Bitcoin Forum

Some clarification is needed to this board due to the recent incident with ChipMixer.

To all advocates of anti-anonymous Bitcoin and Internet tools: Bitcoin mixing is NOT money laundering, per se.

Definition of money laundering:

Definition of Bitcoin mixing:

Unless you think that every potentially identifiable coin is obtained illegally (which would be false), Bitcoin mixing does not equate with Bitcoin laundering. While it is possible to launder, hereby conceal the origins of money from an illegal activity, it is not a money laundering service, in the same manner that while it is possible to terrorize with the assistance of end-to-end encryption and peer-to-peer protocols, such a messenger is not a terrorism service.

When you mix coins, not only do you just not want from the rest to know your business; you want them to know you want to conceal it. It can be a completely conscious decision from any person; criminal or not. If you don't respect this dignify-respecting technique which strengthens individuals' privacy, say it, but say it right; "I don't want that much privacy". Prepare to receive an infinite amount of deprecation from privacy advocates afterwards, but clear it up.

P.S.: You can't have privacy without money laundering due to the nature of humans-- by the way, the opposite does not necessarily hold true.

Bitcoin mixing (Bitcoin mixing or Bitcoin tumbling) is a technique used to hide the identity of Bitcoin users. When using Bitcoin, transactions are publicly stored on the blockchain and can be tracked by anyone. The use of Bitcoin mixing helps to mask users' Bitcoin addresses and makes it harder to track transactions. However, the use of Bitcoin mixing can also be used to launder money and the funds are used to fund illegal activities. Therefore, the use of Bitcoin mixing completely depends on the intended use of the user. If used correctly, Bitcoin mixing is not money laundering.

And unfortunately our behavior is at the root of the problem, I find that people love to blame products when it is the user who is responsible for that behavior. What I find funny is that the law enforcement agencies keep pretending that they only see the wrongdoing of these products and blame it.

This is not part of what we are discussing, but why Wikipedia is referring gambling as an illegal activity? If gambling is not legalized in some countries, that does not mean that many countries do not support gambling. In fact, there are some countries that see bitcoin and other crypto to be illegal, but that does not mean cryptocurrencies are not legal. Most countries support bitcoin and many countries are supporting gambling. Gambling is legal.

That is why some criminals that know about mixers are using it. But the point is that not only criminals are using mixers. Even some people that are using mixers took their bitcoin from a platform that is centralized and mix it before sending it to their wallet. Some people may prefer to use a mixer after dust attack. There also several good reasons people are using mixers. Some people do not just take their privacy to play. Some people do not play with privacy because they see it as a way of having full freedom.

Mixers are not illegal, even when United States have strict rules that mixers can not abide to, United States has never said that they want to ban all mixers, they do not even have the capability to ban mixers outside United States. I have not read anything like that also from other countries.

This is what they are doing, they look for any illegal mixing and expose the mixer, but no country is going against mixers in any country without valid evidence of illegal mixing.

Anyone thinking of bitcoin mixing with money laundering is not real citizen of a country. Money laundry is a term used by the economic/financial department of the government. Thank you for making some clarification between the two so that those who are not clear for the two different concepts will understand it well. What Happened to Chipmixer is that the company's owner was involved in money laundering and that was why the company was seized and not the company was involved the money laundering. Money laundry can never be a service but it is an act which carry out by individuals while mixing is a serve render to serve humanity. Therefore, nobody should misconceptualize what happened in Chipmixer to another bitcoin mixing companies.

I'm pretty sure it means unlicensed gambling.

Unfortunately, for centralized mixers at least, you're wrong. In the US, you're prohibited to run a non-regulated money transmitting service; and that's pretty much what a good Bitcoin mixer is. Anonymous and it involves and intermediary who will transmit money. However, that does not apply on every country, and it does not mean decentralized mixing is illegal.

If centralized mixers should follow the Bank Secrecy Act and register as a money transmitter, they have to follow anti-money laundering and know-your-customer compliance. But is that possible? If they follow it, that means they are no more mixers but another thing else.

But I am wondering why mixers are allowed on sites like bitcointalk and no regulatory ban.

Just like I said, gambling is not legalized in all countries in the world. Cryptocurrencies are not legalized in a countries of the world, there are over 10 countries in the world that completely ban cryptocurrencies. Because something is not legal in one country, that does not mean it is illegal in another country.

We can just take it that mixers are not illegal. But if they see it having illegal mixing, there is possibility that it would be taken down.

This is certainly the bottom line. The US (as well as EU) will also define money laundering to be whatever they want it to be, even with the rest of world not quite in agreement. Generally, any unlicensed money transmitting service will be considered money laundering if there is no KYC in place, even if not really any different than going to a shop with "dirty cash" and getting change that's "clean" from a vendor.

All countries even those who are crypto friendly are most likely to be against Mixing , those countries who are crypto friendly are largely partners with centralized platforms that's to say they want to know how their citizens make use of crypto currency no privacy protection at all.

So using Mixing service will not allow them achieve their goal and as such they will definitely be against the service which they can't render a direct attack to any mixing platform since they are not registered or licensed by any regulatory authority, all they just want it a reason to attack mixing platform and that reason is to link it to money laundering and if they can validate any proof that a crime was committed using the platform then they have all they need to attack.  

Which is why most people are seeing mixing as money laundering platform because of the Fud the Fed's and others Bitcoin haters are spreading regarding Bitcoin.

A real Bitcoiner will definitely know that mixing primary goal is to protect holders privacy, and has nothing to do with money laundering.

There are lots of privacy options in bitcoin, such as the use of change address and having multiple addresses linked to one private key. Mixers function to make it difficult or impossible to trace the source of funds, this is way off from what money laundering actually is.
The idea that mixers can conceal the trail of stolen funds exists, but that does not make up the bulk of transactions through them.

When you consider that money laundering is actually done through legitimate businesses, should there also be a campaign to close them down as by the logic of mixers encouraging scams, they are doing so as well.

- Jay -

Let's say the source of your funds are clean but do mixers make the process of concealing the funds' origin legal? I think this remains a grey area up to now. I haven't read any updates on the cases filed against owners of previously seized mixers prior to Chipmixer.

There's that phrase that laws needs to be changed according to the changes in society. That's most likely what's happening with the changing definition and scope of existing laws.

There's a lot of contradictory statements coming from governments when it comes to mixing.
They claimed that chipmixer helped to launder "money" but most governments don't count bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies as money. Their laws don't protect bitcoin theft the way it protects money.

A good example of this is insider trading happening with bitcoin all around the world, recently Binance was accused of doing it. If something like this was done with fiat money or stocks you'd see the agencies coming for you very fast, but since it's crypto they barely care. The only reason they're going after CZ is to make it harder for Americans to buy bitcoin when the banks are in trouble. They think that scaring people away from bitcoin will be beneficial for dying banks and should prevent a bank run.

If bitcoin is not money and you can trade it like you trade gift cards or game tokens, why were people put in jail for money transmitting without a license?

How come some politicians treat it as gift cards or game tokens and others want you to apply for licenses and forbid you to make it hard to trace?

IMO mixers have the right to exist and be used by citizens of a country, especially as long as bitcoin isn't a recognized and accepted currency in that country. If it becomes fully regulated they can make it clear whether it is money and if that money is allowed to be made untraceable by people who want to use it for open, legal, payments in the country.
You either regulate and accept it, or you don't accept it and we do what we want with it just as we play around with game currencies and casino chips.

Is some way this could be defined to be some kind of money laundering as you conceal the origin of the transaction, the only thing that separates bitcoin mixing and money laundering... pretty much borders around the legal side of the transaction.

But whatever the case, crypto by nature does have the anonymity aspect to it and the origin of the coins matter less and makes it difficult to define money laundering in this context.

We Know So Many People’s Interested And Involved With Bitcoin And Crypto Currency Projects Because Just Trying To Build Up In Future Life With Crypto Currency Related Project So Bitcoin Is Not Money Laundering Issue.

That was definitely a bad incident with ChipMixer and it should have been handled in a better way by the owners actually. There were many justifications available for the same but unfortunately, the case was appealed strongly by juries. I think they should have clearly mentioned how crypto works and how money (fiat) works. Though there were many grounds such as, virtual currencies not being fiat they are just mixing up a bunch of encrypted data and giving away fresh encrypted and more protected data etc.

I am not sure if such grounds are valid in the court or not but with such a big mixer with that much money they should have hired the best lawyer in the US>

In many countries, it could have been based on protection against the data by adding more security such as mixing and creating anonymous fresh data sets. I don't think it was money laundering at all.

In simple terms money laundering is a term giving to all illegal money activities by government.
Why coin mixing is method of hiding coins holders privacy.

Their is probably no relationship between Bitcoin Mixing or any Mixing service and that's of money laundering.

Calling Mixing service money laundering is just another way for government to damage the image of the Mixing service using the recent news of ChipMixer.

I really don't see any relationship in regard to the ongoing discussion.
Luckily this topic is self moderated.

Of course, the owners had to get out of this situation in the best way, but it turned out the way it happened.

Most likely, almost all the money was confiscated. Another point is why the mixer owners didn't prepare for such a scenario and didn't prepare defense in advance. This type of activity undoubtedly had to attract the attention of law enforcement agencies and, of course, first of all they took up the biggest service.

Laundering is just an excuse to sue a chipmixer and arrange a show execution. The precedent has been created and will now hunt for other platforms too.

Many would assume that once a person is trying to be private then something is fishy, this has been the stigma placed on Crypto-currency that all of its users are either scammers or launderers.

Mixing is not a Crime until the person engaging in the Crypto-currency mixing is found guilty. Anyone can want to engage the services of a mixer for anonymous reasons and to protect their privacy.

Not really. Concealing is not yet laundering.

Let's say you have money from a legal source but you don't want your spouse or family to know about it. You get a friend to lend you his account, send money there and get him to withdraw money at the ATM and give you cash. All legal, but the money has been mixed.
Making it harder to find the source of money, by moving it through different banks and multiple bank accounts is not a crime, as long as the money wasn't obtained illegally.

It does, as long as you don't use a centralized exchange or a service that sends money to your bank account.
Here's where it becomes interesting and you have to realize 2 things:

1. Mixing crypto is not illegal.
2. Fiat money belongs to the government.

When you exchange crypto to fiat, it's like accepting government's ToS. You agree to use THEIR money and you must obey all laws regarding it. As long as you get crypto, for instance by gambling in a casino, participating in a signature campaigns, giveaways, raffles, you can freely mix it. You cannot be sentenced for using a mixer!

What is illegal then and when can you be taken to court?
It becomes complicated the moment you exchange bitcoin to fiat money. When you do it, you sell your mixed coins that can technically (but don't have to) come from illegal sources, into fiat money, that is supposed to be clean and legal, and doesn't belong to you. This is the important part, a fiat owner is just a user, but the government is in control, unlike with bitcoin where you're the user and the owner. By exchanging (potentially) dirty laundered coins into fiat, in the eyes of the government you're tainting that fiat, THEIR fiat.

it doesnt matter what idiots that promote mixers think that mixers should be

its about what the regulators say and choose to call red flags to actually act upon

so read what those "watchers" are watching.. to learn what to avoid so that you are not being watched

HINT: if authorities are on the watchout for mixers... and then you are using a mixer, expect to be watched

EG
if cops are on the lookout for people in pink hoodies and your wearing a pink hoody. expect to be highlighted as someone to look into and question when seen
and if you learn that cops are on the watch out for someone in a pink hoody. you might want to choose to change your clothes


http://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/recommendations/Virtual-Assets-Red-Flag-Indicators.pdf

in short.. use a mixer. expect to be watched closer.. use a anonymity enhanced currency expect to be watched closer

pretending using a mixer/aec hides you better is the opposite of what happens. it reveals you and highlights you better.. not hide

In my opinion Bitcoin Mixing has nothing to do with money laundering, since bitcoins are fungible. Can somebody here see if there are already cases where there was an investigation opened against somebody who has run an Mixing service or somebody who used a mixer?

This is what I've been saying, the mere act of mixing is not crime, Mixers are not criminal dens that brood these scammers and scums of the planet where they can easily trick people and get away with it. There's a legitimate cause for the tool and that is to give the privacy back and make sure that coins aren't traceable, this fearmongering against Mixers brought about by the fall of Chipmixer is just horrible and a little concerning too, coz this is literally an attack to the people's right to privacy. Who's to say they're not going to crackdown on cryptocurrencies too, coz "they are anonymous and could be used by scammers hurr durr" jesus fuck. These legislators should do better.

money has never had privacy rights. fiat money was the patent of governments. its their property so they have always had control on its usage.

its only now recently that people are finding/creating non government currency to a broader crowd than just a business/casino

and so the thought of now wanting privacy currency is a new thought process

however by trying to get "mainstream acceptance" by lobbying governments to deem private property assets as "currency" has allowed governments to set rules for crypto currency due to them recognising such as a currency


bitcoin was deemed private PROPERTY 2009-2014. much like pokemon trading cards, antiques, however now its in government jurisdiction of currency. the government are applying currency rules to the usage of cryptocurrency

so instead of trying to create your own definitions about what laws you want to apply or not. its far more realistic and real life affecting to know what actual laws and policies DO APPLY and then learning from them what to do and not do to then have a better idea of how to preserve your privacy

Well if you apply currency rules to Bitcoin this would actually be great news. Since for money laundering you need an illegal component that needs to be proven by law enforcement. Everybody is not guilty if not proven otherwise.
If Bitcoin mixing is however not currency mixing than it could be illegal from the start.

read the actual regulations.
stop trying to define things based on your prefered confirmation bias

if you can learn how things are actually treated you can then learn what actually happens in the real world and how you can possibly think about methods to avoid being watched

EG
owning a gun does not make you a murderer. but regulators put gun owners on a watch list. by noting down gun serial numbers and owners identity.

that way if there was a murder and they found a gun and thus serial number they can then easily find the suspect

mixing/buying a gun is a red flag that something criminal could happen. and so they are on the watch for those particular people
if you dont own a gun you wont be on a gun watch list. .. OBVIOUSLY

if you dont use a mixer you wont be on a watchlist of possible laundering

with all that said
by being put on watch lists by using mixers.. defeats the whole point of using a mixer.. because using a mixer gets you watched closer

thus mixers are not privacy tools when the end result of using a mixer is being watched more closely

#common-sense

as for the whole "proven in court"
i laugh

if you are doing an activity where you think going to court to prove innocence is a positive. you are forgetting some major steps before judgement

the main one being before you even step into court. your privacy has already gone...
because they have found you, taken you to a police station, interrogated you and questioned your life history and done some background checks on you.. etc etc

thus privacy gone. even before you get to have your day in court.

so thinking 'just use mixers, everything is fine, if things go bad you can explain in court' .. you are too late. your privacy had disappeared along time ago

i facepalm people that tell innocent people to carry on doing red flag activities get put on watchlists and have to be questioned about it later.. all so that real criminals can run off with innocent peoples funds leaving the dirty funds with the innocent person to have to explain..
shameful

I agree with your opinion that the bitcoin mixing and mixer service has nothing to do with money laundering, but we can't be sure about the mixing as some evil use it for their wrong intentions. As far as I know, the recent incident with the chip mixer is not ordinary and after that incident, law enforcement agencies are directly targeting the mixing services. Bitcoin mixing was for privacy purposes but a question here is why anyone who is using it for his privacy concerns is getting targeted. I know the answer is in the question but it's quite weird that institutes that were created for the protection of civilians and their rights are stealing those rights for the civilians.

