Bitcoin Forum

What happened:

It was supposed to be instant exchange. They have good reputation on BestChange (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5404706.0).

When you go to their site all they ask you is the direction and email address.

I have tried to exchange 0.256 BTC, one ChipMixer's chip, to Monero.

After receiving enough confirmations they changed order status to "Mistake" and accused me of trying to money launder stolen funds. According to their AML bot funds that I have sent are stolen. I have tried to explain them what Chipmixer is and it was a waste of time. They keep insisting on:"Risk of your transaction - Stolen 100.00%".

Conversation was going on inside their internal "messages" and now I can't find all that they asked me to refund me, but it was from source of funds, who sent me, conversations and screenshots, can't even remember everything and in the end KYC (ID, selfie, etc), but most of what they asked I couldn't provide even if I wanted to. It's the first part about source, who, how, links, transactions, conversations, crazy.


I kept asking them just to return funds to the same address from which they received the payment. And they keep repeating that they can do it after I send them all "supporting documents"

Website: openchange.cash

Amount Scammed: 0.25598350 BTC ($4,838.92)

Proof of Payment: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/1f393532c18ac21a21b17ea890579a6d071f008400b2c73ced357cd59fe194d3

PM/Chat Logs: Some of them disappeared from their internal messages system (I don't see old messages) and I haven't took a screenshots, but there is a public conversation on https://www.bestchange.com/openchange-exchanger.html


UPDATE:

A couple of days after public posts, threats that I will expose their previous wrongdoings, their use of fake identities and everything else that I have found, and proved them that I do have some info, like names and addresses of their Australian Paypal accounts, that I will report them to every hosting, domain registrar, etc. they accepted to process my exchange after answering a few questions, without KYC, but to keep 10% as fee because transaction is high risk.
So, I got 90% back.

Just to let everyone know, they have at least one more site: imexchanger.pro

I'm finished here.

It's funny that you signed up to use openchange.cash but did not read their ToS and AML policy that were right there before you confirmed
https://i.imgur.com/ucSG7yW.png

Sincerely, who is to blame here?
Did you sign up on gun point?
1. https://openchange.cash/terms_of_service/
https://i.imgur.com/iwfOynZ.png

2. https://openchange.cash/privacy_policy/

yeah that's certainly one thing I've learned, is never put any money into anything with a TOS without reading it first completely for sure.

I can see chipmixer addresses being flagged as well by the terms of that TOS, I bet they just googled your sending address and went uh, nope.... So I'm not really too surprised I guess... Sorry for the loss OP. :P

Please read my post again.

I have used Bitcoin! BTC!

Not Payin and I don't know even know what is Payin and how it works.

But OP you know that Chipmixer is to lose track of the source if the coins used by people who want to hide the track
How they knew it's from Chipmixer? You just went saying to them the funds is mixed ! ? I don't blame them then
Chipmixer is for coin laundry. Add to it TO Monero the other untraceable coin .
It doesn't need a bot to mark you in a red flag just hear Chipmixer and Monero I think you too obtained that coins illegally otherwise why laundering it at the mixer and then Monero?

The funds have an AML score of 94.89999999999999 according to my system. It is clearly 100% money laundering and they had all the right to take your funds if they have any kind of AML policy.

Chipmixer is not recommended to use as mixer, it is detected 80-85% of cases. Try to use coinjoin wassabi, but there you have to extremly careful (there are some settings you need to apply) for a real mix.

I would avoid using anti-privacy currency exchangers. Their privacy policy essentially reveals they treat bitcoin as non-fungible.

What's even funnier is that you have no idea what you're talking about. There's nothing in their policy which prevents someone from using mixed funds. All they say is that they disapprove "suspicious" transactions, whatever the hell that means:

ChipMixer exists to protect your privacy. Thanks.

Wanna share us how you calculate money-laundering score according to the chain?

It is trivial to detect coins which have come from ChipMixer due to their unique chip funding transactions, but that's not the point. The whole point of a mixer is to break the link between deposit and withdrawal, which ChipMixer does better than any other mixer out there. If some scammy centralized service is attacking bitcoin's fungibility by refusing mixed coins, then the solution is not to give up your privacy but rather to never use that service.

Wasabi spies on its users. If you want privacy, you should never use Wasabi.

---

Openchange's terms, which Bitcoin_Arena has linked to above, are pretty clear. Incredibly scummy, but still clear. OP should have read them before sending his coins. You could maybe try arguing based on point 7.6 - that you have the right to independently verify the result of their risk assessment. As you say, the coins came directly from ChipMixer, so claiming they are "100% anything" is just an outright lie. They have no idea, and their risk assessment is wrong.

And I must say, the way they are handling this issue on https://www.bestchange.com/openchange-exchanger.html is atrocious. This should be a warning for everyone to steer well clear of this service.

To protect your privacy ? If owners of that site got caught Wich for sure someday as it's a service mostly must be in the deep web it's like life in prison money laundry is not a joke buddy.  
To protect my privacy is a good way to put it.
Im sure now you connected by some rdp or onion browser to reply here
At least let people who use your laundry service knows how dangerous and illegal act they doing don't put it there like it's okay to use the service.
Here just one example if small mixer operator got himself caught
https://coingeek.com/bitcoin-mixers-are-illegal-and-anonymity-is-dangerous/


To the OP don't go around saying to people I use Chipmixer and send your KYC ... You will get your self in serious troubles. Hope you realize what you are doing.

I will try to find a paper from last year where it is very nice described how chipmixer coins were followed in a couple of ransomware cases; this is why i specified regarding wassabi that you may need to some custom changes to it.

Citation needed. All the evidence we have shows that a very small minority of coins which pass through mixers are associated with illicit activity, and the vast majority come from users simply looking to protect themselves from the mass surveillance of centralized exchanges.

I mean, yes, but what's that got to do with anything?

Mixers aren't illegal.

The operator was arrested for operating an unlicensed money transmitter. That does not mean mixers are illegal. Also, coingeek is a CSW scam site.

Hey everyone. I use ChipMixer.

Got caught for what? Accepting bitcoin? There's no regulation that forbids the acceptance of "tainted" coins, because there are no "tainted" coins to begin with.

I'm glad you agree.

There's nothing dangerous nor illegal to using a mixer. Money laundering being illegal doesn't make mixing illegal just because a minority does both.

Check this out: https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/recommendations/Updated-Guidance-VA-VASP.pdf

Not illegal, but without laws, still applied in a weird way, courts rulled 95% of time against the use of mixers

Openchange.cash's Contact page (https://openchange.cash/contacts/) shows an email address. No phone number, no company address, no country of origin. That alone is reason enough to never send them any documents, and I'm pretty sure such an anonymous company doesn't care about "combating the financing of terrorism (https://openchange.cash/privacy_policy/)" and the other big words in their AML policy. They like to refer to "international law", which is as broad as it can be:
What does that even mean? A totally anonymous website is going to report Janyiah201 to some "international government"? I doubt it! This sounds like it's designed to keep your money. The policy on the .cash domain only refers to the .me domain.
According to BestChange (https://www.bestchange.com/openchange-exchanger.html), OpenChange.cash is from Russia. That's the closest thing to an "address" I found.

It doesn't worry you that an anonymous entity demands people to share their legal documents? It worries me! I'm okay with legit companies following the law in the country they're registered in. I'm also okay with totally anonymous services that solely rely on their reputation.
But I'm not okay with anonymous entities cherry picking which rules do or don't apply to them.

They call it a privacy policy, but it has nothing to do with that.

It's non of your business, but I have been using it before I wore the signature, and I'm sure others have been using it too.

Show me a regulation that says that I'm forbidden to mix bitcoin.

This is one of the million reasons people (should) avoid using centralized exchanges. There's a high chance I have my funds frozen because they don't like my inputs. I don't deal with services that require my personal data to make a purchase.

I'll have to argue we're talking objectively.

It's funny how they accused you for money laundering like you tried to exchange much larger amount of coins, instead of just 0.25 btc.  ::)
Openchange needs to return your coins if you don't want to pass kyc verfication, but Janyiah201 I think you should always read terms and conditions before using any centralized exchanges like this.
There are always risks when you are using obscure exchanges like this, and I think BestChange should change some things and add warning for exchanges that have strict KYC rules like this.

So much legal hypocrisy it makes me puke...

Tell me is it LEGAL to buy japanese decurret account verified, google play developer account, and is it legal to sell Japanese PayPal account?!  ::)

Where is it illegal to ensure the privacy your funds?  I'm in a country where law enforcement has to prove a crime was committed before they can seize funds, and there's nothing illegal about using methods to remain private.

This isn't about ChipMixer, or any other method of obfuscating your coins.  I earn a bit of bitcoin here, and I don't want people from this site following my money around.  I use obfuscation tools to break the link between me and the money for privacy and security, and that's all.  I have no illegal funds, I have no criminal intent, but I do value my privacy.



