Bitcoin Forum

I have been sending my coins to some gambling websites and casinos which, at the moment, do not have my KYC and I think they won't ask for that in the future as my coin sizes and winnings are not so big.

So, what do I do?

I send them to a gambling site of my choice, play there and keep my coins there for some time, then withdraw them to another address which is fresh and new but on a different wallet that was newly created.

So how can this be mixing?

Well, I get a new address every time I send coins to my casino account. Next, I send those coins from casino to my personal wallet but the one that I create every time I need a withdrawal or else, I just send them to the exchange where I sell them. If I cut that exchange part, where is my identity revealed? And if I'm anonymous during this process, shouldn't I call this a way of mixing?

It can be yes, but I have doubt that it can be traced if someone will investigate. I suggest also to read the TOS before you will be doing this, it might you have a problem upon withdrawal from the gambling site you've chosen.

The right way of mixing? Nope, this isn't the right way of mixing aside from the real mixer service. Because your Bitcoin tumbled so many times.
Anyway, there is a related thread about this long time ago, [SOLVED] Can Gamble Sites Used as Bitcoin Mixers? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493550.0) OP marked solved the thread and probably OP was satisfied by the answer.

I don't consider this mixing. There was no mixing, in the first place. All the wallets involved are your own. The addresses where the Bitcoin came from and the addresses where the Bitcoin is going are all addresses of your own wallets. There was no mixing, therefore. They're just hopping from one of your addresses to another.

A few transactions of this kind may not necessarily reveal your identity but since all these are actually linked together, there might be a point where your identity is recognized.

Whereas, in using a mixer, the BTC you send from one of your addresses is not the BTC that arrives to where you would want it to be sent.

No this is not mixing.

Casinos wallets are well known. Casino owners may be obligated to give information to whom those transactions came from or went to. They have your IP and email.

you can be tracked by this method.

It's same in case of a casino too. Almost all of the centralize services like exchange, casino etc are kind of mixers. Imagine, you sent BTC from address A, you can 100% be sure that when you make withdrawal, you will never get the input of your deposit address. So, yeah, we can call this kind of mixing.
There's a problem though. I'm sure you don't use TOR or VPN to visit the casino and it can easily get your footprint I think.

It's not the right way but maybe you can call it as "improvised mixing"?
Online casinos and exchanges are not bitcoin mixers.
What you are doing is "hopping" like Darker45 said.
The more hops you do, the more obfuscated your transaction becomes but, as bitmover said, casinos and exchanges still keeps records of your accounts.

I don't understand why would anyone would go to such lengths when they can just use mixers or coinjoins.

Your identity will not be revealed as you don't make any KYC on gambling sites.

The address can be monitored, but not you, it's only revealed the moment you will exchange your bitcoin to an exchange as its easy to determine your name and the source of the bitcoin you are transferring from.We can call this mixing but it's useless if you will not sell your bitcoin to an exchange where your identity will be revealed.

So if you are asking if, would the authorities know I'm gambling?

Yes, because they can track the wallet of a gambling site whether regulated or not.

Do you request a change in address from the casino each time you make a deposit and a subsequent wthdrawal? If not, then it would mean you are moving coins between same addresses but changing the final recipient.
Address A --> Address B --> Address C
Address A --> Address B --> Address D
A link can be established between the first two fixed addresses, which will have inputs in the final transaction, and with that other variable addresses can also be linked to you.

Most gambling sites use cookies and would also require you register using your email. While there may be no KYC needed, these details can be used to track down your IP address.

They can also block you or removed your balance if proven that you send money came from illegal activities or have a complain to the address that belong to you. Read the tos carefully before using gambling website as mixer since it will also became problem later.

Who are they? Are you referring to the authorities?
I think what OP is doing is just mixing his coins, it doesn't necessarily means that transactions are illegal, maybe one way to gain privacy without using a bitcoin mixer.  Once OP use an exchange to trade the coins, regardless of where it's coming from, when there's an investigation that will be conducted by the authorities, they can trace the transactions because there's a trail, which is the blockchain, some just use mixers to make it harder to trace by the authorities but it's not impossible to trace.