At the same time, I think this can be a move by these agencies to divert the attention from the main concern such as the economical problems and flawed policies, but I am very sure of one thing and that is they use their full power to somehow suppress the decentralization and freedom trend in crypto market.

Privacy is #1 enemy of the governments in the modern world. That's the reason why we are approaching a 100% digital fiat cashless society (and then who knows a chip in your head?). They hate privacy and that's why they will keep stalking privacy services like Bitcoin mixers.

they didnt shut down chip mixer just because it was a mixer

they ALONG TIME AGO had chip mixer on a watch list(including its customers).

and as soon as they linked it to a criminal activity this year. they acted on the information

chip mixer did do laundering this year so suffered the consequence this year

because mixing is a red flag of raised suspicion of possible utility of criminal activity, so regulators and their regulated services are delegated to watch a short list of suspicious activity and rate it based on the chance of criminal activity, to decide to level 1 just watch, 2 investigate, 3 bring charges

if you do not want to be a high percent rate risk.. if you dont want to be on a watch list.. avoid things that are given a high % rating of suspicion risk that would put you on a watch list

because if they watch something close enough. when something criminal does occur. boom. your are caught.

suspicion is not a yes/no question.. its a % rating.
fungibility is not a yes/no question.. its a % rating.

if you avoid the certain things that earn you % risk rating. you avoid the thresholds of being on a watchlist thus you keep your privacy

Privacy doesn't mean money laundry, but privacy can be seen as an advantage for some persons to partake in some illegal activities. Bitcoin mixer gives the privacy needed for transfer of bitcoin from one wallet to another without a trace. The misappropriate use of it by some persons has brought the raise of eye brown to bitcoin mixing companies.

The government shouldn't use the action of chipmixer owner to judge other bitcoin mixing companies. The thing is that government s are worried about their incapability to track the transfer of bitcoin due to mixing.

One of the basic properties of "good" money is the fungibility of individual coins. 

The value of one coin of one denomination must not differ from the value of another coin of the same denomination.  This is the basic property of money.  Cash, by definition, is fungible money.  Bitcoins just mined by miners are also fungible money (which is why they are often more valuable than bitcoins with a "history"). 

However, the transparency of the Bitcoin blockchain has played a bad joke on it....

Bitcoin has lost such a basic property of money as the fungibility of coins.  The first cryptocurrency was artificially divided into white, gray and black (criminal).  Mixers solve the problem of returning Bitcoin's coin fungibility property.  There is nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.  Crimes on the Internet are possible, but they must be investigated by the competent authorities. 

At the same time, the principle of the presumption of innocence must apply - a person cannot be found guilty until his guilt is established by a court decision.  In my opinion, this is the most correct legal approach.

fungibility is not as you think
all money is treated differently and always has been

if you get money in your account from an employer. that amount gets taxed as income tax
if you get money in your account from an investment. that amount gets taxed as cap gains
if you get money in your business account from customers. that amount gets taxed as corporation tax

if you want more than $500 from an ATM you have to talk to your bank
if you want more then$1000, $10000 expect reports to tax offices

doing a wire transfer of $30k using a business account gets treated differently than a minimum wage person doing a $30k wire transfer of his life savings

what most people dont realise is money is not fungible. its just when only handling small amounts like $100 in  you back pocket. your not really a big concern for authorities to watch compared to someone with over $10k in a suitcase crossing a border.

and yes different rules apply if your using cash, debit or credit. heck even mortgage amounts are put into escrow whilst paperwork is done.

money is treated differently and always has.. welcome to the real world

Why can't they just assume that those person are a shy type? :D But seriously, not all who private themselves are doing something shady. Crypto has once gain a bad reputation but now that it was popular, the public already sees them as a regular currency. If they found someone who use the mixers for illegal activity, they should punish those users and not the mixers itself because they are only doing a business here and there is no way they open the business for the sole purpose of helping the criminals.

I remember the authorities have also removed privacy coins in the exchanges before for the same reason but luckily those coins are still surviving.

The act of mixing Bitcoin has never been synonymous with money laundering. However, the centralized authorities with weak enforcement capabilities tend to falsely accuse it of being a form of money laundering. This is primarily because they are unable to regulate or track these transactions. Bitcoin mixers serve as a means to safeguard our privacy. Unfortunately, if someone were to utilize mixers for money laundering, there is very little that can be done about it. It's worth noting that money laundering is prevalent in traditional fiat currencies, yet there seems to be no viable way of putting a stop to it. Similarly, the crackdown on Bitcoin mixers is merely an excuse to hinder the use of Bitcoin.

its not a simple legal/illegal yes no. thing
its a suspect/risk % scale. with thresholds.


chip mixer was not shut down just for being a mixer. otherwise it would have been shut down years ago
it was shut down because regulators and businesses were WATCHING chip mixer because chip mixer is a risk of suspicious activity. and then in 2023 chip mixer GOT CAUGHT being directly involved with helping criminals.. much like the mixer that got caught last year. it was not that he was offering a mixing service it was that he directly helped and financially benefitted from processing criminal funds



regulators give guidance to VASP's and its the VASP that decides how much headache it wants to tolerate or avoid. and most VASPS just avoid accepting AEC to simply avoid questions/headaches later

Anyone thinking that Bitcoin mixing is money laundering is just an idiot. They call it money laundering because they don't know what it is really all about, because the site maybe doesn't open in their country, and because they haven't held enough bitcoin that requires them to mix and gives them more security for their wallet.

I was not aware of Bitcoin mixing until I joined this forum, and even after joining, with always seeing the ChipMixer signature, I was prompted to search what Bitcoin mixing was really all about.

Some other think about that this is scam and they need to get debunked because people need to understand that mixing service doesn't offer a investment plan to their user but rather a bitcoin mixing service. Its just this service has been used by many frauds that's the reason why they are been tagged as illegal operation by government.

Mixing service is not only used for illegal matter but also for legit transactions to but unfortunately the illegal matters are the only one government saw that's why they are not good with this service and shut then down for good.

OP is right with his explanation, where the problem lies is that, majority find it difficult to differentiate, like the government or authorities that consider everything done in secret to mean that a crime is being committed, which of the time, its not always so..

Bitcoin mixing is not a crime and not an illegal service, if it is, then it simply means that privacy in itself is also illegal and a crime..
The authorities have their secret business, which we know nothing about, yet they expect us to report every single step we take to them, isnt that man's inhumanity to man?
They should stop chasing shadows, and start chasing the real criminals, going after bitcoin mixing service is the same as chasing shadows.

A few years ago (in 2019), I've presented a statistic on Bitcointalk about mixers and illicit money: Chainalysis research reveals: only a small percentage of mixed coins are illegal (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5179441.0)
Let's have a look here:

https://abload.de/img/mixerq6kpl.jpg
Source (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/chainalysis-most-mixed-bitcoin-not-used-for-illicit-purposes)

So, according to Chainalysis, only a small percentage of mixed funds are from illicit origin. I'm sure, the numbers don't have changed much (it's data from 2019).

ChipMixer's problem is very simple in my opinion: After operating since 2017 (for 6 years) it was known by many scammers, so recently, a lot of hacked, stolen or extorted funds went to ChipMixer.
But such high numbers for illicit funds are obviously specific for ChipMixer because it was known by scammers after operating for such a long time (which we didn't know until it was taken down).
It might look completely different for average mixers (similar to what Chainalysis found out) and only a small percentage of mixed coins are illegal.  

It's because it becomes abused and the illegal intention has grown more than the legal one due to a very well-known mixing service and the unique process of protecting your privacy.  Because this is the fact, Bitcoin mixing isn't inherently money laundering, it's simply a tool that can be used for both legitimate and illegitimate purposes, depending on the intentions of the users.

Chipmixer was a victim and abused for illegal activities because it can be used for illegal purposes, such as to hide the proceeds of criminal activity or to evade taxes, and even can clean dirty Bitcoin into a clean but not for a purpose of enhancing privacy.  It might be because of this matter the authorities take action to seize this kind of service because it's abused.

Who'll disagree Bitcoin mixing isn't money laundering per se. Bitcoin mixers aren't regulated so that's the reason they'll be used for predetermined money laundering by lawbreakers.

Even this definition of Bitcoin mixing by Wikipedia is a bit questionable. The connotation is still almost referring to money laundering, which isn't really true. Bitcoin mixing services in this definition simply doesn't appear as a neutral tool for privacy, which is wrong. It seems it is something that is not normally used by ordinary people.

If I were to define a Bitcoin mixing service, I'd simply say it's a tool by which Bitcoin funds are mixed with others to protect the user's privacy.

I agree with you guys, Mixing is not money laundering, and Mixing is not a crime by itself.

But the problem here is the people who use these mixing services, 95% of them use it because we get those coins from an illicit source, and they need a way to wash those coins, that's why they use a service like that. And that's the main problem with the mixers.

And is important to remind you that using this kind of service isn't free, so, people pay to hide the source of their coins. So, science it has a cost then is something that people will not do just for fun.

-----


Defend mixers is like defending guns... Guns doesn't kill, what kills is the bullet ;)

mixers and tumblers are mainly used by illicit sourced funds..  i understand criminals dont want to wash their dirty coins and get other criminals dirty coins as thats another pointless exercise. so they keep trying desperately to cry out that innocent people should join their crowd.. but thats purely criminal greed to push their dirty coin onto someone else, without caring how that causes consequences on innocent people

the funny part is they say "its fungible" as the lame excuse to pretend innocent people getting dirty coin wont get hit by authorities.. yet if it was "fungible" there would be no need for mixing and criminals wouldnt need to ask innocent people to swap funds with

and lastly. read regulators policy and also terms of service of exchanges to realise that services DO TREAT MIXED FUNDS DIFFERENTLY(anti-fungibility) and DO WATCH MIXED FUNDS(anti-privacy)

so in short mixing does not help fungibility nor privacy

i really do understand criminals hate circle jerking their dirty funds between each other, and they really want innocent funds added into the mix.. but that does not mean its morally, ethically, or considerate to such innocent people you shamelessly try advertising mixing services too

 and yes innocent people are caught up with having to explain themselves and reveal their private lives due to receiving your dirty funds.. which i know you dont care about. but it happens
 and yes innocent people are caught up with having been denied usage of legit services due to receiving your dirty funds.. which i know you dont care about. but it happens

if you lot had half a brain you could work out better methods, which would not harm innocent people.

So in conclusion any one who want to be safe from being watched should totally avoid using mixing service irrespective of which it is.

I also think holding crypto alone in a private wallet which the user have access to alone is enough to protect the holders identity, what's the point of mixing coin when one can just use different wallet for different purposes which am sure could be a little bit private and anonymous for someone else to locate the real owner of any exact wallet providing that you are not making use of a centralized exchange 

Mixing Bitcoins is legal if done the right way and in a country where it is permitted. Bitcoin laundering is an illegal and criminal activity in many countries.

That's why different countries have different laws regarding Bitcoin mixing and centralized mixing can be considered illegal in some countries. However, I completely agree that decentralized mixing is not illegal and can be a safer option for protecting user privacy.

I don't take the time to get involved with you anymore, but you're prohibited from derailing this thread further. You've had your chance to make a civilized dialogue about mixers in the past. Now you're just blabbering the same nonsense. Mixers are not used mainly for illicit stuff. Evidence supports otherwise. Chain analysis (if you took the time to actually do "tHe ReSEarCH", as you love), has noticed a less than 10% being sent there illegally. Hopefully, the same percentage of people who agree with your "moral standard" of what should the users be free to do.

Sure, no disagreement. You can't regulate everything, so criminals will always be attracted to beating around the bush.

I'll need a little bit more context. If you're asking if it's legal to conceal the origins of money, then it depends on the country and the manner you conceal it. You conceal the origins of your cash in your pocket everyday unconsciously, but that's obviously not illegal.

I agree, it's not. But it can be used as a money laundering tool and an effective one.
I think that if we want to see mass adoption of bitcoin, we should admit that some people can use bitcoin as ML and TF. We should somehow try to lower the possibility of these actions because, without that, the government will never fully adopt bitcoin and will be antagonizing it.

That's why I think that dislike of the mixing services is understandable.

There is a unique expression like this; Bitcoin's presence is a problem for banks.
Logically fiat is owned by the government with a more complicated system compared to the simpler bitcoin.
Although I don't understand very well, but the 2008 financial crisis could be the beginning of Bitcoin can be considered as one of the rivals that offers a per-to-per system that can dismantle the banking system where the central authority at that time the bank had a key role behind the financial crisis that occurred.

This article can be a comparison material and can be my knowledge why hit money laundering in bitcoin mixer.
investopedia, 2021 (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050715/can-bitcoin-kill-central-banks.asp)

Bitcoins blockchain is fully transparent so it is just a matter of if you have enough computing power and analysts to undertake an investigation. Governments definitely have. So they can trace even mixed transactions. So mixer can be useful if you don't want an exchange to know how many bitcoins do you have (or for some other same purposes of privacy, anonymity and personal safety), but if you want to use it for crime activity then gov will know it and multiple news about arrests of criminals used bitcoins prove it. Bitcoin, even mixed, is not a good option for criminals as its blockchain remembers everything forever: so any bad thing can be discovered and proved at any time even in decades.

Indeed, Bitcoin mixing is not money laundering per se, but why would anyone need to use a mixer? The most correct answer is to avoid getting tracked, by whom? Not all Bitcoin mixer users are money launderers but other motives behind using Bitcoin mixer is 80% illegal, criminal-minded, call it whatever you want, since the day I have started investing money in crypto I have never for once think of a mixer, I like the feature of a mixer but most users are into illegal things.

People who don't use mixers illegally are those who believe in privacy, which they believe is the only way to really evade the government and the watchers. Perhaps someday, a more secure mixer can be developed where people can stay off the radar of the government by using one.

For now, I don't see any reason to start using a Bitcoin mixer but I am a supporter, the ability that a mixer possess is more useful for criminals than a normal average Joe, that's my point.

Does it matter? By the people who want to watch me.