WTF are you talking about?  You're the one saying that privacy is only for the criminals.  If you're so confident you have nothing to hide, why don't you post your KYC?

---

Wasabi is a joke, they are blacklisting UTXO's that don't meet their chain analysis requirements, so they only mix funds that don't need mixing.  What's the point of that?

---

Consider how many US dollars are in circulation right now, and consider how many of those US dollars have been used to pay for criminal activity.  When you spend those dollars at a grocery store, are they going to check the serial number of each dollar you spend to make sure they've not been stolen from a bank, or suspected of being used to pay for drugs?  

Give me a break, this is nothing but governments trying to hold on to the power they gain by controlling the method of trade.  They don't care to stop crime, they care to preserve their power and control.

Take a look at the United States Constitution and tell me where you see that the Federal Government has the right to control currency, I dare you to find it.  The advent of bitcoin makes the US dollar and the Federal Reserve unconstitutional, and power brokers everywhere are panicking!

https://i.postimg.cc/ZKr8BZCT/image.jpg

You two are clearly very new to the whole subject of cryptocurrency and its roots in cypherpunk, anarchistic and liberalist ideology.
I'd like to use this opportunity to suggest reading Bitcoin: The dream of Cypherpunks, libertarians and crypto-anarchists (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5255623).

If you really understand the importance of privacy for security and freedom, you would immediately see that the words you're spouting now are the propaganda someone made you believe; perfectly in line with the whole 'you have nothing to hide, have you?' narrative.
I'm not surprised seeing your line of thought when speaking to people who have no idea or no interest in Bitcoin, but I am surprised when I come across it on a Bitcoin forum. My most plausible theory so far is that 'crypto enthusiasts' who buy into 'I have nothing to hide; so here have all my data, KYC, and whatever else you want'-nonsense are people who see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies merely as investment assets, nothing more, nothing less. They see them as a way to maximize their fiat holdings (hence the term 'fiat maxi'). But I'm interested to know about other theories.

Let's clear some things up.
First, this is one of my old posts:


So, I did send (by mistake) funds from a freshly mixed address directly to Bitstamp, coins that were just claimed, I didn't have a single problem to date with them, I'm full KYC (a thing I regret doing it also) but Bitstamp, probably the worse exchange when it comes to controlling everything has had no problem with it.

Second:
No exchange can confiscate your funds legally without a court order, they can freeze your account for a period but doing so because you have failed KYC would require them to inform the authorities where they operate about this transaction immediately. There is no such thing as these funds look stolen then we freeze it and we unfreeze it the moment you send us a pic of an id, this is illegal on so many levels it doesn't even need to be discussed.


Please do quote any law from any country, territory, or fantasy world on this planetthat says something like this , since FATF says something different



ToS terms don't grant you power beyond the law, nor can they shield you from complaints or lawsuits.
Of course, this is a no-name exchange with no location and no physical address but normally such ToS wound't stand a chance in any civil or criminal case.

That's what qualifies their behavior for a scam accusation. It's odd that this exchange isn't open about who they are, where they are, and all of that, but at the same time demands information from their customers.

It's probably on a 'trust me, bro' basis.
Real-life picure of saxydev:
https://i.postimg.cc/fbJKTfRG/image.png

That's good to keep in mind! On the other hand, I doubt anyone is interested in going to court against an exchange unless it's BTC1+ ...

Very well explained. This is what makes "Openchange" look like a scam!

You are right here. No exchange can hold your funds permanently, if there is a problem authorities get involved.


In every country that has decent money laundering laws you have to. Any input of your money need to be declared and knowledge how/where you got the money. You can't be paid by cartel to develope candy websites and have no troubles..

I understand that most of you focus on the privacy and fuck the government policies, but laws are laws and laws are accepted by us; you can't just fuck them, this is why we live in a society with rules.


This is what I do 14 hours a day. I have a big database which works like a spider and identifies several inputs which are already tagged as used in illegal transactions.

To your knowledge, out of 40k addresses and 3.1 mil inputs (all used for illegal activities) i got, only 4% have been through a mixer (those mixers I can identify, such as chipmixer).

At this point, it looks like Openchange is no different than Freewallet.

Yes, I use Chipmixer and Monero, just like I use VPN and TOR, because I have something to hide, it's my privacy.

Why I tried to exchange ChipMixer's chip to Monero, I could explain, but does that matter?


WHAT DOES MATTER:

• They have TOS, but if I wanted to settle this in court, which court have jurisdiction? They don't have company, they hide their names.
• I have found that Openchange lie and hide their identities and use fake names and fake verified accounts to make payments.
• They are Russians, based in Russia, speak very poor English, but they use, for example, multiple Paypal accounts with American names and addresses. And there is probably more, I'm still investigating.
• They are in business for a long time, but the current domain is relatively new, because their previous was seized. I still don't know all the details.

Who would send their documents and selfie and many more things they asked to site like this one?

Exactly that's why I'm asking you about the laws, show me the laws where an exchange a bank, a money transmitter, a marketplace,a merchant can confiscate user funds or merchandise on suspicion of money laundering. AML rules don't give you rights on any property of a customer nor does a picture of an ID validate the source and legitimacy of those funds. /end.

If a cop stops me in the middle of the night because my plate seems stolen he won't let me get away if I just show him a legit ID. If he realizes the car is stolen he won't drive it to his house and wait there for the real owner to come and pick it up if he has matching keys while all the time using that car for UBER deliveries.

If an exchange determines by his own means the funds are stolen it can only freeze the assets and wait for his filling with a money-laundering task force to be accepted or solved, if a prosecutor denies the case then it must return the funds no matter what his beliefs are or face criminal charge themselves. /end


You can do whatever you want in your spare time, you are no prosecutor, you are no judge and neither is openchange so your tagging just as theirs has zero value in real life outside your make-believe fantasy.

?

sexy?

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1596452256370&uri=CELEX:52020DC0605
https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/aml-ctf-lawyers-training-manuals_en
https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/210720-anti-money-laundering-countering-financing-terrorism_en#transfer (this is revision of a treaty)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX%3A32014L0042&qid=1541682532524&from=EN

Thank you for showing me you know how to use google...
The first paragraph is no law, in case you didn't know that.

The first link:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1596452256370&uri=CELEX:52020DC0605
Is a briefing, you can see large in bold letters "communication"

The second link:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/aml-ctf-lawyers-training-manuals_en
Is a training manual for lawyers, probably it will come to a surprise for you but all that is for criminal cases, aka things that are being solved in a court

The third link:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/210720-anti-money-laundering-countering-financing-terrorism_en#transfer (this is revision of a treaty)
Yup, it's revision:

So openchange uses laws from the future just like you, nicely done

The fourth link:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX%3A32014L0042&qid=1541682532524&from=EN

Finally, let's see some laws oh wait...but let's leave it like that:


Neither you nor openchange are competent authorities


Neither you nor openchange are a court so your final decision means nothing


Has openchange offered support to the competent authority to preserve the funds, do they have a court order mandating a confiscation order?

And the final sexy paragraph:


What order? Has openchage filled a case with a prosecutor in order for this order to exist?

Next time when I ask you to quote the law, please do QUOTE the law, don't be a smartass tossing google links you haven't ever read. I've done this kind of stuff in the EU for enough time to know when somebody is bullshiting about being a lawyer or knowing what laws are broken in a case

@stompix I am very sorry for you! I give up on it. But I wish you the best in your ventures, you sound like an ancien collègue who knew everything but irl he was left in the sun. On sunday you can text me on discord to continue the conversation and I'll show you where you are wrong on at least 18 states in EU.

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand the whole point of a mixer or why someone would want to keep their privacy. And for the record, I've never completely KYC with any crypto service ever, and I have no intention of starting now.

I wouldn't trust them to refund your money even if you did send the things the are asking, and the risk of your documents ending up on some darknet market or being used by someone else for some shady activity is extremely high.

---

I've never used BestChange, but I find it very questionable that they allow exchanges to simply close claims like this. OP has obviously not been refunded, but OpenChange have now closed his claim 24 times without resolving it. Looking back through their previous ratings, there seem to be a number of other issues which have been closed without being resolved. BestChange therefore show OpenChange as having an unblemished 100% positive feedback, which is obviously not the case. Such a system allows any exchange to keep a perfect record so long as they are more determined than their victims, who will eventually give up renewing their claims.

Well, the laws that exist at least in Europe illegitimize privacy in the use of funds at least from medium amounts.  Let's make an analysis.

If you get paid for a job that either shows up directly on a tax return or you are legally obligated to declare it. In other words, the income from your work is not private at all. If you get money for selling a house, for example, neither.

In the European Union, all transactions between member countries that exceed 10,000 euros ($10,400) are automatically reported to the authorities, and those within countries have lower limits, such as 2,500 euros. Those of lesser amounts are obviously registered and available to the authorities if they request the data.

If you go to a country of the European Union, being a legal resident in the country, to open a bank account with "private" money that exceeds 10,000 euros, they will not open it if you cannot prove the origin of the funds.