A must but I think it's not relevant to what OP is asking though.

short answer is no, you are not really anonymous.

but it depends on who you are trying to hide from.
for example when you do this, an average Joe on the internet knowing your address can no longer track your coin movements, balance,... or maybe a family member or a friend that may know your address.
but if it is the government, the tax man,... that you are trying to increase your privacy against then they won't have any problem tracking you. for starters the centralized services you use (eg. the Casinos) will most probably keep a record of your IP address, browser finger print and other information you are leaking while visiting their website and your bitcoin addresses. additionally since it is a centralized service and is probably known, their addresses can be linked together and with some chain analysis they may figure out your coins too. for example if you deposited 65,479,531 satoshis and withdrew 65,024,111 then there is a good chance the second transaction belongs to you too. that becomes harder the more popular the service is and the bigger difference between the deposit and withdrawal amounts.

No it is not, IMO.

You guys remember the number of threads that used to come up in "Scam Accusations" blaming casinos for freezing their funds? When we tried to make them say what the source of funds was, there never came any reply and those threads were left without followup.

Now it is possible that the user was being cautious to reveal the info because it might hurt their privacy. But it is again possible that the sources were tainted and the casino found it out and probably brought it to the notice of the authorities. Now this guy is posting his one sided story to this forum and thus unable to follow it up with proper information.

Note, if you want to use a mixing service, use a legit one, dont use different casinos or exchanges or anything else thinking that you are wiping your trace, you are wrong the data can be traced back.

That's not the "right way of mixing" and right practice too. First of all you are going against TOS of gambling websites and there is high doubt you may look suspicious for them very soon and then your funds will be gone i.e. account blocked. At the same time, it's not a practice people follow, gambling websites don't work like bitcoin mixers and aren't mean to be used for this purposes. At some point, yeah, it adds more anonymity to you but at the same time mixers are far better and the best choices out there. At least see some statistics, millions of coins are mixed through mixers and most famous hacked that happened were using mixers and not casinos.

I believe what you are describing in the OP is somewhat similar to what ChipMixer does. They allow their customers to gamble with the coin they are mixing for the purpose of obfuscating the link between what they sent to CM and what they are receiving from CM.

I would assume that most traditional casinos will keep extensive logs of their customers' transactions, and may give a list of deposit and withdrawal transactions if asked by law enforcement.

If a casino is not explicitly saying they do not keep logs, you should assume they do. If they are saying they don't keep logs, you will need to determine if you can trust them or not.

They discontinued this a long time ago. You can't bet chips anymore.

It depends on what your final aim is.

If all you want to do is break the link between a known address of yours and your new one for general peace of mind then it's good enough if you're not bothered about them knowing about you.

Using a service like a gambling site or exchange to obfuscate your coins certainly won't give you proper anonymity even if you haven't handed over details. They'll know the origin and destination of your coins plus your internet details so that one choke point will have a complete route for everything.

For me that's enough most of the time as I don't want just anyone freely following my coinage. If I was serious about keeping under the radar it definitely wouldn't be good enough.

In a way, yes, but you are not properly hidden on those services you've mentioned if the end goal is to hide your tracks completely.

Gambling operators can be asked by authorities for records of players if they are involved in illegal activities and fraud. So if a gambling site has your KYC and you used this scheme on their platform, they can tell that you did this and you're busted.

However if you're just merely hiding tracks without a care for complete anonymity then this is OK, though not as good as what mixers actually do. The trail is severed but they still have your info at the end of the day.

With the chip system, there is also no need to. You can deposit one large transaction, and withdraw multiple smaller chips of a variety of denominations over the space of days, weeks, or even months, or you can deposit several small transactions over the space of days/weeks/months and withdraw one large transaction, or any combination therefore. Although you are obviously trusting a third party with holding your coins, which is never a great position to be in, if you are comfortable doing so with small amounts then you can deposit and withdraw different amounts from ChipMixer every time you use them, making linking inputs and outputs based on value near impossible.