Why do people cover their bathroom windows when they wash themselves? They do that so people can't see them naked. Nobody cares what people are they going to be, but for the sake of the conversation let's say it's the government that I want to hide from.

Does it imply that I'm a criminal or a launderer?

I don't trust the government. I've seen people falsely accused and prosecuted and I want to stay as far away from my government as I can. I want to be as anonymous as I can, even if nobody ever decides to watch me. That's why we put good locks in our doors and have firewalls on our computers. We don't know if someone's coming for us, but we want to be ready.

That's my impression as well.
Especially in late 2022, many big hackers were sending funds to ChipMixer to launder these funds and ChipMixer suffered from this. We had some content about it in our forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5423124.0) and that had been a sign already, that ChipMixer was targed heavily by criminals.
Maybe new mixers can implement some community based (like DT) blocking mechanism, that funds coming from clearly criminal origins will be blocked. It could work similar as DT but it's difficult to implement, especiall because criminals could just do a few hoops to different addresses and circumvent it.
I still believe most mixers are not abused according to our Chainalysis data (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5446635.msg61995708#msg61995708).

Hopefully, when security standards will increase and people become more educated, hackers will have less success to steal coins and launder them.  :)

What happens if you are a US citizen running a money transmitting service in another country (like Arthur Hayes)?


Well you and I are using Bitcoin which is somewhat "anonymity enhanced" according to people who don't understand how e-mail works, so all of us here are being watched closesy.

Franky if Bitcoin is anonymity enhanced the problem will be nearly impossible to solve, if the government can be this frank with Bitcoin mixers then they can do the same with privacy Bitcoin, they will easily ban it and blame it on money laundering and other crimes, I think it is better than Bitcoin ain't a privacy digital currency..

sometimes i often think of the government law as nonsense. they can just declare anything illegal if they cannot impose power on it. i'm not saying laundering is legal and mixing is illegal, but how come they assumed someone is committing illegal actions when they just want to hide their identity? does that mean because they couldn't impose taxes to those who are mixing? are they also considered tax evaders? non of this makes sense when someone is trying to enact law just because it is convenient for them. the only thing that made sense to me is that when you follow the regulations of the government it is impossible to hide your privacy. one more thing for me is that they wanted monopoly in which they want to monitor all your transactions whenever they want that makes decentralization only an imagination.

To all users: franky1 is not allowed to make further replies in this thread. I've already cleared it out in here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5446635.msg61997183#msg61997183), but he completely ignored me for once more. The reason isn't because I disagree with what he says, but due to him being multiple (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5409696.msg60762631#msg60762631) times (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432665.200) debunked (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5409206.msg60723207#msg60723207) already. I don't endorse to have this nowhere-going conversation with franky again. It's pointless, and I don't want to watch others trying to put him some sense.

You really don't know that the blockchain is a public ledger?

Last time I checked, we don't count legality in percentage. And no, it's not illegal, unless you're in some country that says so.

I'm not a lawyer. I don't know if the US is hostile to services that are outside its borders, but for one thing I'm sure is they're not hostile with any activity which would make US citizens avoid taxes.

What if someone owns an online shop that takes btc. It goes without saying that, he can possibly take some mixed (coinjoined) coins. But later, he has to pay the host billings etc, so he has to convert the coins to fiat by deposit to exchanges.
The problem is that: some exchange can freeze the funds for it contains coinjoined btc. That eventually results in funds loss.

Your advises please.

I agree, this is a problem if you want fiat conversion via CEX.

That's a risk you're taking. Exchanges can freeze funds if they're traced to coinjoins so why don't you contact your exchange to ask?

Yeah. Bitcoin mixing service is not money laundering even Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-regulations/guidance/application-fincens-regulations-certain-business-models) identifies it as a process "designed to prevent others from tracing the transmission back to its source". Besides, FinCen also claims that mixing "An anonymizing services provider is a money transmitter under FinCEN
regulations." However, when the source of the Bitcoin mixed is acquired through criminal or unlawful it automatically turns to money laundering.

No it's not, and mixing/tumbling is actually good to preserve Bitcoin's fungibility. But because there are entities who want to "launder dirty Bitcoins" that went through the Dark Markets for example, then mixing is the only way to "make it clean". Naturally, law enforcement would go after mixers because they know that it's close to 100% that all mixers are being used to launder Bitcoin.

I believe it's time for the community to start researching about applications that we can use from the protocol-level. Applications like BIP-47 Reusable Payment Codes.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0047

payment codes are not mascarading bitcoin addresses

its just where bob and alice PRE AGREE a 'secret'(privkey seed) so they can both create or know about each others next X number of addresses they both own so they dont have to send funds to the same address to know it gets to the same wallet of many addresses.. because emphasis they both pre arranged to agree on a secret for them to formulate the addresses they will use

its the same as emailing some one your seed. or emailing a pre created list of 100 addresses

the added feature thing is to inform using an op return that your using their wallet key number XX so that their wallet can then scan the blockchain and update its utxo of incoming funds

because usually when someone uses a seed the wallet wont move to the next number unless prompted by wallet user to generate an address. so the prompt is put in a opreturn by the sender to make the receiver then move to next number to scan for receipt

its not about any special tumbling or mixing its just so that people who have relationships can send a second payment to a pre arranged second address without having to ask each time, nor having to send to same address each time

its not complex or anonymity fixing.. and it requires people to enter into a shared key relationship before using

---

mixers are actually black listed or suspect listed by regulated services because mixers are a non 0% risk factor for laundering.
and as wind fury says the the most opportune method for criminals to clean funds so regulators dont ignore it.
money has never been fungible. thats just the dream/pretend offering but it never has been.

 . the key is actually thinking outside the "privacy" box to offer a service that is outside the "financial service" box that does a different offering, and not be advertised as a anonymity /financial service. to not be defined as a anonymity service thus not be flagged as such. which although does not have such a promotion. the service as a side effect could offer people different withdrawals to their deposits

remember: services offering/advertising privacy/anonymity end up doing the exact opposite because offering such promoted stuff gets them highlighted due to offering it. being highlighted and watched is the opposite of hiding, obviously.

why do you think tax avoiders dont use laundering services advertised as laundering services and instead put property into a countries "freeports" to avoid tax. because a freeport does not advertise itself as a laundering service/mixing service/tax avoidance service. it just advertises itself as a border port with corporate private property law protections which as a side effect means no reporting or auditing

Duh.

We can apply it to a lot of things. I might say, for example, despite recent investigations and exposes in the news, gold trading is NOT money laundering. Used for decades and a known tool for money laundering, terrorism, WMD, etc. But we aren't going after people who trade gold specifically, are we? So just because there are powerful networks that clean dirty money through gold trading -- gold sourced from bloody mines in Africa, routed to Middle East, or to refineries in the US, where it can be freshly sold to the rest of the world, doesn't make gold trading money laundering.

Just because bad guy A used mixers to try and clean his ill-gotten gains doesn't make all mixer users bad guys.

goldsmiths know the loopholes. thats how they get away with it. they dont advertise mixers when they steal nazi gold and african blood gold and smelt it together and then churn out new bars with new stamps. realise how they do it to realise how you lot should do it


but mixers are not trade service. its not a retailer, a smelter. a mine, a shipping company, a exchange. the pure function of a mixer is to tumble and mix funds. which means it has a higher % of people wanting to hide things they dont want governments seeing. because thats its sole/promoted purpose

and so unlike other services that solve other purposes with a unspoken side function of swapping different deposits to different withdrawals. mixing services sole purpose is to swap different deposits to different withdrawals with no real OTHER service in the center to explain any real legit valid reason for usage in the middle

MONEY has never been private. money for longer then all readers have been alive has never been private. money/currency has always had a central control.

bitcoin 2009 was not considered money by the laws. it was considered private property.
it was not until ~2013 where bitcoin became considered convertibly described as currency by law. which changed it from being private property(consequence of being declared currency). meaning bitcoin is not protected by private property laws in regards to privacy, instead its now in the jurisdiction of currency, meaning banking, tax and auditing laws now apply

i personally prefered the days before 2014. but some people dont even take the time to realise the reality of laws/jurisdictions and declarations that changed how bitcoin was treated in the last 14 years. nor do they care to realise what it means to use a service that advertises itself as something that is red flagged by regulators.

be smarter create services that are not so on-the-nose of being promoted as something regulators want to watch, if you dont want to be watched

True, it is unfair to generalize the entire gold industry as a money laundering mechanism just because there are cases of abuse and illegal behavior.  This is similar to the case with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin: just because some individuals may use them for illegal activities, it doesn't mean that all people who use cryptocurrencies are engaged in illegal activities.

I'm sorry if I correct you, but it's the combination of gun and bullet that kills, if you have the gun and not the bullet or vice versa you don't kill.


Having said that, I share your thoughts with both of you, mixers per se are not promoters of illegal activity, the problem is who uses them and with what funds

im sorry to correct you. even waving an unloaded gun in a bank, to a cop. or to anyone threatening to kill them. even if you know you have no bullets. they dont. and they have the laws on their side to defend themselves against you and if you are arrested you will still get into legal trouble for waving a gun around even if there was no bullets inside.

just because the NRA tells you to wave a gun around "coz freedom" if you tried doing that infront of a cop. they will shoot you or arrest you. or at the very least have them question you

so dont think that having no bullets means no consequence. dont always listen to the NRA. all they care about is selling you a gun they dont care about the consequences after their sale

fun fact. there have been cases where gun loving politicians that become gun ambassadors. if someone approached them with a gun. that politician will not kiss your ass and be your friend. they will be busy dialling 911 crying that they fear their life because a man with a gun is stalking them

...
translating it to mixers
those promoting mixers dont care for consequences to users. they just care about their own greed benefit they get from getting others to use what they advertise. and when these services/products get in trouble they wont blame themselves for their promotion they will find someone else to blame

these promoters do not know about the regulations that apply nor reasons why regulations apply they do not realise bitcoins definition/categorisation has changed over the decade. they dont realise that regulations DO apply. they just want to stroke people into a zombie status of sleep to pretend laws dont apply just to recruit people into using something that does have consequences, even if they dont want to talk about the consequences

you are not correcting me, rather you are confirming what I wrote before,
if you have the gun but no bullets you can't kill.
if you have the bullets but no gun you can't kill. simple isn't it?

as regards the advertising of mixers, everyone is free to think as they wish, the fact is that renting out one's signature form is a personal matter, which can be shared or not. I would say that the same problem would exist even if they advertised an online casino, or a bookmaker.

remember, dont trust, verify!

I really have not seen any tangible proof convincing to conclude that bitcoin mixing is money laundering. This is just a service like every other services out there wanting to deliver so as to remain relevant. As we all know bitcoin mixing signifies being anonymous so therefore the mixing process goes along with the sole reason why bitcoin was found. People who chooses to remain anonymous tend to use the mixers so as not to be noticed for their own comfort and privacy.

If i am not mistaken, people tend to use mixers as a result of third parties monitoring their transactions and assets movement which they do not find comfortable with so in that case, they opt for mixers so as to avoid being monitored or traced.

I think the only way to survive the onslaught by the government is to remain anonymous just like satoshi did.  If bitcoin mixers can remain anonymous, irrespective of the threats and sanctions, they can go further surviving the the heat from all corners. That was what satoshi did and bitcoin still exists till today. Any mixer can do it too.

Eh?  I didn't get your point there, but I think I agree with your argument if it's that mixing doesn't equate with money laundering necessarily.  I'm pretty sure mixers could be used to launder money or for some other illicit purpose, but I don't think they're inherently evil like the US and some other governments seem to believe.  Some people prize their privacy above all else in the world of bitcoin--like Satoshi, for instance.  And I always think of Lauda (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=101872) when I think of members here who've guarded their personal information intensely, and not just their bitcoin transactions.  Me?  I'm sure I could be doxxed in 2 minutes flat, but I respect people's need for as much anonymity as they're comfortable with.

Governments don't want people to have privacy; that's a fact.  It's been that way for a long time, but I think as technology has advanced privacy (and alarmingly, people's concern for it) has started swirling down the toilet bowl like a tornado twister.  I could go on and on, but I won't.  This is a good discussion to have, but I think it's a conversation some of the bigger bitcoiners need to have with regulators.

I pretty much agree with everything you've written except the last phrase: I hate how governments try to take down cryptos all the time, even making up facts or blame cryptos for every single problem there is in the world but if a mixer is mainly used to laundry bitcoins then I can understand they want to take it down. Of course if the illegal transactions are a minimum part than I have no problem with that, even cash and bank transfers are used by criminals but if a specific bank mainly deals with stolen funds then I understand why it must be shut down. Same goes with mixers, they closed Chip Mixer because of the huge amount of illegal activity behind it. The problem as usual is not the tool, it's the people.

Yeah, I know that mixing/tumbling is different from BIP-47/Reusable Payment Codes, but can't BIP-47 help a little in making our onchain activities in Bitcoin more private? For example in the Trucker's Protest, I see it now as both a success and a failure, but if the truckers used a wallet that applied BIP-47, wouldn't the government have had a harder time to sanction the donations?

Citation required. Chainanalysis suggests otherwise. Even from their recent report, which included Hydra marketplace and Lazarus group, they have concluded that only a 25% comes form illicit activity[1].

Just a tip: you're making a privacy-related question to a narcissistic, anti-privacy and anti-Bitcoin (altogether) forum user who believes that money had had never privacy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5446635.msg62032963#msg62032963) to begin with. Very poor choice.