There are countries like Italy, Spain or Portugal with a cash payment limit of 1,000 euros, which means that if you want to buy a fucking TV worth 1,000 euros you can not pay in banknotes and your name is registered in the transaction.

I would put the question the other way around. Do you think there is much time left legally speaking for services that are dedicated to obscuring the origin of funds? No upper limit at the top? In other words, an Italian buys a 1,000 euro TV in Italy and the transaction is obligatorily KYC. He makes a deposit in his bank of 5,000 euros and gets automatically reported to the authorities who are probably going to ask him to justify the origin of that money, and meanwhile that same Italian can mix 50 Bitcoins "for privacy?"

That leaving aside that I am not very clear on the basis of what legal vacuum mixers operate, because in normal conditions a company that provides services to Italian citizens, should charge VAT and pay it to the government of Italy, which I doubt very much that the mixers do.

I'm quoting 1miau again

Not saying Janyiah201 should procure fake identity information, just saying it could be a way to try getting those funds back. Assuming they do return the funds by just seeing some ID document, which of course makes no sense since it doesn't make 'criminal origin funds' suddenly 'non-criminal', but what do I know.

Indeed; I got a positive impression of BestChange since browsing Bitcointalk, since respected community members wore the BestChange signature. But this case makes me hesitant to continue trusting BestChange in general. If BestChange ratings can so easily be manipulated, it begs the question of what use that site even is.

The whole tax subject is valid, but it's wrong that it requires giving up your privacy. For example, LoyceV has to pay wealth tax (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5358678.msg57880723#msg57880723), but it doesn't require giving up privacy, since just has to tell the amount he owns, without providing addresses or public keys; thus the total of his holdings is known, but not when, if, and for what purchase, he moves funds in and out of his wallets.

Laws in general, I mentioned the EU because a wannabe lawyer here thought he has a clue how things work, but AML rules are basically the same everywhere and in every country, Russia in a member of the FATF same regulation when it comes to this should apply. The main thing here is that exchange X, considers those funds to be illegal, coming from a theft, anything else, both those courses of actions are illegal:
- seizing the funds and releasing them on a simple ID check, personally I don't believe they have a license to even deal with personal checks
- seizing the funds without informing the cybercrime or equivalent police branch and not giving custody of those assets under the mentioned law enforcement

The thing those exchanges are doing is simply random scamming people and getting those funds for themselves, since as you mentioned, it's quite hard to think that most of them would file complaints about smaller sums, and if they do all the exchange has to do is send him his funds and grab another victim.

 
Financial transactions in which the ownership of funds in question is changed through the transfer of funds that do not include any other services are excluded from VAT. Chipmixer would simply act like those coin machines in which you dump all coins and you get a banknote or the other way round.

Exactly. Cash isn't considered a "good" option of merchants for most countries nowadays, because there are regulations that make them believe so. In my country, Greece, it is not legal to make a purchase worth of beyond 1,500 EUR with cash, as they say, to avoid tax evasion. You must only make it with bank accounts, credit/debit cards and cheques.

But, cash is used to protect your privacy, and therefore this regulation can be translated to "forbidding privacy protection to avoid tax evasion". If you want to get goosebumps, check other countries' cash payment limitations: https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/shopping-internet/cash-payment-limitations.html. If your country doesn't have a limit yet, be sure that it'll someday do.

I'm stop trusting BestChange, and this incident was just the icing on the cake. They've been advertising other services that treated bitcoin as non-fungible in the past, with no problem. They even added a rule (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5217201.msg59989513#msg59989513) in which they recommend against talking about Ukrainian war, just because one of them had a political belief a stranger didn't approve of (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5217201.msg59946739#msg59946739).

They put profit above business integrity.

I think we have to fight for every bit of privacy we have left!

There's no VAT on exchanging money, right? That would make buying dollars very expensive in Italy, and just as expensive to exchange them back after your vacation.

I'll take this post from another topic here:
It now sounds like OpenChange uses deposit addresses owned by another exchange, and not their own funds. If that's the case, the Reserve: $175 804 859 (https://www.bestchange.com/openchange-exchanger.html) probably isn't correct.

We have similar laws here in the US, cheating on taxes isn't a good idea no matter where you live.  But that's all it's about; i.e. they want to make sure to tax every penny they can.  Recently the Biden Administration announced they want the IRS to be informed every time an American deposits $600 of cash (or more) into their bank account.   Yes, $600!  Obviously that's not about crime or terrorism.  

Let's be real, if these same politicians cared about crime they wouldn't be enabling it.  They only care when they can use it as a bludgeon to gain more power, like "Gun Crime."  Just look at all the liberal DA's in major US cities who are decriminalizing drug crimes, thefts of up to $1000, or running over a mother pushing a stroller (https://video.foxnews.com/v/6307255731112).  So, if you're a law abiding citizen you better report $600, but if you're a repeat offender you can get away stealing $1000, and possibly attempted murder.

These laws are intended to keep us under their control and afraid.  As for reporting the movement of your money, these laws are sold as an effort to prevent terrorism, or thwart drug cartels, and again I'll point to the politicians' actions rather than their words to decern their real agenda.



This isn't an argument to stop using mixers, this is an argument for a revolution.  

I didn't know how this ratings work but I certainly don't like it and I don't understand why would positive feedback be any different from negative feedback.
If they say how someone could abuse feedback for negative reviews, than I can say that anyone can do exactly the same thing for positive feedback to create fake reviews.

This is crazy, I don' understand how people accepted this rules :o
So that means you can't even buy a laptop, bike or cheap used car with cash if it's 1,501 euros?

I think they are probably using Binance and other similar centralized exchanges like that, and they use their own account for trading and taking percentage earnings.
Any exchange that uses third parties should notify users about that in their website.

Why? They don't have anything to hide.  ;)

Yes, because a minority uses cash to launder money, and we're really sensitive when it comes to minorities. We're willing to have our privacy invaded to discourage them do so. It's bad on behalf of them.

It is true, I had not thought of that, but I imagine that it does not operate as a regular company of which the Ministry of Finance of the respective countries have record, and less operating with Tor, I would not see much sense.



Forget about revolutions in Europe to defend privacy. People accept it because in those countries it does not affect them and they see it as a measure against the rich. In those countries, the average monthly net salary is around €1,300. Add to that the fact that people have a mortgage, a car loan and some credit card or personal loan debt, and that they pay more and more frequently by credit card or cell phone, and you get that the vast majority of people have not seen €1,000 in banknotes in many years.  Add to this the mentality that the state is the best guarantor of citizen welfare, and you will see why no one protests.

Back to the central topic of the thread, I agree, especially with stompix who has explained it very well, that the exchange does not have the legal capacity to hold some funds that it suspects are laundered without informing the authorities, but I have been reading the comments on:

https://www.bestchange.com/openchange-exchanger.html

and something doesn't add up:


Are they saying that it is an entity external to Openchange that has freezed the funds?

That's exactly what it sounds like. See their other comments:


And this quote from their Terms of Service:


Sounds like OpenChange need to come clean here and tell OP which third party service is currently holding his coins ransom.

OP could also pursue this avenue:

I would be asking for the results of the audit so he can independently verify how they have decided that mixed coins are "100% stolen", since that is clearly and provably incorrect.

This is how I read it:
Anonymous scammer: Please pay me, on address X.
Customer: I've sent you 0.256 BTC.
Anonymous scammer: It's confirmed on the address, but the address isn't mine, so I didn't receive your payment. You're now going to have to send me all the documents I need to be able to commit identity fraud. Or you'll never see your money again.
Customer: WTF?

Openchange.cash is asking for identity verification data. I do not see they have a registered company. If they are not legally registered then how a client will send their ID to them?

How authentic these reviews (https://openchange.cash/reviews/?PAGEN_1=533) are? I feel negatives were not displayed but only the positive reviews are there.

https://i.postimg.cc/8C0vFN19/Screenshot-1.png

This is interesting. Some high ranked website including bitcointalk logo but the image link is taking you to the index page.

Did anyone ever saw any of their team members in bitcointalk forum?
I doubt they will register here and explain anything, but there is still hope to get this information via BestChange forum members.

I can't wait to see this ''audit''  :D

This is standard practice with most websites and services, they only show positive feedback with questionable history.
For example, I know ledger model X hardware wallet had many complains from customers (battery, firmware issues, etc), but if you check their reviews page it has almost perfect score:
https://shop.ledger.com/products/ledger-nano-x?view=reviews

I got 90% back. First post updated. I'm tired and done with this shit.

So, now the scammers gladly took 0.0256BTC of funds that are, as they claim, "Stolen 100.00%"? This has nothing to do with AML, it's a plain scam. They just didn't like the attention this case got.

@Best_Change: what's your stance on doing business with a "company" (which looks like nothing more than an email address) that takes "stolen" money?

I noticed that 10% BS a few days ago already. I'm not sure if they quickly added it.
They're basically saying they can selectively scam 10% of any deposit. @Best_Change are you delisting them now?