I can't think of a single benefit of using a casino or gambling site as OP has suggested over using ChipMixer. The privacy is better, the security is better, the fees are better, you never have to worry about your account being frozen or locked, and you have complete control over the fees of your withdrawal transaction.

Nah, this wouldn't a good way to mix your coin. The platform of gambling knows your every detail including your mail and IP. So you already revealed your identity there. The gambling platform or casino knows your receiving BTC address as well. On the other hand, the exchange would make trouble when funds coming from gambling sites. Because some exchanges do not accept funds from gambling and they would freeze your account due to money Laundering accusation. At this point, you are on risk, by selling peer to peer you are throwing the buyer on the same risk. That's why using bitcoin mixers is quite important and mixer companies doing their businesses as well. Basically, you are thinking that you are anonymous, but it's not really.

Yes, I would never use a gambling service to mix my own coins. There are far better mixing alternatives out there to use.
Mixers, Wasabi, Samourai, Joinmarket: 2double0, do a great deal of research on the matter.  8)

Though it's given that casinos also collect information but they don't collect as much information the exchange are requiring us for their KYC. For the gambling sites I have been using, an email address would already be enough and I'm good to go, names and other information, we can put a different name as they don't require an ID or any document for identity verification, so that's what OP is trying to convey, an anonymous gambling is different from exchanges requirement as most of them are regulated.


I'm pretty sure he knows about mixers, but what he is giving is just another way of mixing coins, in his own perception.

Add into the equation that many many gambling sites already have their wallets identified by these blockchain analysis companies, and also some exchanges already identified them, you don't want to mix with gambling sites unless you do want your coins tagged as gambling and people knowing YOU are a gambler;)

And we are correctly pointing out what that perception is flawed.

Even although some gambling sites don't collect full KYC as you say, they still keep a complete log of all deposits and all withdrawals, all IP addresses, browser fingerprints, etc. They might not be able to link your coins to your real name, but they can very easily link your deposits to your withdrawals, and link all of that to your IP address and browser fingerprint. In most cases this would be enough for an attacker to de-anonymize you through other means, since most people do not use Tor, have very unique fingerprints, and leave traces of their activity and identity all over the internet.

Even without going through the gambling site at all, since as slaman29 says the vast majority of gambling sites are well known to blockchain analysis companies, watching deposits and withdrawals over a period of time and simply matching timestamps and amounts may even be enough to link your deposits and withdrawals.

I would say that not only is using a gambling site in this way not making your privacy any better, but in many cases it is actively making it worse.

That's exactly correct perspective insight. Because if you will use a custodial wallet it might your Bitcoin will freeze or hold or much worst if your account will be blocked by them. This is a very common case in my country because most of us as crypto holders have a custodial Bitcoin wallet called (Coins.ph), other's didn't know that if you will depositing Bitcoin from a gambling company to this wallet the result might be blocked your account.

Never use gambling sites, exchange sites of mixing your Bitcoin if the purpose is your privacy. It is irrelevant to the Bitcoin mixer services that you can completely hide and protect your privacy. Fueling a small amount of fee just to cover your identity and use legitimate mixers will have a good result and the right way of mixing.

Ditto! That's the way I see it too. Given the very low security literacy of most bitcoin (and internet) users I would never suggest a gambling site (or an exchange) to be used as a mixer. That is simply very stupid.

Bad idea mate.
Instead safely scramble your transactions route .. you are in high risk of losing money while playing those what so called 'small amount' , gambling never fails to suck your money no matter what , this is just a method that highly recommended to avoid not just because of it was not anonymous at all. Clearly you are risking it all.

I've tried this method back in the days where i just get into crypto and i believe everyone else who have the same experience as me would agree with this point of view. You are not mixing it , you are losing it in no time.
Rookie way to hide your transactions, this method work only to delay the tracking .. you'll get uncover sooner or later no matter how high the gambling site has a privacy policy on how they can't and won't reveal its users information.