
Overall, I think that the site team is smart enough to hide its IP addresses, and therefore it is never easy to track them, and it can also be imagined that they are able to relaunch the service again using other servers.

Warrantless search and seizures of internet domains and assets, outside of a legal court process have questionable legality They don't need to prove money laundering occurred, or even that a crime was committed. They can simply shut down whoever they want on a whim. Which could be considered a breach of due process and basic rights. Innocent until proven guilty, implies neither the media nor law enforcement should have the power to serve as judge, jury and executioner.

I have toned down the content of my posts. So as to not reflect negatively on chipmixer. Maybe I can be a little more honest about things now?

I noticed a few posters on this forum with chipmixer signatures writing many single line posts this week. As if they had been warned and knew this was coming in advance. If law enforcement is around, they have probably monitored this place for a long time.

If I lose sig campaigns as a source of income, I have to try to find a way to make a million dollars, instead. With whatever time I devoted towards posting here. There isn't a whole lot else to do atm.

Its Bitmixer

One of the Largest Bitcoin Mixing Services Closes its Doors
https://news.bitcoin.com/one-of-the-largest-bitcoin-mixing-services-closes-its-doors/

Yeah, i do remember that they had closed up their doors and didnt wait for such thing to happen.
I was expecting for mixers to be ended up on the same path but for Chipmixer it did last for a while
but not really still ending up on the good side.