That' weird, i remember it doesn't exist few days ago (should be July 1st). But it's definitely not exist a year ago according to the archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20210613120712/https://openchange.cash/t%D0%B5rms_of_service/ (https://web.archive.org/web/20210613120712/https://openchange.cash/t%D0%B5rms_of_service/)


I also wonder why old message disappear on https://www.bestchange.com/openchange-exchanger.html (https://www.bestchange.com/openchange-exchanger.html) gone.

I have mixed feelings about this. You have received 90% of your funds back but they have effectively confiscated 10% for reasons that cannot be justified. I hope you do not give up and continue chasing them for the 10% they stole.

Why are Best Change associating themselves with shady exchanges? If it were not for Best Change you would probably not have have found the Openchange website.

I never heard of any exchange that is charging extortion fees like this  ::)
It's better than nothing, but did openchange returned your Bitcoin from the same address you sent them, or they used some different address?
For me it's obvious all their ''high risk''kyc transaction talk fee is bs, and they are using this as an excuse to make extra shady profit from their customers aka stealing.

They can't retroactively change terms like this and steal 10% from people like they did from Janyiah201...
This scam exchange should get blacklisted, everyone should avoid using it, and BestChange needs to have this information seen on their website feedback.

Just laughing at those ToS


So basically if the funds seems to be stolen they are charging a 10% money laundering fee.
I can't wait, hope I don't have to go to discord to see how the wanna-be lawyer saxydev is going to explain how this 10% is a requirement by directive 69 of the FY constitution.


Wait, so if it's forbidden, then why do you accept them and take your 10% money laundering share?  ;D


And releases them after taking a 10% cut.
At this point, there is nothing left to debate, scammers, law breakers, liars, so I'm waiting to see bestchange next move...

 

That's a very good question for @Best_Change to answer! Now we can't even see the original posts anymore, including opening and closing the same complaint about 20 times. And that makes me wonder how many other complaints have been censored on BestChange.com by removed posts!

OP paid from this address (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qm6dhnqg5hk9qlvjsenueurec2aq6qdgcr5f8aw), which didn't receive anything back. The exchange moved the funds in this transaction (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qwvqcjwla50lzahgdu3tpr8ewzdkngu4xd6k3hz), to an address (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qng0keqn7cq6p8qdt4rjnzdxrygnzq7nd0pju8q) that has received a total of 52145.32510318 BTC. And with that, the "100% stolen" BS story is completely forgotten.

Lol. Saul Goodman charges 17%.

For this particular exchange, this means when a new visitor who has no idea what happened for the last few days visits BestChange. He see all the positive reviews for Openchange.cash. It's all fresh for him. He decides to send coins from mixer to the exchange. After another long conversation Openchange.cash refunds 90% and keep 10% (fee or penalty). This is nice business.

This address with 52k btc received (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qng0keqn7cq6p8qdt4rjnzdxrygnzq7nd0pju8q) is owned by whitebit

Thanks for the update!
Honestly, if you do have evidence and info about them that they don't want to be public; since you got those 90% already, why not use that information to get the last 10%? I'm not saying you should do this, but hypothetically, if they don't return the full amount, you could just deliver on those threats. At that point it's their choice, right.

I will also add imexchanger to my blacklist! How did you link that site to openchange?

Yeah, this is absolute bullshit from BestChange. Their reputation is now destroyed, in my eyes, after this course of action with openchange. I don't understand what they have to gain from this; it's not even like openchange is a big business partner; they have dozens of exchanges on their site.

https://i.postimg.cc/CM2K8wPC/image.png
Like: how do they just cancel a claim, just because the user went out of their way to find doxxable evidence and got part of the money back? This is not how reviews work. I read through Amazon 1-star reviews, where people update about e.g. having received a full refund, but still leave the review on 1 star, since the product was simply bad. Those aren't turned into 5 star reviews (or deleted) by Amazon, after the company refunding the crappy item.

Wow, you read something new everyday. Can't believe they actually sent 90% back after they were successfully exorted ;D


But now I'm curious if they actually laundered the money. Did they send back 10% of his funds, or 10% of some other higher-risk funds?
With their ToS update sounds like they worked out that they could be onto something here, instead of simply refusing mixed funds...

Get the remaining 10% from Bestchange who referred you to that Exchange.
For sure they got a lot of commission as referral revenue from the exchange by letting the exchange remove the bad reviews and let the good ones.
 

Who says that BestChange referred them to this exchanger?
Is not possible that he reached that exchanger directly and not using Bestchange service, in the end, I didn't see in the first post that he stressed something like that.

It is possible, but that Best Change still has that scam site on their list does not look good to me. Regardless of whether they referred the OP or not.

A site that only provides an email address, freezes funds and upon protests only returns 90% is a scam, and within the detailed explanations Best Change has given on many other topics, he has not gone into this one.

yes, you are all right. the Openchange site and everything I found on it does not inspire confidence in me, in my personal assessment, there are many more parameters to treat them as a scam, than as a trustworthy exchanger.
I am of the opinion that they must be removed from BestChange monitoring, if nothing, due to the 10% retention. that is theft.

My previous comment is a reply to @aew, who reaches into someone else's pocket and decides how the money will be distributed.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5404706.0
Maybe you can see in this post here then.
It's the same OP right ? Se day of opening scam accusation against the Exchange he opened against Bestchange
 Also let's say he didn't find  the Exchange from your site.
Still read that other post whatever there it's true.  
I even did try by my self and  Exchangers allowed to leave bad reviews and leave the good ones.

Oh wait you wearing Bestchange signature so .... What will you say rather than argue in a side thing to leave the whole point.

Btw : Bestchange representative admit to allowing Exchanges rove bad claims automatically. So go ahead argue about side things
If I wear signature if a business with bad business practices I will feel stupid too.

OpenChange is a scam. That much is clear. What is yet to be seen is how BestChange address this issue, and the wider issues with their site that it has revealed (e.g. their feedback system).

aaand?!
how exactly did you conclude that bestchange should return the money kept by openchange?
at this moment we are talking about your conclusion, not about whether the rating system on the site is good or not.

It was funny reading you categorising the 10% they retain as a money laundering fee because that is exactly what it seems like ;D

Terms and conditions (or terms of service) have been used by all sorts of businesses to justify confiscating funds from their own users but in many of those that have been brought here in scam allegations over the years, it is clear by far the majority were cases of selective scamming, And that is what seems to be the case here.

It is absurd Open Change can insert clauses within their Terms that allow them to withhold 10% of funds on the basis of suspicious activity. I have never read anything like that before. Their 9. Other terms clause is equally laughable when they state their website cannot be used for fraudulent and illegal transactions.

Like you, I am also waiting to see what Best Change do next. Will they want to keep their association and affiliation with Open Change? Will they actually read the Terms and Conditions of all the exchanges before listing them, in essence them being vetted before being listed?

Hello everyone! It's OpenChange.

Let we tell you our point of view.

Some user came to our website. He was informed that the incoming transaction would be subject to AML verification. He also agreed to our User Agreement that:
- the funds sent will send to the crypto exchange
- he knew that his funds were high risk / dirty
- sent funds will be AML checked by the crypto exchange
- he understood that they would be frozen by the exchange and that verification would be required
Please note that we do not require verification from the user, but only transfer data to the crypto exchange that requests this information. Since the funds are sent to a cryptocurrency exchange, we have no way to make a refund without receiving additional information. When the user provided this information, the funds were unfrozen by crypto exchange, credited to our account and after refund was made.

About crypto exchanges:
Using crypto exchanges allows us to convert cryptocurrency into USDT immediately after being credited to the account and fix the exchange rate. If we accepted funds to a cold wallet and sent them to the exchange, then order processing would take a very long time and users would complain about losses due to the volatility of the exchange rate. We inform users that the funds will be accepted to the crypto exchange.

About 10% fee:
Many times we have lost and frozen our own funds due to users sending high risk funds. Questions about these transactions appear after we complete orders. You can't even imagine how much money was lost due to users like this one. This is our rule. If some user does not agree with our rules, he can use another exchanger.
Since the user did not provide any evidence of using ChipMixer, we have every reason to believe that the funds were stolen. Refusal to provide additional information confirms this. Many times, such freezes allowed the thieves to be stopped and the funds returned to the rightful owners.

About slander:
The user wrote that we are cheating someone with Western Union transfers and with PayPal, but this is a lie. No one knows where he got this nonsense from and he did not provide any evidence. You all just believed him and did not check.

What do you think would be the right thing to do in this situation? We are interested in hearing your answers.

P.S. We have decided to refund 10% to the user and have already done so. We hope it will help stop the conflict.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Can you confirm your Bitcointalk username in openchange.cash/bitcointalk.txt, so we know you're the real owner?

@Support OpenChange: Maybe you can answer some questions:
Where is your exchange located?
Who's behind it? An anonymous email address isn't enough.
Why do you use a third party's deposit address without announcing that?