[1] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/crypto-mixer-criminal-volume-2022/

I'm merely making a point of asking more about BIP-47, and its capabilities and application to make our onchain activities more anonymous. It would have made the difference between the success and the failure of using Bitcoin for the Canadian Truckers' donations in my opinion. franky1 is a smart person if he's not trolling.

payment codes is where there is a partnership involved.

all donators would have to be in on the secret to know whats the next address to use. and they would need to organise who sends to which address so they dont all just end up sending to the same next address,, and due to lots of different donators its hard to do because a honeypot can be done where the authorities become a partner(pretend to be a donator to get in the secret reveal club) and get the secret thus the honeypot then knows the list of addresses


also later(separate flaw) when its time to spend funds received. usually utxos are clumped together as multiple inputs, so unless spending each utxo individually by manually choosing utxo's for input to never co-mingling utxo's into one spend. those numerous addresses may end up being linked later

as for blackhat. he is the person that wants other peoples posts deleted and people banned and tries to tell people that they should not use bitcoin normally and promotes other networks and services that end up messing with people more. and he is in complete ignorant blindness of his actions. he prefers other networks so all insults he says to me apply to him 1000x

he doesnt want you to think for yourself or do your own research he just wants you to follow the group narrative you got recruited into by his forum wife.

even now in this topic he avoids the regulators guidance of how legit services should treat mixers.

for instance he only displays info that echos his preconceived confirmation bias (sounds like stuff he likes to hear). rather then things that are part of the real world. take the chain analysis stats. .. chain analysis only know of SOME criminal activity due to SOME poorly made privacy options. however there are many other better ones that chain analysis cant audit.
EG the police only know about the crimes that got reported. although there are xX more crimes that go unreported. thus crime stats are BS

Honestly franky1, and before I ask some people who are smarter than me about BIP-47, is that how it truly works? Because I've read a few blogs/articles and I have never read/seen anything/any explanation about a "nefarious user" needing to be "in on the secret", and getting the capability to know the list of addresses.

bip 47 and their admirers are not going to talk about risk awareness/flaws.. you should know this.. proposers/promotors/advertisers never talk about flaws. they try to get flaws to be unspoken/removed/trampled out of a discussion. as you know

however when you learn how it works and realise whats involved hopefully you can ignore the proposers stroking your head to sleep and instead have a critical thinking cap on and think about how the features can be used against other users involved in the feature

the thing is. for ease of use a recipient wanting lots of payments over time shares a secret with one person. so that person can generate the same address lists as recipient so the sender can send funds over many addresses knowing it goes to the recipients wallets who has the secret, without sending funds to the same address or asking repeatedly for new addresses because they pre agreed on an address list creation method they both share

one utility is if a recipient does not want to set up multiple secrets to have a secret per sender. but instead creates a 'federation"/group who all share the secret making it easy to manage/monitor incoming payments

best practice would be a different secret per sender-receiver partnership. thus avoid the malicious user joining the federation. but some examples of bip47 are that the recipient sends out the same secret to his trusted allies/group/friends so that he has to only watch monitor one set

the flaw with the federation/group is that if alice uses index 2 so could dave. meaning address re-use still occurs

some discussion is that out of the range of index. the recipient says alice use 1-250 chris use 251-500 and so on so that there is no cross over. but the recipient then doesnt have to watch several secrets with thousands of potential addresses per secret. but instead a more manageable watchable amount

those involved in looking into bip 47 are tweaking their promotion/utility arguments. but from the earlier idea's there were many flaws

the end solution is new secret per partnership with no group federation sharing secret.
but in all cases it still involves sharing a secret.

...
i say all this because you used the freedom trucker donation gateway. whereby its lots of people making single payments. meaning a secret per user is meaningless. however the model of the donation gateway having multiple managers with the same secret and they then select individual addresses within the secret range so that funds appear to be going everywhere where reality is it goes to one wallet of the secret

a malicious user can become one of the managers of the secret that is also used for other users/managers

The coins of Canadian truckers were confiscated, because they used centralized exchanges and their government enacted the Emergencies Act to stop "freedom envoy". Bitcoin mixing has nothing to do with it.

I'm not questioning his intelligence; I'm just alerting for his intentions. He is clearly not in favor of privacy, pretty much the opposite.

blackhatcoiner

i do understand privacy far more then you. i also know to actually do research to know how to be most effective

if you read my posts i have never said everyone should KYC their life history. i have clarified that using mixers is not as private as you PROMOTE because your PROMOTIONS fail to inform people that they actually get watched when using services YOU PROMOTE

so its you that does not care about privacy you simply care about earning a commission from PROMOTING SOMETHING

if you actually bother to read my posts and then go do some research on what regulators look for and delegate money services to look for,... you could, if you actually read the stuff... then create a new service that avoids the flags becasue you understood the flags to know what to avoid.. where said new service as a unpromoted side effect does the purpose of privacy

the very fact you promote privacy gets you highlighted as someone that should be watched.

so learn from mistakes and stop repeating mistakes

oh and yea
if you dont want people knowing the colour of your underwear stop promoting, stop waving a flag that you wear pink thongs.. you are going to get noticed

EG
if you want to hide your shopping habits. dont put a bilboard up, of a map of where you shop and make payments and receive payments, telling people they should shop there too..

Based on your reasoning, you shouldn't avoid KYC, because you're put on some watchlist.

Completely irrelevant the part where you're wanted by the authorities and the part where you're private. In fact, the former proves the latter. If you weren't private, the authorities wouldn't be anxious about mixers.

See, this is what I mean. You don't even understand what's privacy to begin with.

---

Completely waste of time. Back to ignore.

funny part is im not the one waving my underwear around YOU ARE
you cry that you dont want people knowing your business but then go about promoting it..

i however for a decade have never advertised my stash or services i use nor promoted people to use the services i use.
no one knows my history pre-bitcoin nor my name

sooo angelo
are you as successful or unsuccessful at bitcoin as you were at scrap metal trading

That is very true. Bitcoin had been associated to drugs for a long time because of Silk road accepting bitcoin as a payment.
But things have changed now and people are using bitcoin for trading these days. Yet there are a lot of people who think it's illegal and some think its a scam/ponzi.
Its true that back in those days bitcoin mixers were being used at peak to launder the money used for illicit activities.
I guess bitcoin mixers are so good that government agencies find it really difficult to trace the coins back to the owner and hence they decided to ban mixers like Chipmixer.

I agree that Bitcoin mixing is a way to keep your Bitcoin information private. But some people use it to hide their bad actions, like stealing or cheating. It depends on why someone is using it if it's okay or not.

It's not fair when people blame products for bad behavior when it's really the person's fault. Sometimes law enforcement only focuses on the product instead of the person using it.

Yes, mixers are a great tool for losing track of your utxos, but if they are not used by many at the same time, you risk not having enough utxos to mix, thus rendering the purpose for which they exist in vain.  But at the moment I prefer coinjoins to a mixer service even though they do a great job.

Law enforcement has to follow the stolen funds and when they are being laundered through a mixing service it really isn’t a question of whether or not mixers enable money laundering. They do. When an individual is running a mixing service, then that person has enabled money laundering and will likely go to jail. If privacy was built into the Bitcoin protocol, then there would be no individual enabling money laundering, we would only have financial privacy.

Individuals laundering money for criminals = bad
Currency that enables financial privacy = good

Too many people are on the mixers payroll here to have a real discussion about it though.

to add to ognasty post

REGULATORS DO list mixers as something to watch. though sponsored forum-bro's stroke readers to sleep pretending its not happening
but its not deniable.. they DO WATCH actions done by mixers.. they have reasons to

its because fungibility is not a true-false thing. its a risk % and mixers are not a 0% risk. they actually are advertising that they clean dirty money. thus they are waving a flag of servicing criminals.

mixers dont get automatically shut down just by being a mixer. they get shut down when criminals use them. but by advertising a service fit for criminals means regulators watch what goes through a mixer

using a mixer gets you watched more so than for instance buying a giftcard (hackers prefer giftcards) so when innocent people use mixers instead of giftcards. guess what.. innocent people get on watchlists more due to using mixers.

thus defeating the whole point of mixing..
.. mixing is not about privacy becasue your on a watch list. meaning the only real purpose of mixing is to clean dirty coins by passing the dirt to innocent people and take innocent peoples clean funds..

people that want privacy should think smarter and realise that advertising that you want privacy makes other people start to wonder why and start looking at you.
(if 2 people were standing in a street. one on the main sidewalk. and the other hiding behind a bush.. the guy behind the bush looks more suspicious and becomes watched more. .. but for that person hiding to then have a billboard to tell everyone he is hiding and where he goes to hide.. that just defeats the point of hiding)


the less you speak of it the more private you become. the less you make it obvious the more private you become. in short dont use things that make it obvious

But there would be money laundering. Isn't that what you're trying to prevent? Seriously now. Do you want to prevent money laundering or individuals having profit from money laundering? Because I'm personally in favor of the former.

Currency that enables financial privacy is actually currency that enables money laundering. You're somehow in the delusion that decentralized mixing is morally correct in comparison with centralized mixing, while the same (and even worse) criminal activity remains encouraged.

Do you think privacy coins are good while mixing is bad? Not sure what's the point while both serve the same purposes.
1. Mixer allows to have financial privacy, and so do the privacy coins.
2. Mixer helps with money laundering, and so do the privacy coins.

While I would say none of them have the goal to help criminals. Both are here to ensure financial privacy. If criminal takes advantage of that, it's not their fault directly, it's not the mixer's fault, not even the fault of privacy coins. Bitcoin has been used by so many criminals and that doesn't make Bitcoin bad.

If you want to hide your bitcoins from government then it is probably so. If you use mixers you draw more attention to yourself. Governments have enough analytics and computing power to trace mixed transactions. When we saw news about Chopmixer closure Europol said they already know who used this mixer, so they knew everything they need before they confiscateed servers.

But if don't want some exchange office to know how many coins do you have you can probably hide that information from them. I see no purpose to hide my transactions from gov as they'll find anything if they want, but I usually prefer not everyone knew about that I have... nothing on my account. ;D

you nailed the whole point. this is the best explanation I have read so far. in short, you cannot achieve both privacy and reputation. as you've said if you are mixing your money, you are hiding what you wanted to hide by getting innocent people's money, in that statement alone you are already escaping something. therefore you can conclude that this person has a reputation and a bad one at that. IMO, they are not mixing their money, but they are mixing their reputation in order to escape those tails that are chasing them. for sure anyone who knows how the mixer will function will always be keeping an eye on those transactions before it goes inside that specific mixer.

Just highlighting this as it is like clockwork that the only people who defend these mixers are on their payroll.  They will say stupid things like having financial freedom is the same thing as allowing third parties to engage in the facilitation of money laundering or that, "the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination" of funds is not money laundering but just maintaining privacy.  On one hand they bash honest projects as scams and unleash their combined power to try and censor people's feedback in the trust network that are honest while claiming to fight scams, and on the other they want the scammers to be able to launder their funds so they can keep getting paid their cut for advertising mixers to them.  Not saying all those advertising mixers are evil.  Some of them just want an easy paycheck.  The ones who list me as untrusted for blowing the whistle about the coming government crackdown on ChipMixer BEFORE they acted are the ones who are literal pieces of shit this community would be 100 times better off without.

And even what happened to Chipmixer is totally different from what the advocates that  are saying, because of what happened to Chipmixer they took all mixers as scam or money launders and that is wrong, you can't accused an innocent Mother because of what the son did out. Everyone had their own race. And from what I read and understand Chipmixer company (the company itself) was not involved but the owner of the company was the money launderer, and the company was seized because the owner was involved in the crime.

Before cryptocurrency, it was really easy to define money laundering, but then, when Bitcoin came out, we were reading various articles that tried to prove that bitcoin is not money.

"Whatever Bitcoin is, it’s not money.
We use money to buy products and services. The dollar, for instance, is like a claim check on a car, a coat or a ticket to an event—only, in the dollar’s case, it can be used to purchase or sell anything.
Money works best when it has a stable value. While there are stories of vendors being willing to accept a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies will remain curiosities until their value is stable."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2021/02/02/bitcoin-is-not-money-yet/
This is one of many examples.

We have to remember that if you receive bitcoin from someone that bitcoin is anonymous. It's the same with bitcoin mined by yourself or received from faucets, or other anonymous users on this forum.
It's like cash in the electronic form. What happens when you take $100 to a store, buy a chewing gum for $1 and pocket the rest? Is it an act of money laundering?
Concealing the transaction may, or may not be money laundering, just as my post in this matter may, or may not be influenced by my signature. I've spent years on this forum and just a week advertising this mixer. A few dollars that I got from it wouldn't be able to change my mind.

My opinion is as follows: messing with bitcoin transactions is not money laundering. Bitcoin is classified as commodity, not security and not money. It's called digital money but it doesn't tick all boxes. If I buy a gold OTC and decide to turn it into gold bullion, is it money laundering? IMO it's not.

Whatever you believe if Bitcoin mixing is used to launder money then it is.  It is not about Bitcoin but the service that uses Bitcoin to launder money.  Bitcoin mixing is not an act of money laundering itself but the purpose of using it to launder money is alarming to the authority.  I know many of us are knowledgeable enough about how money laundering happens.  So anyone that has a malicious intent of laundering fiat currency by converting it to Bitcoin and using Bitcoin mixers to wash the traces and then reconverts Bitcoin to fiat currency, then it can be considered as money laundering, yes?

This must be the umpteenth time you avoid the counter-arguments and keep cycling through the same bullshit. So you're going to completely ignore my arguments for once more, and blame me for being financially biased? Convenient path, but any adult who's been following the conversation can acknowledge you're ridiculous. The moment someone discredits you for being incorrect, you change the subject. At least show some dignity and admit you've been contradicting yourself throughout.

Even franky1, the individual who believes money should not have privacy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5446635.msg62032963#msg62032963), is more conscious than you; he has clarified he's against. You're somehow in favor and against privacy simultaneously, and the moment someone questions you, you ignore. Childish.

From my understanding, what I know that while Bitcoin mixing itself may not be illegal or used for money laundering, it can be used for those purposes. However, privacy is the most important thing in financial transactions, and anyone should have the rights to use something like Bitcoin mixer if it is protecting their personal information.
And as OP explained, it is not the same concept as money laundering. So there's no point of mixing them both together. Things are bad only when we chose to look at it from a perspective which makes it bad.

So, if someone uses a car to ram and murder people, cars should be treated like murder weapons. In 2017 in Charlottesville some guy run his car into a crowd killing 1 person and injuring over 30 people, but cars weren't banned because of it.
Bitcoin itself, without mixers, combined with a no KYC exchange, can also be used to launder money. Should we ban bitcoin, or p2p exchanges?
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

It's funny how it's you who plays with semantics now. Yes, in that post you mention that money had never had privacy (which is completely false, but let's ignore that for the sake of the topic); you're clearly not in favor of privacy, your intentions reveal so.

Look, there isn't much point talking with you. Any forum reader with minimum intelligence who's been reading your posts can acknowledge not only that you're against privacy, but you don't even understand it to begin with. You think that "waving a flag (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5446635.msg62046591#msg62046591)" that you used a mixer makes you traceable. Doesn't even pass the laugh test.

First off, let me express my gratitude for your clarification on the dissimilarity between Bitcoin mixing and money laundering. It's imperative to comprehend that blending of coins doesn't equate to engaging in illegitimate activities. However, my skepticism towards Bitcoin's anonymity remains intact, and its traceability to the source is a matter of concern. In my view, it's essential to safeguard one's privacy, but simultaneously, one must adhere to the cryptocurrency-related laws and regulations.

I truly believe that people have the right to keep their personal stuff private and should be able to prevent anyone from snooping around where they don't belong. But you know what? With all the hackers and cybercriminals running amok, we gotta find a way to balance privacy and security. It's not gonna be easy, but we gotta do what we gotta do to keep everyone safe.

If Bitcoin Mixing is not any of what you have mentioned, so can you give us a clue of what mixing actually tells us? What is the need for mixing if the fund we are holding is not going to put us in problem. Although I don't really cares what those mixers are for but I think mixing coin is unnecessary for me. Those that are using them enjoy using the service and they don't complain.

