Bitcoin Forum

Is it legal to run a mixer in the US? How about in other countries? If you do run a mixer, what laws and regulations do you have to follow?

I'm not exactly sure about the laws in the US, but my understanding is that they haven't fully "embraced" bitcoin yet, and I'm fairly sure that mixers are in the gray zone, i.e., not-yet-outlawed (legal for now). 

Hopefully someone with knowledge of this will chime in, because I'm interested in the answer as well.

Surely it's a state by state thing. I would've thought if you were in NY you'd have to have a bitlicence because you're handling customer coins even if there's zero fiat involved.

From Wikipedia

The regulations define virtual currency business activity as any one of the following types of activities:

receiving Virtual Currency for Transmission or Transmitting Virtual Currency, except where the transaction is undertaken for non-financial purposes and does not involve the transfer of more than a nominal amount of Virtual Currency,
storing, holding, or maintaining custody or control of Virtual Currency on behalf of others,
buying and selling Virtual Currency as a customer business,
performing Exchange Services as a customer business, or
controlling, administering, or issuing a Virtual Currency.

Hm. I suppose states would have some control, but I would imagine that there are also federal level regulations about this.

if you remain in the altcoin only territory there is nothing they can really do, cryptocurrency are not taxable directly if they are you can build a server on another country if you have someone there, so it's tax free and rule free

You can run things for now unless they are not disclosed and doesn't get completely popular in front of governments, as after that, you will be paying taxes for the same if you just expose it yourself to them...

Even Bitcoins are not legal at some places, but people are still using it hiding it from their governments, so does the mixer thing...

question here would be are you prepared to deal with law enforcement
it's somehow similar to running a VPN service
sooner or later they will be asking you questions and asking for services.

I don't think an anonymous mixer can ever be legal in the US. Think about all the KYC regulations involving crypto exchanges and no profit tax paid on the profits.

But that's where the question of legality and illegality takes place...
Isn't it possible for someone to do it in a decentralized and "anonymous" manner???

I am fairly certain that all of the KYC and AML stuff in exchanges are for the fiat that they handle.

Check the bitlicence wording above. You could be all crypto in NY state and it looks like you'd still need one. Shapeshift.io quit NY and that is mainly all crypto.

Running a money laundering service, whether it be fiat or crypto currency would be considered illegal especially in the United States. If found doing so would come with similar consequences to fiat.
While running a mixer would be illegal, many are operated in the crypto currency and have not (yet) been seized.

I think the mixer has to apply for money transmitter license as it receive and send a large amount of money.

I believe that it is criminal money laundering at a minimum without a license and without adhering to KYC and AML regulations.

You would probably need to contact the federal government, each state the service is run in and the state of every user for regulations, licensing and applicable laws.