This makes no sense.

Claims like this require evidence. Who's the rightful owner, and how do you find them after mixing coins?

@Janyiah201: can you confirm this?

This particular phrase makes no sense in this place. Do you want to define us how you recognize "dirty" funds?

Here are a few questions:

• Were the funds frozen because they were part of a mixer's transaction?
• If yes, don't you find it offensive to confiscate customer's money because they chose to protect their privacy?
• Are you willing to tell us the criteria you identify "dirty" funds?
• If not, don't you find it fraudulent from the customer's side to, not only disapprove but also confiscate their money, just because it doesn't meet your potentially arbitrary criteria?
• Had you ever thought of asking the user's inputs, so you can judge if you can accept them according to your criteria?

Sysadmin will do it asap.

Our personal located in Russia. We inform about the use of the crypto exchange in the User Agreement. This is insignificant information, the vast majority of users do not need it. If we include too much information on the order creating page, then clients will complain that the information is unreadable. Users will always find something to complain about.

This issue is dealt with by a professional team of crypto exchanges.


It may not matter to you, but it matters to us. Is it OK for you if you receive high-risk or dirty money? I don't think so.

You can find all the answers in section 7 of the User Agreement and our first post. Let's not duplicate information.
We write the rules in the User Agreement not for discussion. If you are not satisfied with the rules of using our service, you have the full right to use other exchangers.


I think since we gave enough justifications and made a return of 10%, this conflict can be considered solved.

I'm wondering why a 10% refund, not the full sum?
According to your ToS or rules, whatever you say, you are confiscating money because you want to prevent funds from being stolen and you are trying to get the fund back to the rightful owner as you said above. Now, since you have refunded 10% (no confirmation yet though), how will you send the full money back to the original if this fund is stolen?

Trust me, it doesn't sound like you are looking for the rightful owner. Instead, it sounds like a scam. If you were telling the truth, refunding 10% or a single cent doesn't make any sense. It seems you are trying to shut him up with the little sum.

This is what I can see in section 7.
Can you please check the bold part and say what was the reasoning of confiscating fund in this case?

Solved and stolen by you or what?

there are many illogicalities here.
You hold 10% of user funds to protect your own. now there is obviously no danger to your funds and you return the remaining 10% to the user.
would you have returned it even if this drama had not happened on Bitcointalk?

how will you behave in the next similar cases? Returning 100% depends on your frozen funds or if a negative story is started about your business (like this one)?
why are there even cases where you kept 10% of such funds, although, in the end, it turned out that it had no negative impact on your accounts?

Welcome to Bitcointalk and nice to see you finally joining this conversation.
Can you please tell us what third party exchanges are you using, and do you use one or more accounts with them?

He said coins are coming from Chipmixer and it's not so hard to prove that.
I don't know how you expect him to show you that he used that mixer, and I don't think this should be done.

So what happens when he send you his kyc identification, and you have totally different kyc detail for your account in third party exchange?
It doesn't make any sense that sending any documents would unfreeze your account and coins, if names from documents don't match.

It's not like I trust him or anyone else blindly, but something obviously changed quickly and you suddenly changed your decision.
If it was not because of his claims, can you explain what happened that you first refunded your customer 90% and later full amount?
After all, how can I know that you really openchange team member and not some troll who is just wasting time?

You can use other exchanges that don't have such strict rules, maybe use decentralize exchanges, or ask customers to first give you address to check if it is high risk or not.
After that you can decide if you want to accept his coins or not.

Good decision, but you need to make some changes in your website, so it things like this won't happen in future.

Cash is also used by a minority of people for illicit activity, just like bitcoin. There's a high chance, hereby "high risk", for your bank notes to come from drugs, smuggling, guns, organ trade, child porn etc., and be therefore "dirty". Would you ever disapprove a $100 dollar bill?

Of course and it's okay, money is fungible. What is not okay is when a "professional team" dictates me what I have to consider as "tainted", "dirty" or "high risk" as it happens completely arbitrarily. It's pointless.

Section 7, as said by Little Mouse, refers to this:

Further questions, then:
- What does it mean to "include the use of <service>"? For example, how can you know that my output has come from a mixer? And if you somehow do, will I delude you if I spend it to one of my wallet's addresses a couple of times, and then send it to you? Do you check the history of that output?

I'm definitely not satisfied with those rules, and I'm the first to avoid your service, but you have a reputation to maintain here. The "if you don't like our service, go use another one" argument doesn't help the situation here (if it ever did).

You're running a seriously dangerous service which arbitrarily confiscates people's money. I'm bucking against.

What happens if you contradict your own clauses by posting one thing here while stipulating another on your website? For that reason you should duplicate the information as it would allow others to see if it matches.


First of all, I have not seen any acceptance by the victim that Open Change have returned the 10% they stole from him because he has not been here since 4th July but let us go with that assumption. I know some forum members will follow your lead and deem this matter closed but from my vantage point I think otherwise and several members of this forum will probably think the same.

Would you be able to explain why you decided to return the stolen 10% to the victim?

Was it because of the negative publicity the whole drama brought and you were worried about long lasting damage to your Open Changebrand or was it something else?

Were you really going to return those funds to the victim if this issue was not escalated here in the forum?

Let's have an imaginary answer of your questions.

Yes - we do not know if it was really yes
No - we do not know again if he is telling the truth

YES/NO - whatever it is, how will you verify?

Again YES/NO is not verifiable.

YES/NO is not relevant again.

It does not matter why they decided to return 10%. What matter is, they did. We should learn to leave something and let it go once solved.

This is more practical. At least it's suggesting an action to take.

Wait, the user sent you their funds; then you somehow determined that his coins are 'dirty' / 'high risk' and sent them an email that if he wants to proceed with the exchange, the coins will be 'AML verified'? Did the user get an option to cancel the exchange and get the funds back? Because you make it seem like the user directly agreed with all of these points, but I'd appreciate if you could make it clear if they did so implicitly through your terms of service or explicitly.

Also, I will use this statement as further proof for my blacklist (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5401468). I know it's hard to convince someone who bought into the belief that there are good and bad Bitcoins and that companies can arbitrarily decide what coins belong to which category; and that it's even more difficult to get a company to change action. However, I accept your opinion and therefore guarantee you a permanent entry into that list.

So you're not even an exchange; just a 'front page' that uses an exchange's API in the background?

And you keep 10% to be able to recoup those losses of yours or what? That's super sketchy and scammy behaviour.

Many times? Do you have any proof to back this up? Because all these 'dirty funds' stories seem much more like more or less elaborate ways to scam people out of their hard-earned money and those funds are never returned to supposed victims. After all: how do you know? How can you know that someone scammed me and then tried to exchange the stolen funds with your service? Do you work with the FBI or what? I doubt you do; in fact, I've never heard someone go to a blockchain analysis firm after being crypto-scammed, and it's also just not their business. If someone gets robbed, they go to the police, where they have 0 chance of getting their funds back.

---

[1] Make it clear you're not an exchange and just a front-page for another exchange and disclose who that is.
[2] Provide a support contact of that exchange so users can go there to dispute any issue with your / their service.
[3] Disclose who you are and where you are located.
[4] Drop any notion of dirty and clean coins, if you want to be taken seriously.
[5] Otherwise, make a clear statement that you're an anti-Bitcoin, anti-privacy company that believes bank notes should be tested for traces of drugs every time they're spent, which makes them basically unusable, just like the way you envision Bitcoin to be used.

Read carefully, at the moment the user has received the full amount.
We are not engaged in investigating theft or finding the rightful owner, this is what the crypto exchange is doing. If they approve the transaction and credit the account, we complete the order. If not, we request additional information through them.
We do not make a scam. We just exchange currencies, but sometimes users with high-risk money come along and make problems like this. For some reason, you all took his side. I absolutely don't understand why. Who can explain to me?


Funds were frozen because their risk was Stolen 100%


The user has already received all his money


We will think about it.


We use WhiteBIT and Binance


We only resend kyc identification to crypto exchange support, we don't make a decisions.


Since the user refused to provide any information, I talked to the support of the exchange and they agreed to receive at least a textual justification for the funds. The user provided this and the funds were unfrozen.


Check my username https://openchange.cash/bitcointalk.txt


Very few exchanges provide multiple addresses for deposits. We will think about it. Thank you.


Victim? It's funny. High-risk funds are sent to me, but you call the sender a victim. I can not believe this.


I want to stop this discussion. Perhaps we will revise our rules regarding AML and additional fees.

Based on what/whose analysis? The coins came directly from ChipMixer, meaning it is impossible for you to say they are 100% anything (unless you are the first person ever to be able to break ChipMixer). You have absolutely no idea where those coins came from, and claiming they are "stolen 100%" is nonsense.

Your terms of service say the following:

I would like to see the results of that audit, who decided the coins were "stolen 100%", and how they reached that conclusion.