I would argue that if you don't see the point in mixing your bitcoins, it's highly likely that you don't need to mix your bitcoins. There are not too many cases where someone needs to increase the level of privacy when using bitcoins. At least if you are a bona fide owner.

Some criminals think that they can hide their bitcoins from government using mixers. I'd say it is a popular misconception: transparency of bitcoins blockchain makes it nearly impossible even if to use most modern mixers. Government will find out what it needs anyway. But until criminals caught they think they do everything better than others who are already caught. Well, I'm not so sure about that.

In a recent article (https://decrypt.co/138445/ohio-man-steals-bitcoin-from-brother-prison) about how the brother of the creator of one of the mixers stole funds already under arrest from him, they talk about two mixers against which law enforcement agencies took action. In both cases, they are talking about the connection of mixers with criminals.

According to them, Helix (exactly the mixer whose founder's brother stole the money) partnered with several shops from the dark web. And Tornado Cash worked with the hacker organization Lazarus Group.

Perhaps not every mixer has partnerships with criminal organizations, but mixers are closed precisely for this.

The problem is that people aren't as smart as you think. If people were smart, they wouldn't believe lies from government but people are dumb, majority of them, so, don't expect dumb people to understand the importance of privacy. I've actually met a lot of people who say, why do you need privacy if you don't do something illegal? So, government knows what I do and then what? What can say do? Will they arrest me, kill me? I'm clear. This is definitely a wrong approach, people ignore that every information they gave away, including their transactions, strengthens the power of governments and strengthens the power of companies like Apple, Google, Walmart, they understand your behavior, know what you do and when, you are just in their claws. Because of that, it's getting almost impossible to compete with these firms and soon, I think, there will be a total monopoly in many business niches.

Now, it's pretty clear for me that majority of people think that bitcoin mixing is only for money laundering, because government tells them so and that's what they learnt from people around them. Should we try to talk again about this task? Definitely, the more we let the light shine, the more people will see it in the dark but so many people still don't learn basics like not your keys, not your wallets, I'm sad.

If cops say it's crime to wear pink hoody, should we all agree about that without asking a logical question, what's wrong with pink hoodies?
They say that bitcoin mixing is an illegal act but how the hell is it legal act to track me and learn and analyze my every activity? How legal is it to read all of my messages and track all of my phone calls? Oh, it's done to prevent crime and illegal activities? C'mon man, that's not true and you can see it in everyday life. Government it self is a huge group of criminals that don't let other criminals to step in their game. They are brainwashing people and only adjust attention on one specific thing, that they want.

You are watched anyway! Let's make it more difficult for them. If you are partly anonymizing yourself, like using a mixer to receive coins on your main exchange wallet, log-in in your bank account via ProtonVPN and ProtonMail, then yeah, you are watched but if you do things a little bit different, you won't be their main target.

As much as I want to agree with you here, I have to disagree.  Most of the tracking has been accepted by you once you agreed to all sorts of Terms and Conditions when setting up your phone.  Or your computer.  Or, when you bought a SIM card.  We blindly agree to so many Terms and Conditions almost every day.  Open up a web page and you have to click 'I Consent' or read a 10 minute long text to understand what you have to consent for proper functioning of the Website.  No body ever reads this for every single website they go on.

Of course.  Most of these Terms are overwhelmingly long for the average human to read, comprehend and link together.  But it all lays down there in the Terms.  One Google app records your voice (Assistant) continuously.  The other (Photos) stores your gallery stuff.  Another one (Messages) stores SMS.  Most of them do not work without the weird GSF and the other apps required by these apps to work.  You download other apps to identify unknown phone numbers.  WhatsApp has your contacts.  Tinder knows what kind of people you like and how you flirt.  Et cetera.  They have it all and when it is all linked to a single business owner (say Google which knows most of the stuff about you), it is so easy to analyze your person and monitor you.

Then you have a lot of apps mentioning in some way they will sell information to Third Parties.  Here is where the thing links all together.  Either they work directly with the Government or Third Parties buy and sell information to them if needed, indirectly making these corporations work with the Governments.  Because what is easier to do, pay/ask Google for some information about Synchronice or find, collect and analyze the information by yourself?

The door to Governments is open as soon as there is a 'we will report to the Government if there is a suspicious action or we will hand them out the information in case they ask us for it' clause in the Terms.  Same goes with Centralized Exchanges.  As soon as there is this clause that your money will be frozen and seized if they think something is suspicious about you.  There are SO many things that can go wrong.  Free Wallet uses this clause to seize your money and ask for so many personal documents with the promise that your money will be handed back to you if you send it, but this never actually happens.  You end up sending them all you got on you and they keep asking for more.  They now have your money and an unimaginable amount of your personal documents.  So there is theft for one and a potential for identity theft in the future.

So if you start being MUCH more cautious about the way you handle things.  And start de Google-ing your phone, get rid of Windows, use a dumb phone with removable battery for your mobile carrier interactions, use Mixers to break links, use an encrypted e-mail provider for e-mail communication, use Open Source encrypted communication applications instead of WhatsApp, remove your Facebook and Instagram accounts et cetera.  Once you do that, maybe they will try to watch you closer.  But there is not much they can watch any more.  What will they do if they are now unable to collect much on you anyway.

Now start arguing that crime will be on All Time High levels if every body did this.  Do we all forget the things I mentioned in the above paragraph did not really even exist 50 to 100 years ago and crime was still a thing.  I do not see crime going into inexistence thanks to severe monitoring of humans.

What franky does not get is that I am in the highlights for using Mixers BECAUSE every body else is scared of using them.  Had Mixing, using Proton Mail and encryption at every single corner been the common way of using technology, not only would they not be a highlight any more but Governments would have a very hard time keeping up with controlling and monitoring.

Am I criminal for using Cash at a store?  Why, if my bank note can not be traced down to the source.  If I am not, then why is Mixing money laundering.  Some body above my post posted the definition of Mixing as obscuring the trail back to the source of funds.  Cash is the same, is it not.  Intentionally or not, you are obscuring the trail back to the source of funds by using it.  In fact.  You are obscuring the trail so much better by using a bank note than by using a Mixer.  I can go to a self paying checkout point in a store with a large bill and buy the cheapest thing in the store.  I now have a new set of bank notes, minus a 'fee' (the thing I bought).  How does the Government keep up with this kind of 'money laundering'?

To me it is also a sort of psychopathic pleasure to know that a Government has a hard time keeping up with the monitoring of my person.  I really dislike being watched like I was in a cage at a Zoo they were visiting for some weird study.

Not all Bitcoin mixer users are into money laundering, there are many people that take privacy very seriously and nobody can stop such people from using mixers for their transactions, they believe this is the real way to be two steps away from the government and powerful centralized commodities, I can't blame them but, indeed, there are also some people that are using Bitcoin mixers to move illegal funds and launder money, this is also a fact.

I don't want to be caught up between what's good and what's bad but whatever we use for the good purposes can also be use by bad people, the government have every right to try stopping this, terrorists around the world can benefits a lot from mixers, they can move illegal money around with mixer to purchase weapons and bombs, they are going to use this to take lives of innocent people.

Mixers are beneficial for the good and the bad but I don't know what to say or do about it because there is no way to stop bad people from using Bitcoin mixers.

Tell that to mainstream governments who usually come up with excuses to stop people from getting true financial freedom. They make everyone believe mixers are used for money laundering and tax evasion just to keep Fiat currencies afloat. We should expect more crackdowns on crypto mixers and privacy coins as crypto/Blockchain tech becomes more popular.

I'm glad there are decentralized (non-custodial) mixers aimed to give people the financial privacy they need without fear of censorship from the government. You can see how Tornado.Cash is still being used, despite the US sanctions. Now there's a new alternative called Privacy Pools using the same tech as Tornado.Cash. The revolution simply can't be stopped. Who knows if all centralized mixers disappear for good due to fierce government crackdowns? Just my opinion :)

Indeed, Bitcoin mixing and money laundering are two different things. But the problem here is that the line that separates both is very thin. Plus the fact that the goal of these two are somewhat the same which is hiding traces or origins of the funds through a variety of ways. Thus, giving the government and authorities the sweet excuse to pin down such services as much as they can. It doesn't even matter whether the reason is just or only for the sake of personal gain of certain individuals. As long as there is a chance for it to be used by criminals, the authorities and government will always take advantage of their justification of protecting the people to give Bitcoin mixing service providers a hard time in every way possible. The only thing we ordinary people can do is to support these type of services in our own ways and look for workarounds that would help us keep as much as we can of whatever control and privacy there is that we still have left.

Centralized mixing services don't stance a chance against the government. But with non-custodial (decentralized) mixers, that's another story. These will be the ones that will ultimately survive as governments will be unable to take them down for good. But be aware that you can still get targeted by the government if it discovers you are using a decentralized mixer.

After all, governments don't want you to gain true privacy and finacial freedom. Therefore, we should expect tougher days ahead for crypto mixers and privacy coins alike. As long as decentralization wins, there should be nothing to worry about. Just my thoughts ;D

Is what I wanted to say just like how @Similificator described, the difference between those two are so thin that it is enough to be mistaken as what we commonly call illegal by government standards. We arr all aware that mixing wasn't made by the purpose of doing something illegal, but it has to be expected that it can be exploited due to its nature or the process as how it works. We are also aware that those who had bad records before mixing are the ones causing massive problems while dragging those innocent users on their way.

I still believe that it all depends on how the user wanted to use the platform not that a platform was initially like that, and to be more precise their major customers like what happened at CM are the ones doing those laundering activities, and even if they will revise their own rules, they will probably lose credibility since what they had promised is different than what they can afford to deliver.

If a government doesn't ban bitcoin usage at all I see no worries if it can see any transactions. Why I see bitcoin mixing important is to hide my transactions from different kind of bad actors who can trace my transactions and take bad action against me. Even if now all I have is very few to have an interest in me bitcoin can go up and situation can change. I prefer less people know anything about my money. But I don't think any can hide their money from gov as gov has enough resources to trace everything in blockchain if they want.

With the development of blockchain analyzers, including the use of artificial intelligence technologies, and the general development of the digitalization of society, bitcoin may in the foreseeable future be divided into three large clusters:
1. Bitcoins on verified bitcoin addresses that are uniquely associated with the identity of the owner, let's call them "white" bitcoins for definiteness.
2. Bitcoins without any history of miner rewards, let's call them "gray" bitcoins for definiteness.
3. Bitcoins with a dubious history, including those that have passed through the mixer, let's call them "black" bitcoins.

I think every member of the bitcoin community should ask themselves the question, what color is their current bitcoins, and what color bitcoins would they like to own when the difference between bitcoins of different colors becomes really significant?

Because the prospect is quite real when it may suddenly become clear that one bitcoin is not equal to one bitcoin. The favorite mantra of bitcoin maximalists "1btc = 1btc" does not work because the coins in the open blockchain are not fungible.

I think every Bitcoin user should have color blindness in that matter.

I strongly disagree. There are abundant bitcoin buyers and sellers who are willing to exchange bitcoin without questioning the coin history at all. That alone should be enough to consider it fungible. The fact that some companies enforce a view in which some coins are worth less, doesn't mean they really do, because there are people who don't buy this view, and still are willing to buy / sell them for the same price.

If this is the case now (due to the imperfection of automatic blockchain analyzers, gaps in the legislation of different jurisdictions and local weaknesses of regulators) - this does not mean that it will always and everywhere be like this. Of course, there will always be more loyal jurisdictions that will be color blind in the matter of bitcoin color differentiation. And I'm talking more about the real risk of such a separation in the future than about a fait accompli in the present.

Although it seems that some centralized exchanges even today will automatically block your deposit if the incoming bitcoin had traces of passing through the mixer in its history. The deposit will be unblocked after you document the legality of the origin of the funds, show a certificate of income.

There will always be decentralized exchanges, which are superior in terms of enforcing arbitrary coin criteria, because they cannot be shut down. So you will always have the option to go and buy / sell this way.

Great, so don't use a centralized exchange. You will never have your coins treated unequally in Bisq.

You contradict yourself. First say that the history of a particular bitcoin does not matter, and then admit that this is only true until you use centralized exchanges, otherwise you will have problems freezing funds. And problems with freezing funds will also arise for someone who buys bitcoins from you that have passed through a mixer on a decentralized exchange, and then wants to bring them to a centralized exchange. For you it doesn't matter, but for someone it can be a serious limitation in the freedom to manage their funds. So don't tell me that the history of a particular bitcoin is unimportant, because it isn't. Conditional freedom is a kind of non-freedom.

I'm not contradicting myself. Just because there exist services which enforce arbitrary rules, it doesn't mean the coins are the problem. Just as if there would be a merchant in real life, who would not accept your cash because he thinks you're not trustworthy, and asked for further info like bank transactions, passport, phone number etc., it doesn't mean your cash are problematic; the merchant is.

Notice that you repeat the usage of centralized exchange as if it was an indivisible part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. It's not. I have not used a centralized exchange in my life that enforces such nonsense. I trade peer-to-peer using decentralized, trustless exchanges*, just as bitcoin was designed to be.

Depends on the conditions. If the only condition is "don't use such services", I don't think you have much freedom encroached.

* with this exception (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5286821.msg62115318#msg62115318).

If you don't like the example of centralized exchanges, I can cite a number of others to support the generally self-evident point that bitcoins are not the same.
1. One bitcoin in an address with multiple inputs is not equal to one bitcoin in an address with one input. You can consolidate many inputs into one by making a transaction to your own address, but this will require additional effort, time, and miner fee overhead from you.
2. One bitcoin on a legacy address is not equal to one bitcoin on a segwit address or one bitcoin on a taproot address. You can transform address types by transacting to your own address, but this will also require you to add extra effort, time, and miner fee overhead.
3. There is a number of evidence that investors of a certain class prefer to buy bitcoins not on the exchange, but directly from mining companies, and even pay an additional premium to the market price for owning bitcoins with zero history.
4. Bitcoins from the earliest period of history (about a year after the genesis block) are under close scrutiny by blockchain analyzers, and their transition from a quiescent to an active state can lead to significant consequences. One bitcoin from this period of early history is not equal to one bitcoin from a more modern period of history.