No bitcoin is inherently "high risk". If you subjectively decide that some particular bitcoin is high risk and you don't want to accept it, then you return it to the customer and say "No thanks". You don't keep it for yourself and extort the customer in to risking identity theft.

Check this

http://joxi.ru/l2ZozEVClok8NA

How reliable is that? I see that it has a very high risk score and a 100% probability that they are stolen funds, which does not fit coming from a mixer, because the supposed stolen funds would have been mixed with others.

I would like to see a more detailed analysis to see how they justify their conclusions.

You still haven't answered me this question:
If there's a chance for the funds to be "high risk", why can't the user first confirm they aren't and move onto depositing to your exchange right after?

You're also avoiding my other questions. Would you mind answering? Even typically.

The link doesn't load from Tor Browser.

http://dl4.joxi.net/drive/2022/07/08/0040/0610/2622050/50/1ba25355b2.jpg

Well, here is your image displaying properly, now we all can see it.

Can you shed any light on where you decided to use a 10% figure confiscating user funds? I mean, why not raise your percentage to 50%, 100% or even drop it to 5% or zero?

Changed circuit for joxi dot net, and it loaded normally. But, thanks.

So, in summary, the AML report:

- shows the TX ID.
- shows the amount of bitcoin that is deposited to openchange dot cash, may I assume?
- shows groups of risk score.
- shows that the risk score of that transaction is 94.9%, with no explanation.
- colors it red.
- somehow concludes it's de facto stolen.

Perhaps, a little explanation might clear up the situation. You're likely going to get a feedback of the same color, though.

I love how they are digging the grave deeper and deeper with such explanations:


So exchanges down where you are acting like both police, lawyers, prosecutors and court orders and return the money to the victims based on what? The picture id? How where have victims reimbursed you just released flagged money?

FACTS:
-you took the money from the person who opened this scam accusation
-both you and best exchange claimed you're a company following AML rules and you froze the funds because you followed AML regulations
-suddenly we find out you're not a company, you have no license to operate, and you're no money transmitter so you're whole existence defies AML regulations and FATF rules
- despite the funds being flagged as stolen 100%, despite the user not going through any KYC, you forgot everything about AML regulations, you accepted knowingly stolen funds and you released the exchange for a 10% money laundering fee

In what alternative reality is anything you have done legally...


Of course, you do, there is no sane explanation that even a kid would buy for what you did

Just to make things clear:
If you would have frozen the funds, announced the authorities, informed the user of the case that might be opened against him, and offered him a chance to claim his funds back if the prosecutor would refuse any criminal charge against him, that would have been understandable.
You taking 10% because some script says so and telling us this is the law, this is bullshit!

Tracing back an input if I find an address has 0.xxx bitcoin then it could consider that it came from chipmixer since their minimum amount is 0.001 BTC with 0.001 BTC increments. But a single bitcoin user can create the same cheap and then spend it which will look like they are coming from chipmixer. Ideally, there are no valid way which will find out 100% that it came from Chipmixer.

Off - topic: Has anything wrong with ChipMixer clearnet?

I find it hilarious that they wave around some random 'tainting service database website' evaluation as if it was definitive proof of anything. :D
This is so unprofessional - either the people behind OpenChange are clueless of how all of this works or they are actually malicious. In both cases definitive signs of a service to avoid.

I don't have to explain why such a website link is no proof of anything. But just to reiterate: anyone can set up a little web server that does basic parsing of transactions and give them some random score. For all we know, such blockchain analysis can be (and often are confirmed to be) close with governments and other authorities; meaning they can directly censor people if we accept such websites' opinions as truth.

Most probably in this case, they flag anything that looks like it comes from ChipMixer as '95% risk' or whatever. I will check later with a ChipMixer withdrawal. Even if someone tumbled stolen coins through CM, there would be no way to return those funds to the legitimate owner, so there is no legit use in freezing them.
To OpenChange; if you're reading this: if the exchange you work with, uses such explanations to steal your funds; and then you try to pass these costs on to your customers, I'm sorry, but you're the stupid party in this business relationship. Your customers know that all this 'tainting talk' and 'risky transactions' is bullshit. Like: how is a Bitcoin transaction risky for you? It's the most irreversible way of transfering money; you got your coins, you're done. No amount of 'alleged risk' will result in an actual risk to your company.

---

This is the bullshit that results when people come into Development & Technical Discussion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0) (or 'Wallets'?) and ask about 'Bitcoin APIs' for buying and selling BTC. I have seen this more than twice in the last 9 months and just from the way those questions are written it becomes clear the guys who build this type of stuff are totally incompetent.
I am not sure if the threads have been deleted or if I just can't find them right now, but I'll link them later.

It appears that they use the AMLBot API to check for "tainted" or "high risk" coins, but I can't verify these results because it's a paid service.
According to the website, AMLBot (https://amlbot.com/) is operated by AML CORPORATION LIMITED, UK


I definitely agree with this. Judging by all of the above, OpenChange should be flagged for illegal misappropriation of user funds and avoided at all costs.

We don't side with: OP, we just want to help and solve the problem between @Janyiah201 and @OpenChange/you.

There are some inconsistencies I see here.
If you are part of the OpenChange exchange team, I think your words are too much for users of mixed companies like Mixer, you equate all users who use mixed services with the case experienced by: @Janyiah201, you guys think all crypto transactions coming from companies mixed with stolen coins, this is really overkill.

@Janyiah201, already explained here, that he doesn't steal, and he does some AML and KYC Verification, which you requested, Of course any user object, if the Verification carried out exceeds the limits of the KYC rules.


I looked at the AML and KYC Verification rules, which OpenChange/you guys are running.
openchange.cash (https://openchange.cash/t%D0%B5rms_of_service/)

Some points I see, openchange.cash implements AML and KYC Verification, burdensome one party/user of openchange.cash service.

Warning;
From the data I see, I dare to conclude, anyone who uses mixed services such as Mixer, etc., including gambling, like the data above, be careful making transactions to the openchange.cash service, high risk, you can end up as experienced by: @Janyiah201, use an exchange service which is not high risk for you and read all their rules before doing it.

It does bring up the question as to why exchanges are relying on third parties to define tainted vs. clean bitcoin.  Who gave these third party companies the authority to decide other than the exchange, and why do these exchanges think they're entitled to break the law based on some random third party's claims?

If Openchange was operating in the US, they would have their asses handed to them in their own hat for pulling this kind of shit.  The AMLbot they purport to be using is registered to a company that's based in the UK.  The UK must have some laws that protect consumers' funds from being frozen by rogue financial services.  It seems that if the OP decided to sue, the company behind AMLbot could be held liable for providing misleading, or downright false information.

It's starting to look like any exchange that contracts with a third-party AML "authority" is only doing so to shift blame when they decide to abuse their power.  

The problem was resolved. Due to public pressure, they gave in and returned the missing 10%, as they stated earlier. It doesn't make them seem any more legit / trustable as business partners though, since if the funds were indeed as 'super duper for sure stolen' and 'going to be returned to righteous owners'; they wouldn't/shouldn't have returned anything; neither 90%, nor 100%, no matter how much public pressure. However, the fact that they did return the funds to Janyiah201 confirms they know just as well as us that there is no way to tell if CM funds are stolen or not.
Just tried to scam over the wrong person (a Bitcointalk user).. ::)

Amen to that! This is the reaction I want to see from customers / Bitcoin users. If a service comes up with some arbitrary, hilarious money laundering / stealing accusations, do not give in; stop using this service. Having to give a bank all your personal information, letting wallets track your every transaction and letting other people decide if you're allowed to spend your coins or not, are exactly the things Bitcoin was made to destroy. That's why we keep saying this behavior shown by 'Bitcoin companies' is actually 'anti-Bitcoin'.

https://i.postimg.cc/R03v5tC8/image.png

I doubt if Support OpenChange is going to come back here, but just in case he does, I would like to ask him a question.

I can understand that the legislation of the country where you are located does not oblige you to put information about the company on the website, apart from the email you put. Another thing is that if I am fine with that legislation.

But it is inconsistent to ask for KYC documents while you do not expose anything about your company.

Can you give some more information about your company?

One thing is that the legislation does not oblige you, but it does not forbid you to share information about your company. Not sharing anything makes us think that the company simply does not exist, that it is not legally registered.

Besides, I agree with most of the things that have been commented here. For example, keeping 10% of funds that you consider stolen says a lot about you, and about the supposed legality of your actions.

That are good questions and I would like to see openchange answering on them, but in reality this magical AMLbot can one time flag address coming from CM as high risk, second time as medium risk, and third time as low risk... it's like lottery.
There are some free tools for testing this and last time I tested them it was giving medium risk for most coins coming from exchanges like Binance.
Now we don't have proof that openchange is using Binance and WhiteBIT but they claim they are using this two exchanges.

Let me play evil advocate here...
What happens if they only have multiple accounts at Binance exchange, and they really received warning and frozen funds by Binance.
They could easily prove this by showing us screenshot from that message and this would stop all speculations.
My question is what happens with those (unclean) coins that are now mixed with supposed clean coins, and how can anyone separate ''clean'' from ''unclean'' coins?
It's ridiculous concept  :P

http://joxi.ru/ZrJoxGqCQ4v9pm

Maybe we will add this feature in the future

We relied on statistics

The crypto exchange demanded to block this client.
All possible evidence, including screenshots, is accepted for confirmation.

As I said before perhaps we will revise our rules regarding AML and additional fees.

Allow me to embed the image from another host:
https://i.postimg.cc/Bvx51dt0/ecf9518afe.jpg (https://postimg.cc/jWSnp3zg)
So, you're saying the funds came from a hack 5 transactions and 8 years ago. Without verifying the chain evidence, even if this is correct, it makes no sense to blame the current owner of the funds. Just like someone can't be blamed if they received dollar bills that were previously stolen.
Luckily, the funds now moved to the address of a large exchange, so it's at 7 transactions now and completely clean, right? Don't you see none of this makes any sense?

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Allow me to emphasize this again:
@Support OpenChange: Pick a side :)

@loycev it is definetly same owner as the cryptsy hack, i sent the address yesterday to blackhatcoiner as PM, same as the one opensea posted from that scam aml service, the funny part is that this aml bot opensea uses it is considered by most people who work in aml in crypto as a scam. but the result is the same as the one i have.

This  story is Already over but signature spammers keep raising it. I'm surprised the exchange still paid 90% a reputable exchange will never pay back a dime after the OP admitted to laundry his coins at  mixing sites.

Guys I mean signature spammers you guys keep repeating same this again  and again and talk about stupid things

I surprised also those signature patrons pays for such posts .

If it's "definitely" the same owner, prove me how transaction - 1e7c498469369e90dfdd0c8258c6aa5325661553f441a2c6897d93b210f8ef67 - which spends supposedly stolen funds of 2014, has a direct correlation with transaction - 1f393532c18ac21a21b17ea890579a6d071f008400b2c73ced357cd59fe194d3 - wherein I only see some (conceivably) ChipMixer's chips being spent.

It might be over for pro-censorship folks like you, but those who wear this signature appear to be more delicate to privacy invasion, customer extortion for personal data, treating bitcoin as non-fungible and confiscating funds arbitrarily - generally, for breaking the law. Thanks.

The only proof which should be needed is to point out that the coins are very clearly from ChipMixer, which anyone who spends two seconds looking at the transaction can clearly see due to their unique chip funding transactions. To still state the coins are "stolen 100%" after you know they have been mixed means you either don't understand bitcoin at all or you are actively trying to scam.

What are you saying? That OP, who withdrew that chip from ChipMixer, also made the deposit which created that chip? Despite the chip being created almost 3 months before OP used it? And your proof of that is what?

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Also worth pointing out that AMLBot is also used by Antinalysis, which as I've pointed out in another thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5395035.msg59905002#msg59905002), flags lots of coins from large centralized exchanges such as Binance as similarly tainted. Its analysis is worthless. This is also evidenced by the fact that it thinks coins which were stolen 8 years ago, have moved 5 times, and have been mixed, are still "100%" in possession of the same user, which is utter nonsense.

No, you both get it wrong, first you don't have to look for a direct connection between those 2. I don't say the sender has to do something with criptsy or chipmixer at all. The bitcoin is directly originated from the criptsy hack in such a way that the coins received at the end by open sea are directly originated from that hack/stolen, also the model of the txo's reflects that chipmixer was used. It goes even more complicated because the exchange has no matter if the mixer was used or not. This transaction is a clear example why mixers can do a lot of harm.
But, I won't trust this exchange only because it uses that AMLbot (btw russians) which is a scam.

What does opensea has to do with this case? Answer us how are the funds from criptsy hack correlated with the OpenChange depositing transaction.

But, it doesn't prove it, unless ChipMixer provide us a signed message from these outputs, stating that it does. I can create 10 outputs, each funded by 0.256 BTC, and make you believe it's theirs, by the same reasoning.

If the exchange "has no matter" for mixer usage, why does it forbid it in their terms of use?

This particular case is a good example of why taint analysis can do a lot of harm.

AMLbot is designed to do one thing; taint coins in a subjective manner. That's the real scam.

The issue with your line of thought is that you assume if we flag coins as stolen, they will be returned to the legitimate owner. These funds have moved hands so many times over so many years and evidently also gone through a mixer that it's impossible to now ask the 'last owner' of said funds to return them. It's also nothing that ever happened; instead it's used as an argument to just confiscate funds. In this case, they were sent to an exchange's main address and jumbled together with all other deposits. So they don't actually care about returning funds to victims of theft, but simply keep them to themselves.

One thing I noticed from the Open Change representative was a clear lack of understanding exactly how serious this matter is. They have not really done themselves any favours by saying they have returned the stolen 10% of the funds to OP therefore the matter is closed. Their shady business practices ensure the matter cannot be closed on whim or their say-so.

I agree, Open Change should be avoided at all costs because there is a serious risk of them users having funds stolen.

I personally would not do business with them, as it is all nonsense. They are supposed to have been in business for many years? I don't know if they started implementing these rules on apparently stolen funds recently or it was the exchange they work with but the explanations they give don't make much sense.

Ok, bare with me, I'll try and explain this one after discovering OXT. The summary is: the coins weren't mixed between those two txs you reference for starters.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mLrED.png

On the left: 1e7c498469369e90dfdd0c8258c6aa5325661553f441a2c6897d93b210f8ef67 (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/1e7c498469369e90dfdd0c8258c6aa5325661553f441a2c6897d93b210f8ef67)
On the right: 1f393532c18ac21a21b17ea890579a6d071f008400b2c73ced357cd59fe194d3 (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/1f393532c18ac21a21b17ea890579a6d071f008400b2c73ced357cd59fe194d3)

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mL15f.png   https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mLcUZ.png

Tx 557ddcdd1bb1380a04c52748454314aca8f9ef68b75ea678e64b74152525b3af (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/557ddcdd1bb1380a04c52748454314aca8f9ef68b75ea678e64b74152525b3af) (top right of first image) has a single input (not a mix, just a breakdown):

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mLhR8.png

Hate to say it, but It simply looks like the thief has either no idea what they are doing, or got confused between their mixed outputs and "broken down" outputs.

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As for the "original mix (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/c7b46a79fd8887038bd3a8e884b04820038415a60e0b9d2c2f5bcff68a2687bf)" in 2014, prior to "1f393532" that is considered the stolen funds, this is a good example of how not to mix your coins basically.

Were mixers even working or being used back then? There was simply a lot of "private mixing" going on in this particular case ::)

• Numerous mainly high-value inputs are all consolidated to 1000+ outputs, apart from 1 output for 0.0961 BTC. Completely not how you mix coins if you don't want to be traced
• Notably 0.0961 BTC is the only unspent output from this "mix" which looks like it came from the input of 0.099 BTC (caught in the mix maybe and now considered "tainted").

For sure, someone else could of also decided to mix 1000+ coins, granted. Then if you trace back these so-called "mixed funds" that were consolidated, they are nearly all Cryptsy labelled addresses simply consolidated together to either single ANON outputs, with the error of what looks like a change addresses (secondary output), often interconnected between "mixes" or back to Cryptsy.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mLo13.png   https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mL4ew.png

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mL7Q9.png    https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mL9fN.png

Expanding a few more inputs and it only connects together more of these addresses with same pattern, as well as secondary output going back to a Cryptsy address:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mLBKa.png   https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mLiAo.png

So in summary, this would be a completely legit mix (centered), if it didn't all come from Cryptsy in the first place (with the exception of 1 tx accounted for):

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mL8IT.png

I only found one address that wasn't labelled (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/b2393b179187fea0f879b86597bedc8dcad12796e4e361cc99b0f39d42d5e55f) Crypsy entering this mix, but it was with 11 BTC, so couldn't of been part of it alone (with outputs being 1000+ or <0.1). This is why you don't do DIY mixing basically.

This is what eliminates the element of doubt that these coins were originally stolen is the reality and probably why they are considered 100% stolen as opposed to 25% "tainted" (mixed) for example.

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As for plausible deniability from the user in question, for sure, he could of received those coins in good faith from the thief.

For example in tx 557ddcdd1 (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/557ddcdd1bb1380a04c52748454314aca8f9ef68b75ea678e64b74152525b3af), the hacker could of paid for 30 nights in a hotel room costing 0.256 BTC up front, using 30 different addresses to pay. Or bought 30 different things for 0.256 BTC with the same transaction, gift cards, games, cds, who knows. The one receiving the Bitcoin likely wouldn't be checking to see if the funds were stolen or "tainted". 30 donations of 0.256 BTC sent to 30 charities? Anything is possible here.