I respect your right to confidentiality, anonymity and privacy, but it seems to me a rather stupid idea to use for this purpose a completely open and transparent bitcoin blockchain, which does not have the native fungibility of coins. I am not against the use of bitcoin mixers, but you should be aware of the possible negative consequences of their use in the present and in the future, which I mentioned above. The spread of bitcoin adoption could lead to the segmentation of the single bitcoin space into partially isolated fragments, some of which may be significantly affected by the efforts of regulators. If you live in an anarchist commune and use bitcoin as your only payment instrument, never touch fiat money, then you have nothing to worry about. If you live in a normal society and continue to use fiat gateways, then you should be aware that the use of bitcoin mixers increases your privacy and at the same time increases the risk of your deanonymization. Because you can mix well, but you can't hide the fact of mixing.

firstly governments do not watch everything everyone does in the first place.
they dont have enough politicians agents to watch screens for everyones daily activities
put it this way the IRS has 80k employees meaning 1 employee per 3125 working age american
with weekends off and 4 weeks vacation thats 13 people they would have to audit in 8-10 hours for each persons whole year of activity if they were to watch everyone.
meaning without leaving the office all employees would only have about 30 minutes to audit every working age person

instead they delegate that task to NON-government entities, like centralised exchanges, money services, and financial institutions.
where by governments only receive data about suspect transactions that meet a threshold target of suspicion, because it takes hours to investigate someone properly

and for the multiple time the thing which you want to ignore, but shouldnt.. is that using a mixer adds points to your suspicion rating with all financial services who do share data with each other and do report suspect behaviour which mixing is listed as suspect

so if your concern is "government overwatch" you are i will say this again much more likely to be on a government watchlist by using a mixer. you are much more likely to have data shared by using a mixer

and yes when you buy coin. and buy produce. they can find out info about you. then when you put the remaining change through mixers..  and then put that mixed coin into a financial service. they see the before and after traces of you and link it together

where as regular folk wont get reported to a government agency. because they didnt use a mixer to even flag a suspect threshold to even be invested by financial services to then not be reported to government

oh and by the way the couple that done the social engineering hack on bitfinex and stole 120k coins and then used mixers and AEC. they got caught
and those involved in silk road got caught too even when their coins went through mixers.

so although mixers are promoted to offer privacy. they in actual fact highlight people to be put on watch lists and be found out more than someone that just buys furniture or electronics without using a mixer

learn what the regulations actually do mention to atleast know what to avoid if you want to stay off watch lists. stop relying on what you hope and dream the systems should be, and whats told to you by sponsored idiots just wanting a pay day.. . and actually learn what is actually happening away from idiot sales pitches. learn the good and bad. find out how things actually work outside of sponsored snake oil sales pitches. and then learn how to evade being highlighted

the sponsored promoters of mixers dont care about end user security. they just care about making money out of selling an idea

Incorrect. One input is not the same as ten. But one bitcoin is exactly the same quantity regardless the number of inputs. This is the same as arguing that ten euro coins can have different value than a 10-euro banknote. They have exactly the same value, it's just the weight that changes.

Incorrect. Legacy address is not equal to Segwit address. But one bitcoin is exactly the same quantity regardless the script used. Similar analogy applies here as well.

Please point me to one such case.

Again, bitcoins are equal. I can acknowledge that the owners of those particular coins need privacy, but the bitcoins per se are no different to "modern" coins.

You have fundamentally misunderstood mixing. You're not supposed to hide the fact that you mixed. You're supposed to obfuscate your coins' origins. You pretty much want from the rest to know that your coins come from a mixer.

Let's stop this dialogue if the above arguments are not enough for you. I'm willing to admit that bitcoin coins are fungible enough these days to not worry too much about it. The risks of losing the fungibility of coins in the open blockchain in the future may differ from different points of view, depending on future development scenarios and on individual risk tolerance.

I guess I really don't understand the meaning of mixing. Why would I want to advertise the fact of mixing my coins? What do I benefit from this to offset the potential problems associated with the common use case for mixers to launder "dirty" money?

There are no associated risks as long as you use bitcoin peer-to-peer. Such risks only arise if third parties, which are prone to regulation, are the backbone of the ecosystem. I don't recognize any third party which, if shut down or regulated, would take the entire currency with it.

I don't argue you advertise such thing; I'm just saying that if someone tries to trace you on-chain, it's good for you to have them known you've used a mixer. That clarifies you are not the owner of all mixer's outputs, and that the history prior mixing is not important.

According to what I understand, while Bitcoin mixing itself may not be unlawful or used to launder money, it can be utilized for those things. The most crucial factor in financial transactions is privacy, so everyone should be allowed to utilize tools like Bitcoin mixer if they are preserving their personal data.
Additionally, as the OP clarified, it is not the same as money laundering. Therefore, there is no reason to combine the two. Only when we choose to view something negatively do we declare it to be bad.

oh blackhatcoiner. missing the point

if you dont want businesses keeping tabs on you. and by that i mean risking then being on a government list..  you simply stop using things that wave a large neon red flag saying please look closer at me, please share what data you gather before a mixer and after a mixer with other businesses because im doing something that is by regulation deemed suspicious

you keep pretending that there is no policy to watch those entering and exiting mixers more carefully... but there is


thus when they find details about you when you get bitcoin and buy things .. which go to a mixer
but then after the mixer you do other things that note details about you..

it doesnt matter that you think you mixed it in the middle. they find you out by joining the two ends together. making the utility of mixing in the middle redundant as a feature. becasue the simple use of a mixer makes them fid the two ends of the ins and outs of your transactions

they put the two together and join up the two activities even if they cant link in the mixer middle initially.
you keep thinking that if you break the connect in the middle you become lost. but forget that the start and ends can be found

in short your thinking is
>     >>>        >
if you break the red connect, you are(in your mind) safe because you think they cant link your blue to your purple

reality is:
>     >>>        >
because there is a red. they follow back and follow forward to find the blues that are you. they are watching both the blues BECAUSE OF THE RED
they simply find the two ends. because the middle is what triggered them to look at the two ends

they are not spending time looking at everyone elses natural non mixed blues
>    >    >
because the non mixed blues have not triggered a watch warning/suspicious activity threshold to spend time watching all the normal blues

its because of the mixer in the middle that they are looking at the first and last parts.
they find you by the beginning and end parts.. because the middle part caused them to highlight each part.

example:
if they honeypot trap you by running lots of DEX traders to get your bank name linked to a bitcoin address
and thats seen going to a mixer. boom. your on a watch list

then after the mixer you do things like buy giftcards delivered to emails or home addresses they know of you. the giftcard merchant gets told to flag you becasue your names on a list.

where as someone that didnt use a mixer is not on a list where they are spending the extra time to look at you to try to find links

the sillier part is that you blackhatter have actually been giving out examples of how mixers work. revealing the allotment amounts that mixers use thus making it easier for those scoping the blockchain to recognise mixer transactions. thus flag coins that go in and coins that come out. thus also making it easier to put peoples movements onto watch lists.

heres the thing
regulators learned which coins got deposited into things like silk road. after seizing silkroad they learned some usernames and delivery addresses of its users. and sellers
then coins on the outs of a mixer. if they find similar usernames, addresses. they join them together
(same with the bitfinex hack)

all because those coins going in and coins coming out had been highlighted for extra scrutiny.

"Suspicious" doesn't tell me much. Earning bitcoin from someone who's involved in child porn can also happen incidentally, without using any privacy-enhancing tool, because people don't study the coins' history prior they accept them. Also, there is no law that prohibits mixing. There is only law about unregistered money transmitters. Mixing is more broad than that.

Watching both the blues and the reds doesn't tell me much either. The result is that we've all mixed coins together, and there is no direct path to match the blues. I don't argue they provide absolute privacy, but it's definitely not how trivial you imagine it to be.

Yes. They don't have the time to de-anonymize everyone else's coins (which is far easier to do btw). They are funded with millions by the American government, but they... don't find the time.  ::)

It's important to clarify that Bitcoin mixing does not necessarily equate to money laundering.

While it can be used to conceal the origins of money obtained through illegal activities, mixing is not a money laundering service in and of itself. Mixing coins can be a conscious decision made by individuals who value their privacy, whether they are involved in criminal activities or not.

It's crucial to respect individuals' privacy and recognize the importance of privacy-enhancing techniques. Remember that privacy and money laundering are not synonymous, and privacy is a fundamental human right.

You do not live in a vacuum, but in real life. If necessary, you will be deanonymized not by the peer-to-peer payment passed through the mixer, but by the context of the payment. And using a mixer, you only attract additional attention to yourself, advertising that you are hiding something. You can deceive yourself as much as you like, but anonymity and privacy are a myth in the modern world.

If you want to make an anonymous payment, it's much more reasonable to use a monero-type blockchain that was initially closed than to try to obfuscate the trail in a public ledger like bitcoin. Mixing in a mixer gives the illusion of privacy, which, like any self-deception, is sometimes much more dangerous than its complete absence.

I don't want to reveal the origins of my coins, some of which come from this very forum, and this is enough to have them sent to a mixer. I don't understand for what context are you talking about.

But I am hiding something. The origins of my coins. It's information I don't feel confident to have it publicly available at any time.

You either accept that, and let everyone scrutinize your life, or you live normally, obviously with part of your privacy violated by big corps, but not by every individual who has access to the blockchain. Do I need to remind you we're talking about public ledger here?

No, it's exactly the same thing. Using Monero means you want on-chain privacy. It not reasonable to distinguish it, as it's essentially a protocol with continuous and mandatory mixing, similar to making coinjoins.

I think you don't usually make a payment for the sole purpose of "make a payment". For this payment, you want to receive something in return - a specific product or service. The weak point of your privacy strategy is that the full cycle of interaction "money-goods" or "money-services" is only partially performed in a decentralized peer-to-peer network, and the other part is performed in real life or on the Internet, where, generally speaking, it is much more difficult to protect yourself from deanonymization, especially if you voluntarily and knowingly display a "red flag" when making a payment using a mixer. The context can be almost anything - an unclosed adjacent browser tab, a smartphone’s geolocation not turned off, a voluntarily filled in postal address for a delivery service, a gait identification system through an outdoor surveillance camera at a pharmacy in a neighboring house, and you never know what else.
These are different things. In the case of Monero, not only the content of your payment is hidden from prying eyes, but the very fact of the payment is also hidden. Without a key to read a particular transaction, you won't even be able to know that it actually happened.
Yep. We're really talking here about a public ledger that you're trying to misuse by mixing - and in doing so, claim that "it's okay, it's definitely not for dirty illegal business like money laundering."

Correct. But I don't want to go full privacy. Again, I don't want from the merchant I exchange stuff everyday to know I have an account here on bitcointalk, which makes me an extra income. I am fully aware that I can be de-anonymized in real life, but my goal is to retain part of my personal life private; specifically, this business in this forum.

This only strengthens my argument, which is that I want financial privacy on the Internet. What you just described is the reason most privacy experts advocate for Monero. It serves better privacy. According to your reasoning, we should neither use Monero because it makes us look suspicious. Why would I want to use a currency which completely hides my financial activity? Isn't that correct?  ::)

So, utilizing privacy-respecting tools for bitcoin with limited privacy gained is "bad", "for criminals only", but using monero which is the most completed black-box cryptocurrency to this date is "good", "for every person who wants some privacy". Okay.  ::)

BTW, I hope you know that it's entirely possible to receive coins which were used for illicit activity prior X transactions; and that X is arbitrarily marked as "good" and "bad" from mass surveillance corps which analyze the chain and create this "taint" perception.

For my own understanding bitcoin mixing is not money laundering. If the chip mixer is closed, it is probably because the chip mixer did not properly comply with the concern which caused it to be closed.

Because if this is a way for money laundering, no more than the Chipmixer took longer to operate. The only sad thing is that Bitcoin mixing is open to anyone who will use it, and there is no doubt that it can be used by someone with bad intentions. So no one is saying that Bitcoin mixing is bad, is there?

In addition to that, Bitcoin mixing only hides its true identity via the addresses used by Bitcoin holders who make transactions, that's the only thing I know why it works as a Bitcoin mixer.

You are wrong to attribute to my messages a moral coloring in the style of "good" and "bad", I condemn only the misuse of tools. My extensive experience and diverse background in the field of information and physical security allows me to argue that partial and unsystematic efforts to preserve confidentiality are a waste of resources, and it would often be better if they did not exist at all, because the harm is greater than the benefit. It's like building a house with three walls and leaving a huge gaping hole instead of a fourth. You will be protected from idle prying eyes from three sides, but do not be fooled by the illusion that you are safe in such a house.

As long as the transaction's source is hidden, the only distinction between bitcoin mixing and money laundering is whether or not this qualifies as money laundering. very essentially encircles the transaction's legal aspect. Whatever the case, it is difficult to define money laundering in this context because cryptocurrency by its very nature has an element of secrecy and the country of origin of the coins doesn't matter as much.

ChipMixer absolutely didn't comply with regulations. It wasn't a registered money transmitter service. No centralized mixer can comply with regulations due to its nature.

How so? You're the one who used the phrase "dirty illegal business" above.

I'm in no illusion that I have absolute anonymity. As I said, I just don't want from the merchants I interact with, online and offline, to let them know what I'm doing in this forum. And I'm pretty much accomplishing this since the day I joined a signature campaign, through the use of mixers. I'm really having a hard time comprehending your argument. Do you imply that unless we have absolute anonymity, we should have zero privacy?

Governments can't trace everything in a Blockchain, especially if the same is private by design. Up to this date, Monero transactions haven't been revealed by the government using available analytics software (as far as I know). You think that will change anytime soon? Developers will keep improving privacy/anonymity techniques to prevent governments from gaining advantage in the future. Just because "you don't have nothing to hide", doesn't mean you should allow governments to take control of every aspect of your life. Privacy/anonymity = freedom.

I see crypto mixers as a way to escape government surveillance in a good way. They're not meant to be used for illegal activites, though. But emerging technologies are a double-edged sword, so there's nothing we can do to prevent some people from using mixers in a bad way. Things are heating up for the crypto industry lately, so it should only be a matter of time before all centralized mixing services disappear for good. Just my thoughts ;D

We are talking about bitcoin mixers so I'm talking about bitcoin as well. If I'm saying that I'm not worried about that gov will anyway trace any my transactions in bitcoin blockchain, it's because they can do it anyway and bitcoin mixers won't prevent it. Right, it doesn't mean we should allow to trace our fair transactions, the presumption of innocence should work. But even if I don't give a special permission to gov to trace my transactions, bitcoin blockchain is transparent to anyone and everyone including gov. I keep it in mind. And it doesn't fear me that gov will see, main problem is that some bad actor can see. Gov should stay in boundaries of law and it shouldn't look if it wasn't allowed (even if it can), but a criminal is not bound by the law. So it's not about hiding anything from the gov, it's about hiding it from different bad actors.