Even before then, the thief could have purchased something for 15.6 BTC (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/557ddcdd1bb1380a04c52748454314aca8f9ef68b75ea678e64b74152525b3af), and the user in question was the one to have broken it up into 0.256 BTC increments, or maybe even their employer did before paying their staff. Only to find out the funds were "tainted", because they were stolen 8 years ago. Gutted. Why would the user come here complaining about 0.256 BTC if they still had thousands from that 11K hack anyway? That wouldn't actually make sense either. There are still plenty of unspent outputs of much higher value from this hack I noticed.

So despite the overwhelming evidence that these coins were indeed stolen (as shown above, the coins were only mixed with each other, not with others in any effective manner), it's still not possible to prove that the user was the one who stole them. I'd like to think anyone is "innocent until proven guilty", rather than the idea of having to prove someone's innocence in order not to be considered guilty. So would providing KYC prove your innocence? Of course not. It would just guarantee police/fbi attention, whether you're the hacker or not. So of course you wouldn't want to provide it if you don't want to be caught or wrongfully accused.

Credits: https://oxt.me

Did I understand this correctly? Some obscure cryptocurrency exchange gives itself the right to confiscate the funds from their customers based of an analysis of some self-proclaimed blockchain (anti)analysts who, incidentally, have absolutely no legal weight whatsoever? It is unacceptable for the exchange to make such a decision and, more importantly, to retain control over customer's assets.

The only thing I think should be done in this case is to flag the Openchange.cash exchange as malicious and warn any traders away from it.

The point of using a mixer is to break the on-chain connection between your old coins and your new coins. It can't break the on-chain connection to the origin of the actual coins.

That's because he didn't steal them.

Because you effectively end up with different coins right? Even if it doesn't break the on-chain connection with your new coins, it breaks the connection with your old coins?

Old coins mixed with different old coins = new coins (mixture of different origins)
Old coins mixed with same old coins = new coins (same origins as old coins)

I had thought the point of a mixer was to mix your coins with other peoples, not just your own. Surely this defeats the point of a mixer if you're just running CoinJoin with yourself?

I get that the coins would still technically be new, but it doesn't do anything to break the connection between old and new coins if you're only mixing coins from the same origin...

Yes.

The point of a mixer is to obfuscate the direction of your money.

It's pointless as long as third parties know that all of the CoinJoin's inputs are yours.

The same origin needs to be proved it's the same. A bitcoin transaction can be consisted of inputs that are not owned from the same person.

Correct. And correct.

It's not a coinjoin. You get different coins than the ones you started with.

Think of it this way: Alice gets Bob's coins, without knowing who Bob is, and without knowing how Bob got his coins. Alice's old coins are now owned by the mixer, and Alice's old coins can't be linked to Alice's new coins.
The coins are totally different.

This is my point in the example above, without other participants nothing is obfuscated, even if old coins are made into new coins.


That I get. The only thing I see happening with the 2014 mix of Crypsy is the following:

Mixing wallets CrypsyA + CrypsyB + CrypsyC etc = CrypsyABCX. There is no UnknownA, B or C to adequately break the connection between stolen and non-stolen coins.

For sure it obfuscated whether the new coins were part of Cryptsy wallet A, B or C. This I don't deny. But mixing stolen coins together only results in stolen coins.


Ok, well whatever software/protocol was used, the hacker simply got back what they put in, as was responsible for all the inputs (-1) - hence got all the outputs (-1).


This is assuming it was an online mixer that was used, and that the website had 11K BTC liquidity ($5 million back then)? To me they look like simple transactions that consolidates funds.

I do see the logic of the coins not being the stolen ones however, but simply owned by the thief after blatant online mixing. Similar to how any tx makes an old coin new again, as the trail shows. This means the blacklisting could be not for stolen coins, if indeed they were able to mix it with a website (swap them as you put it), but attempting to block profiting from a theft on a somewhat permanent basis.

I'm also guessing that back in 2014 there weren't delays in receiving your coins from online mixers, at least not the one that was potentially used, hence didn't obfuscate anything either...

Correct, that's what I aim to do here:

Feel free to follow the topic to get notified of new additions and report other such issues with exchanges and services so they can be swiftly added.

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Basically:
[1] hax0r sent X stolen coins to CM
[2] legit user sent Y legit coins to CM
[3] legit user got Y amount of the stolen coins from CM
[4] hax0r gets X amount of other users' coins from CM

Your confusion comes from the assuption that every mixer works like CoinJoin; whereas ChipMixer is basically an off-chain mix.

That's not how ChipMixer works.

This topic is about a 0.256BTC transaction, which has nothing to do with whatever happened 8 years earlier.

Even before ChipMixer, "coinjoin" was never the standard: a user would simply get someone else's coins in return for their own. Coinjoin is the only form of mixing that leaves an on-chain trail to follow.

True; CoinJoin is actually newer than I thought. According to Bitcoin Wiki CoinJoin page (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin), the first mention of the idea of CoinJoins was in 2013, as quoted below.


I remember in the past mixing was actually more commonly referred to as 'tumbling'; maybe indeed better fitting for something where you throw in coins and get completely unrelated coins of equal value back out. Instead of a CoinJoin mechanism that semantically fits more to the name of a 'mix' since you throw together your inputs with other people's UTXOs, mixing them and getting something out from that same pool.
Like, to be fully honest, ChipMixer is a pretty good name. It doesn't mix UTXOs, like CoinJoin, but it mixes / exchanges these 'chips' that have no ties to each other, instead. This requires it to be a centralized, trusted service, but offers much better on-chain guarantees.

I do understand this now, that the coins the hacker ends up with is different. Still the issue with the mix was the consolidation of 11K (https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/c7b46a79fd8887038bd3a8e884b04820038415a60e0b9d2c2f5bcff68a2687bf) mixed coins back together, given all these inputs come from Crypsty addresses consolidated together, even if they are new coins. Clearly some chainanlysis will easily point to the fact these are the proceeds of crime, based on numerous factors, even if these coins are different.


I completely agree, I was initially merely answering BlackHatCoiner's question (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5404704.msg60539684#msg60539684) of a connection between transactions.

Given these exact same sets of coins have been sent to all major exchanges in recent months and not frozen, instead passed onto other users and exchanges, in the case of Binance mixed together. So there is still zero reason for OpenChange to be stealing this users funds, given large amounts have already gone back into circulation without any issues it seems.


This is initially why I thought the mixes were CoinJoin, as all the inputs going into the smaller mixes (100-300 coins roughly) all came from Crypsty addresses, as highlighted (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5404704.msg60544833#msg60544833), with only 1 major output. So why it's obviously common to make the mistake that all inputs come from the same owner, in the case of 2014, this clearly wasn't the case. Probably back in 2014 these addresses were listed as Cryptsy, so the hacker was completely unaware how their transactions could be easily traced (even if the coins can't).


I can see how mixing has improved over the past 8 years, that much is true. In this sense it seems that the coins were "tumbled" as you put it, by getting back exactly what you put in within the same transaction.

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Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread any further as it's about OpenChange stealing a user's coins without any legitimate reason. For reference sake, whether these coins are considered stolen or not, I discovered most major exchanges have all transacted with these coins (https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mLmrJ.png) from the mixed set that the AML bot considers stolen (red dots are exchanges). This is Binance happily laundering (https://talkimg.com/images/2023/09/10/mL6WC.png) them even, prior to sending some onto UpBit, long before the user made a transaction to OpenChange (the earlier circles aren't mixes, they are merely breaking down the coins to smaller quantities from single inputs).

I reference this as OpenChange claim these coins are "tainted" or outright "stolen", but it turns out that other exchanges have absolutely no issues with these coins, or at least more than willing to be transacting with them. It seems highly likely that they are simply using the AML bot as a poor excuse to steal coins when possible. Even though confiscating these coins isn't considered legal or otherwise.

http://dl4.joxi.net/drive/2022/07/08/0040/0610/2622050/50/1ba25355b2.jpg

Yes you are pretty much spot on but there is confusion as to how they selected 10% as a figure they would confiscate in the event they believed they were dealing with stolen crypto.

Furthermore, there was no real meaningful justification given why they would return 90% of alleged stolen crypto however retain 10% for themselves. I mean, what could they say to justify it?

They justify it with the screenshot from a random internet webpage. This webpage (AMLBot) is neither an internationally (or nationally) recognized authority, nor is it working with one and it may not even be an actual business. Since even with access to a lot of resources (like what the FBI / CIA has access to), it's extremely hard to (1) tie a certain UTXO to a crime and (2) return the funds to the legitimate owner, all these classification attempts are subjective guesstimations at best and deliberate choices to defraud users, with large potential for corruption, at worst.
In the end, they are always used for evil: confiscating funds and keeping them for themselves; so it's a big elaborate thing to steal coins from users. There's no nice way to put it.

I could be wrong but to me it seems their justifications are pure nonsense which are designed to try to fool the user in to conceding 10% of their funds with a fear they could end up losing the other 90% if they contest what is going on.

I wonder what the "successful exchange" vs "we will return 90% to you but keep 10% for ourselves" ratio is for Open Change.