I'm not entirely sure if my sarcasm is too good, or my English is too bad, or both. In any case, I'm definitely not one of those narrow-minded fanatics who run around the section and spam about their jihad declared to spam. Although a mixed transaction in a public blockchain from some point of view also looks like spam. But you can expect me to be free of any kind of moral condemnation, no matter what purpose you use the mixer for. I am glad that sometimes we seem to understand each other quite well, although each of us is conducting a dialogue not in our native language.

he says....
.. then debunks himself the same day with
so you admit chipmixer broke the law.. which you think there are no laws ..

again i need to reiterate this to you..

bitcoin 2009-2013 was private property. thus escaped financial laws and regulations as it was not deemed currency
bitcoin 2014-now is deemed currency thus financial laws do apply and regulating of financial services.. and i must emphasise this
DEX operators, mixer operators AND YES LN routers are all deemed as financial services.. so do check all the regulations and find out whats actually included and not included so you can learn the pitfalls and the loop holes

stop wasting pages trying to say what you hope things are. and instead actually look at the data and information easily accessible to determine how things are

learn and evolve. actually take the time you usually spend promoting things that get people noticed more. and instead do the smart thing
if you want to be chummy with developers of anonymous services. look at the laws and regulations and realise whats said and then learn the traps to avoid

again for instance
by blatantly calling it a mixer where regulations literally say MIXERS are a red flag of suspicion and require extra monitoring of users of such. learn from it

create new services not advertised or described as such.
another for instance. if a services sole function  is to be a mixer. then there is no get-out clause. its a mixer
but if there were a service that does several things. maybe legal gambling or random luck lotto where everyone wins(their funds back) where it also does other things but a unspoken side effect is the funds deposited are not the same taint as the funds withdrawn. then you have a more compelling option/service

think about it. stop playing dumb just to endlessly promote something that is actually written into regulations.
yes the word mixer is actually written in regulations as a red flag of suspicion

I do not really know if it is going to be that clear black/white situation at all. I understand that mixing could be a complicated issue but at the end of the day if it can be used for money laundering, then whatever else people use it for will not matter. However, we also have knives at home, we all have it, and we can kill someone with it if we want to right? Do we? I mean some do obviously but mostly we don't and knives are not banned, you can legally acquire guns too. So that means, just because some people may use it for bad purposes, it shouldn't be banned, or illegal.

There are so many things that would be bad for people to use it in a bad way, but we don't and that's why freedom to choose ourselves and only jail people who use it bad way should be punished, people who do not use it for illegal purposes should be left alone.

Since it's illegal in both Germany and US to run an unlicensed money transmitter service, and ChipMixer was running in just about both countries, it's pretty much certain that it did break the law.

I have nowhere stated that there are no laws that prohibit such activity. I have merely argued there is no law that prohibits mixing, which is true as far as I'm concerned. In no court have I ever seen mixing being equated to some unlicensed money transmitting service's product. You can practically mix coins yourself, with absolutely no other users, even though it's not recommended for your privacy. But it is, and can obfuscate in an extent. Coinjoining is neither money transmitting.

I love the fact that you were so plain and just in your explanations and no matter how people try to picture, I think at some point, this is business and the sole purpose is to create a decentralized form of  holding money where one can confidently spend their money without been monitored or tailed and that is simply the work mixers are doing perfectly well since most of these centralized  exchanges has made bitcoin  transactions very porous  and easily traceable.

I also understand  that judging  from some perspective,  mixing might be seen as aiding some criminal activities maybe consciously or not and since I'm not sure if mixers have to bother over the source of the funds of their clients before mixing don't we think that in other to keep this mixers at a safer side, she they go ahead to seek the source of fund before mixing?

firstly mixing is a financial service. but it cannot register as a licenced money service because its a red flag service.
(catch 22 event)

...
mixing with no other users is not mixing.. because your coins are still yours so its all the same junk(you confuse mixing with tumbling.. and yet tumbling is also a red flag event with regulators).. heck even you know this when your sober.. .. thats the whole point of you wanting to recruit innocent people into mixing instead of just advertising tumblers. you NEED to recruit clean money people(innocents) so that you can get rid of your dirty coins onto such innocents to take their clean coins. because thats how it works.

if it was so simple for dirty money to be mixed with itself there would be no point in needing other people recruited and palmed off with the dirty money
..
also a few other hints about your so called privacy lack of knowledge
when you do wire transfer to some stranger(s). your bank knows who that money went to, so their bank could ask that person for more details about the purpose of that receipt and get your address they sent coins to.
becasue they as wire transfer recipients of alots of payments makes them a money service business. which if they are using a personal account instead of a licenced business can cause them to be pushed into court.. yep DEX is not a saviour just like localbitcoins was not for the popular providers .. learn from this

if all of your coins have information that links to you where you are, at the end points doing wire transfer in and out guess what.. they find you via the end points. then when those addresses are flagged as being mixed. your then highlighted and flagged. and further scrutiny is on you..
you are no longer a random gorilla in the mist, not thought about or seen. you are suddenly kingkong, seen as something that should get the authorities targetting

if you want to stay off authorities radar. dont be kingkong, dont popularise yourself or highlight yourself

..
as for the other points of your post.
again you make a statement then say the opposite after of the same post.
for instance

you just admitted chip mixer was braking the law [not just] for being an unregistered money transmitter service, [but also doing laundering.]
you then pretend to say you have never seen in any court mixing equated to some unlicensed money transmitting service product.. yet chip mixer (your own example you do know about) is in court for BOTH crimes

chip mixer got shut down because of laundering. the owner got slapped with a lawsuit due to financially gaining from it which is the test of being a payment facilitator/financial transmitter service (Money Service Business / Payment Facilitator)

if you want to set up a service. learn from these things. dont pretend they didnt happen(while foolishly mentioning them in the same breath)

just because you plead ignorant by not doing research or ignoring anything you have seen to pretend you did not see it. actually read stuff and learn from it.

regulations do mention that mixing is a red flag that will get you noticed.
ill say it 5 more times
regulations do mention that mixing is a red flag that will get you noticed.
regulations do mention that mixing is a red flag that will get you noticed.
regulations do mention that mixing is a red flag that will get you noticed.
regulations do mention that mixing is a red flag that will get you noticed.
regulations do mention that mixing is a red flag that will get you noticed.

let that thought rattle around in your head for a while


so one last time

when mixing is the bad word of regulation.. be smart.. invent something new that does not sound like the word mixer. offers a different feature as its advertised service. where the unspoken side effect is the taint of deposits is not the same as the taint of withdrawals..

get the hint yet?? or is your mixer advertising contract so strict that you cant escape just advertising mixers

and no i dont mean just rebrand the service "blender" or "shaker" or "stirrer" or "tumbler" and carry on as usual,
be smarter then that

---

screw it.. one more time. just for you becasue it takes a while for you to learn things

MIXERS. do appear in real world regulations(yep REAL legislation) that mixers are a red flag requiring more monitoring/scrutiny of users of such

if you dont want to be monitored scrutinised to a higher level than 99% of normal people. dont use something thats actually mentioned in regulations

i do hope you understand this simple hint.. or admit to it when your contract expires

Bitcoin mixing is not money laundering per se and Bitcoin mixing is money laundering per se, it's a two in one package and that's the truth, some people use mixers for their own privacy while others use a mixer to hide their criminal activities online.

Before you say something else, put yourself in a position as the leader of a country, you will not want any crime lord to do illegal funding behind your back to fund his crime empire, probably cause a chaos in your country.

Mixers are like the dark web in the open public that's why the government easily go after them, every mixers must stay hidden for their functionality and all mixer devs must go fully 101% anonymous.

Mixer is the best privacy tool and to stay this way the devs must respect the privacy too.

Protocols themselves can't be classified as "money transmitting businesses". They're decentralized (non-custodial) by design. The law only applies to individuals running a mixing service all by themselves (centralized, custodial). I guess that's the reason why the US government has been hunting down centralized crypto mixers lately.

If mixer operators had a "money transmitting license" and followed KYC/AML rules, they would've nothing to fear. But that would greatly undermine a user's privacy/anonymity. Thus, decentralized (non-custodial) mixing would become the norm in the future. I'm fine with that as long as financial freedom and privacy is preserved. Just my opinion :)

try and read a regulation once in a while to realise what your getting into
they do actually treat currencies and protocols aswell as businesses

aswell as mixers(not only businesses that use mixers, but mixers themselves) as something to red flag but also AEC
anonymity enhanced currency

yes LN is a red flag monero is a red flag.

...
so lets summarise this entire topic
you can either ass kiss the mad hatter clan of idiots that just kiss ass whomever will sponsor them to advertise crap services.. who never do research.. but want to pretend mixers will hide you better  and there is nothing law can do to find you...

or
you can actually research for instance regulations and see that when regulations LITERALLY SPELL IT OUT FOR PEOPLE that if you use a mixer, tumbler, aec you will be red flagged and monitored, scrutinised more closely

so when regulations tell you that using a mixer gets you scrutinised more closely.. guess what.. mixers are not doing a good job to hide you. instead they are passing you a red flag to wave in the air to be spotted easier

Being passive, unresistant and completely scrutinized is also a red flag. For you as individual.

Simply not true. I can agree to an extent that governments don't want you to use such tools, but it's plain dumb to believe you're being more spied when using them than otherwise. I agree you're a probable suspect for some, but you're a suspect for a reason; you do gain privacy. If I was being monitored more effectively, I wouldn't be a suspect. I am, because they very much work.

I think it's a matter of semantics, laundering is concealing the origin, mixing is trying to hide the taint by mixing it with clean crypto. Mixing is also done in money laundering, Didn't Saul Goodman explaining it to Jesse a good example of that? The fact that you've added per se in your argument means that you have doubts.

oh again the idiot wants to be ignorant

the regulations literally are telling you that they are more interested in mixer used funds..

the solution is to do what i said several posts ago.
think of a new system not advertised/promoted or niched as only offering mixing as a service. but instead something that acts like something else. but the side effect is it breaks the taint.

get it yet

here ill make it real clear
imagine this scenario.. it involves the same crunched up smelly dirty $100 bank note. going into a service. and the same $99 coming out in different denominations of different bank notes and coins.(same end result)

A. mixer.
B. buying chewing gum from a retailer

did you know that the $100 and $99change from scenario A is being then scrutinised for where the $100 came from and where the $99 ends up
where as B is just another random transaction that no business or regulator sniffs at twice. and just gets lost in thought amungst the monotony of all other random transactions

scenario B is not registered nor required to register, nor deemed illegal for not registering as a money transmitter business. it does not do KYC nor appear on any regulation policy to scrutinise its customers identity or purpose or source or destination of deposits/withdrawals. YET you get the same result as A of different taint/denominations out as what went in



stop advertising something that is listed by regulators to watch A
instead get the same end result you want, but via something else that looks feels like B but does the same end result as A. without being what regulations are highlighting.

If you think that you can fool chain analysis companies and regulatory authorities by buying chewing gums, then I don't know what to say.

Except from the fact that the taint nonsense continues insusceptible to such moron techniques, due to it being absolutely arbitrary in the first place. If you want privacy in Bitcoin, mixing is inevitable. If you want to "not look suspicious", sacrificing your privacy is inevitable.

I wouldn't say a must, you can always maintain an excellent level of privacy simply by being careful.  Let's say that using a mixer or coinjoin definitely helps

I took my time to think deeply about the mixing, money laundry, and the crime that could be committed via it but I realize that there is nothing different from what has been committed with fiat. The government knows too much about us, companies know too much about and these people are using their positions to sell our data and track us, this is from the fact that anyone could send assassins and thieves to you when they know what you are worth, getting your privacy through mixer is not a crime.

Let the crime be left for our individual action, no government, organization, or persons can claim that they are 100% clean even when they pretend to be. That is how I see mixers too, it's what we use them for that can judge us, and nothing has that power and integrity to completely condemn it.

By law, it is never illegal, what is the headache?

The Department of Justice of the United States announced (https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/doj-aims-to-stamp-out-money-laundering-by-focusing-on-crypto-mixers-and-exchanges-3082442) that it plans to pay special attention to exchanges and mixers to counter money laundering. In general, it does not seem that there is anything in the field of cryptocurrencies that does not attract the attention of certain government structures.

This is nothing new. The US government has been on a "witch hunt" to minimize crypto's dominance in the country after what happened with FTX. They seriously don't want American people to join in the revolution. A pity for them, as other countries will "eat their cake". As far as mixers go, they're a contentious subject among major countries in the world. They're quickly classified as "money laundering tools" just because governments don't want people to use them. Financial freedom and privacy goes against governments' own rules.

I think centralized mixers will ultimately disappear, paving the way for decentralized (non-custodial) mixers to take over the industry. I'm fine with that as long as people use mixers in a legal and responsible manner. Just my opinion :)

and the idiot still wants to say any other form of coins shuffling/swapping is bad but it has to be specifically "mixing" that everyone has to use.. even though its "mixing" that is LITERALLY WROTE IN REGULATIONS TO BE WATCHED MORE CLOSELY

see how ignorant the idiot is. he cares more about his contract to advertise mixers to recruit people into schemes that will get them noticed more.. more so than he cares about privacy

total moron

..
i think he needs one more lesson

lets say using a bicycle on a motorway/highway, will attract the police to stop the vehicle and take it off the motorway/highway..

there are many other vehicles that can use the highway without drawing the attention to the police. but a bicycle is speficically listed as the main things cops should be on the watch for..
blackhat is telling people only ride bicycles on a highway.

guess what. if everyone done it, everyone gets stopped by the cops.

.. he thinks that if he can get everyone to ride a bicycle on a highway, he can make police give up.
what he is not realising is he is making cops get easy arrests..

the government that banned bitcoin Tumblr said that mixing was a place for money laundering but they did not explain in detail the difference between money laundering and the use of mixing itself causing ambiguity in society.  before there was bitcoin, officials and criminals used houses, land, gold and valuables like cars to launder money but when bitcoin appeared, some used bitcoin as a money laundering option but they thought bitcoin was just like any other untraceable, that was a big mistake, actually people who do money laundering with bitcoins are very easy to trace.  So it's actually important that the advertisement explaining the true function and purpose of mixing is reported so that confusion in the community about what mixing is doesn't spread.

mixing has one function.. to mix. its not a retailer. its not a forex its not a fruit stall. its sole purpose is to mix.
its only advertised to mix, its promoted and used only to mix
regulations are clear that they MAKE regulated businesses monitor and scrutinise mixer users closely.

emphasis again
mixing is wrote into regulations to be watched more closely(= less privacy)

once more.. for luck
MIXING puts you on a watch list.

so the solution to privacy is not .. wait for it.. take a minute to breathe and let this settle in..
so the solution to privacy is not services advertised specifically as mixing

lets word it another way

imagine prostitution was being watched by the police.
would you name a business "prostitution house" or try something new like 'massage parlour' or 'escort service'
you know. just to make it a lil different and ambiguous to not be an instant knock at the door inspection of the premises

Seems that in a few days/weeks mixing will be laundering ( and much more ) per se . For all the advertisers here of mixing services this might be a warning . Funding terrorism is now on the table https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-proposes-new-regulation-enhance-transparency-convertible-virtual-currency  

First I don't know what CVC is, until I found this.


This is not good, although it's still a proposal and will be submitted in the next two days, there's a chance they might accept it.

This make any form of privacy e.g. mixing, coinjoining, and swap to privacy coins are considered as CVC mixing.

Slightly off topic: I only find Chipmixer, Bestmixer, Tornado Cash, Blender.io and Sinbad keywords in ther proposal (https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-23449.pdf), I thought I would find "Whirlwind" because they said they had a problem.

These scumbag politicians will look for whatever opportunity to restrict an individual's right to self-determination. These regulations will have no effect whatsoever on terrorist groups. It will only harm regular people, especially those from marginalized groups, who seek privacy amidst the mass surveillance we are subjected to from corporations and government agencies.

It's too soon to tell what will happen with all the mixers who advertise on the forum but as US policy creeps closer to full-blown authoritarianism I expect decentralized and non-custodial options will start to become more popular and eventually traditional custodial mixers may become obsolete.

not just "mixing" but AEC (anonymity enhanced cryptocurrencies)

here is the thing though. this quote has listed methodologies they class as indications of mixing.. so be smart. stop calling a service a mixer. look at the methods they list to suspect mixing and create a service that does none of the things regulated as mixing and instead has the result people want without being so stupidly named as then thing thats regulated..

be smart, figure it out

Ah yes the blanket statement that all politicians and fiat bosses use to annihilate a section of cryptocurrency they don't like.

They conveniently ignore the fact that their own banks are 100x more guilty for money laundering and terrorist financing at scale.

And even crypto exchanges don't get to escape the cross-fire, no. Binance willingly laundered money for Iran (the sponsor of terrorist groups that are attacking Israel right now). And who knows how much shit FTX was allowed to get away with before they imploded?


Litecoin has MimbleWimble transactions, which makes an AEC. Let's see if these knuckleheads try to ban LTC too.

Oh and wallets like Samourai and Wasabi wallet would be killed by this bill too, despite the latter's "blacklisting" feature (which hasn't even been made yet).


They only include mixers in the document that had official governmental action taken against them (with the exception of Sinbad I guess, which is all rumors up to now...)

Without a doubt, its scary how lawmakers, who are often motivated by their own personal goals, use any opportunity to limit people's rights. Their grasp on rules, which is said to be meant to go after terrorist groups, is at best funny and at worst very scary. Sadly, you're right; these steps always have an effect on the normal person instead of the people they were meant to help. The people who are really at risk are regular people who want to hide from the ever-watchful eyes of corporations and the government. Not a very good irony, is it?

It looks like the writing is on the wall for mixers in the future. As rules get stricter, it looks like we will have to move toward decentralized and non-custodial choices. In the coming years, traditional cleaning mixers may become almost useless because of changes in politics. People are hoping that decentralized solutions will step up and protect their rights and safety.

"Never leave a good crisis to waste".

This is attacking our privacy and Bitcoin altogether. It will push everything decentralized. If I'm aware that centralized exchanges will be forced to classify mixed coins as funding terrorism, then I'd absolutely not risk it. The bill is clearly dystopian, but I didn't expect more from not technically competent politicians; every coin is potentially originating from what this article deems as mixing. What are they going to do? Completely ban bitcoin? I'm looking forward to see how this goes.

It's true that mixers aren't designed for money laundering, but due to their potential for obfuscating transactions, people often assume they are used for that purpose. I wonder how many mixers have been shut down or had funds seized by the government. Unfortunately, these actions can tarnish the reputation of the entire industry, if we can even call it that.

However, those who have a good understanding of Bitcoin know that it's not completely anonymous anymore. Once the source address is known, it becomes easier to trace transactions associated with a specific account. There are individuals who highly value their privacy, especially if they hold a substantial balance in their wallet. They don't want their funds to be easily traceable. That's where mixers come into play, offering a way to enhance privacy. Still, it's important to note that mixers can't prevent malicious actors from using them, as mixers don't typically investigate the source of funds.

In my quest to understand more about mixers, I did some research, and here's what I found.

https://www.coindesk.com/learn/are-crypto-mixers-legal/

The way I understand it, they want mixers to comply with specific requirements before they can be considered legal. However, are there any mixers currently in operation that are legal?

This.

This isn't an attack against mixers - this is attack against bitcoin itself, against privacy itself. Here is how they are defining "mixing" for the purposes of this report:

This essentially makes illegal everything except fully KYCed bitcoin held on centralized exchanges which report every single deposit, trade, and withdrawal to the US government. Mixers fall under (1). Coinjoins fall under (2). Casinos and sportsbooks fall under (1). Any non-KYC exchange falls under (1) and (5). Any kind of decentralized or peer to peer trading falls under (5).

And most importantly, simply owning your own coins, holding them in your own wallet, and using them as you like falls under (3) and (4). "Creating and using single-use addresses", for fuck sake! You know, the entire way bitcoin is supposed to be used in the first place.

This needs fought against, hard.

---

Re-reading the proposal in more depth, and here's another piece worth highlighting:


So $20 billion in volume over a 12 year period, 13% of which was from illicit activities. So a grand total of $2.6 billion of illicit money over 12 years. Let's put that in to context. Danske bank laundered $230 billion through their branch in Estonia. Wachovia laundered $390 billion for drug cartels. Standard Chartered laundered $265 billion for Iran and other sanctioned nations. 18 of the world's biggest 20 banks have been fined for money laundering - and these are only the cases we know about. By FinCEN's own research (which just so happens to be a black box like all bullshit chain analysis - I wonder why? ::)), a single money laundering incident involving a single fiat bank is responsible for more than 100x all illicit mixer use over the last 12 years. Once you combine the hundreds of fiat bank money laundering incidents, then this $2.6 billion attributable to cryptocurrency becomes completely irrelevant.

Ask yourself again why they care about this minuscule fraction so much while turning a blind eye to the fiat banks, which are multiple orders of magnitude worse. ::)

3 & 4 is not about just having wallets or addresses!!! (your again going back to your old group-speak chants that just being a node is being made illegal(facepalm))

its actually about the activity to then coin-hop funds down a path of multiple transaction taints which then make it appear funds moving along those addresses all belonging to the same wallet. thus doing a suspicious money shuffling (shell game) procedure that normal people dont do

EG if a VASP(exchange) had flagging tools that knows funds from address A are blacklisted.
and address A owner just moves funds to address B C D E before then depositing thinking a 4 taint hop to E address is sufficient taint distance to declare clean. however this would not to the VASP mean its sufficient distance to declare clean, just via taint hopping. because the very act of taint hopping becomes suspicious in of itself

the way they would vasp/services monitor or flag something as taint hopping is the way services did years ago. when people would spam every block moving a certain amount of funds to new addresses where in logical common sense real world utility, funds would not move to new addresses every 10 minutes several times

a tip for you:
if you can learn what their descriptors of suspicious activity really mean. you lot of privacy queens can then advise/design services that avoid these methods, thus not get spotted
so learn what these descriptors/methodologies actually mean, to learn how not to get highlighted


that part, just adds more weight that exchange services should be regulated to avoid being treated as suspicious/illegal
(EG localbitcoins.com users got slapped around alot years ago for running exchange services without a money transmitter MSB licence, same will be said for DE-FI swap services..)

---

and big tip for you. in combination with other regulations.. it does not make just being  bitcoin node/bitcoin wallet owner/btc holder illegal.. but it does mean being an LN router DE-FI service using your own involvement to facilitate a payment for someone else for a fee, becomes a factor you should be aware of.. if you participate in shuffling(shellgame) value for others for a fee.. then if your not a regulated service that registered for a money transmitter/MSB licence to be verified as a VASP then expect problems

Well, to be honest, as far as I understand, If you look at him literally, the mixing of bitcoin actually hides the identity of bitcoin users and hides their addresses to make it difficult to see them. That means he can really be used for money laundering.

In short, it depends on the person holding the bitcoin, or it depends on the motive or intention of the person holding the bitcoin. I'm not saying that everyone who uses Bitcoin mixing is doing money laundering; that's not what it means. Maybe someone else is actually doing it.

I guess the Bitcoin network will be illegally operated in the US if this bills passes, as mining bitcoin falls under (1).  ;D

It is pretty easy to pinpoint how bad bitcoin laundering is when you don't get lobbied there.  ::)

As I said, I'm looking forward to seeing how this will work. Blockchain analysis is a scam and can be totally inaccurate. Are you going to accuse someone for being a terrorist just because they happened to receive mixed coins? Are you going to force everyone sharing their TXID with the government whenever they buy/sell bitcoin? Please explain me how this works, don't just give me this giant piece of theoretical horseshit.

If mixers have to fully identify their users before they can use them, then what the hell are they good for?

I think that should be obvious to everyone. Money Laundering involves doing something with money from illegal activities. Mixing is a tool and has nothing to do with illegal activities. It's a tool that can be used by anyone, including money launderers, but has nothing to do with money laundering itself. Just like if you own a knife that doesn't mean you committed murder, though you could use it for murder.

So true , let's make bitcoin as equally or even more guilty to prove that we are by far better than them .

Software is not guilty. People are. And there will always be people who will evade the law provided they're privacy protected; which, as I previously mentioned, does not apply in the reverse scenario.

If you want to turn Bitcoin into a communist, privacy invading tool which provides zero support for future softforks, you can make your own client and see who follows. I believe no sane person wants Stalin-coin, but you have the freedom to use the code.

Edit: Friendly reminder that off-topic, whiny posts regarding BSV will be deleted.

I very much agree. This is not only an attack on mixers, this is also an attack on the whole cryptospace. The broad wording under the new rules was speculated to also include DeFi and other types of decentralized swaps.

Presently there might be 300 million wallets that might be affected and the owners of those wallets might have their personal information reported. Be careful on using a mixer then sending coins to a centralized exchange or a gambling site where you have KYC.



In the course of compliance with special measure one, covered financial institutions may be required to submit reports and retain records containing certain unique identifiers108 and other personal information109 of a party, or parties, to a CVC mixing-exposed transaction.

Based on a recent report, this could affect more than 300 million users of unhosted CVC wallets insofar as a user’s personal information may be reported if their wallet is deemed by a covered financial institution to be involved in a covered transaction. Because there is no restriction on the number of wallets an individual may have, this number may overestimate the number of unique individuals whose personal information may be required.

To the extent that previously reported estimates regarding the distribution of CVC mixer users by type—privacy-oriented versus abusers of anonymity—are usable for inference, special measure one could require the reporting of personal information in connection with up to approximately 66 (87) percent of CVC mixer deposits in the absence of any other identifiable connection to high risk (illicit) activity.

Source https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/federal_register_notices/2023-10-19/FinCEN_311MixingNPRM_FINAL.pdf

Also, if the American government wanted to really crackdown on terrorist funding and moneylaundering, they should begin with the biggest banks in Europe and sanction them hehehe.

You are on point my friend, human beings are too desperate and hellbent, and they use any available loopholes to perpetrate their deeds. Bitcoin itself is good, and so is the mixing of the coin (after all, it enhances privacy and anonymity where the primary design of the coin could fail).

But mixers also create avenues for bad actors, 100% of the people who use mixers can't be using them for good. We can suspect that with the cracks in hundreds of millions of dollars by various governments so far.

People are actually using mixers to perpetrate their evil, regardless, we can't blame the coin, neither can we blame the mixers, let the deeds of those who use them judge them for whatever thing they use them for (good or evil).

Wrong message.

What we should be saying is "Be careful using centralized exchanges", or better yet "Never complete KYC anywhere." Mixing is not the problem. Coinjoins are not the problem. If anything, knowing how draconian the government is being with trying to surveil you and your coins, you should be mixing and coinjoining more, not less. Stay private, and stop using services which sell out your privacy at the drop of a hat and work in cahoots with your government to surveil, monitor, and control you.

You are either free, or you comply. You can't be both.

So does the internet. Shall we ban that too?

As the figures I've outlined above show, even by FinCEN's own research, the amount of illicit money being moved through mixers is absolutely minuscule. Like, we are talking less in the last decade than fiat banks launder in a few days.

VERY WRONG MESSAGE
mixers are the problem. they are literally listed in regulation as a problem. the word "mixer" does get mentioned in regulations.. so to avoid the penalties of regulations, avoid the descriptors of the regulations that can lead to you getting watched by services and then reported to authorities


the draconian rules exist.. ignoring them and doing things that are listed as getting you surveilled is not the cure to avoiding getting you surveilled

what you should be saying is "learn the draconian rules. then invent a service does the end result you are looking for, but sidesteps/does not do the listed details of the certain named thing

EG if taxi cabs are regulated.. create uber
if apple apps are regulated on applestore.. create googleplay or an apk repo

the solution is not to be EG a tax evader by ignoring tax law/pretending taxlaw does not apply... its instead to learn tax law and find the loopholes to be a tax avoider, doing things not listed in law as prohibited, regulated, monitored

there are many ways to remove taint without doing the things listed in regulations. that are not "mixers". find them, create them, use them

This notion basically defeated the purpose of having to use a mixer but then again if mixers want to help combat money laundering, I guess it wouldn't be such a bad idea. I guess that we have to find a way where the use of mixers aren't going to lay any suspicious eye on the people that are using bitcoin mixers. Damn, the problem of malicious entities is that they're abusing the freedom that the innocent has to enjoy is such a conundrum.

It's just like the Internet. People can use it for both good and bad things. There's nothing governments can do about it, other than enforce the rule of law whenever possible. Instead of hunting down crypto mixers, governments should hunt down people using these services for illegal activities. Not doing so tells us there are other intentions. We all know governments want to destroy crypto (or at least minimize its impact on the mainstream economy) because of its decentralized design. Especially anything that has to do with privacy. When they can't track or control financial activities, that's when you become a threat to the corrupt system empowered by banks.

I believe the future of crypto mixers lies in decentralization. The more non-custodial (decentralized) mixers there are, the harder it will be for governments to stop people from obtaining true privacy. I'm yet to see how it's possible to stop criminals from using decentralized mixers for breaking the law (money laundering, tax evasion, etc). KYC/AML is not the answer to this. We can't predict the future, so lets hope for the best. Just my opinion :)

ok here is a game for you.. you know what mixers do for innocent people.. now pretend the word MIXER was never invented. invent another work that doesnt meet the details of regulations but produces same end result for the user..

each time you keep saying "mixers" have to continue. is continuing the issue..
uber replaced taxi cabs.. so think outside of the box of promoting MIXERS

The work of mixers and CoinJoin isn't to combat money laundering, it is to provide better privacy for people who use BTC. Kyc and privacy are mutually exclusive, so you cannot offer privacy and at the same time collect people's data.

Take note that the government and anti bitcoiners are trying very hard to spread the idea that BTC and privacy implementations like mixers and CoinJoin are a big problem in terms of money laundering and the movement of illicit funds, but it is not true, there are other payment methods that are more attractive to money launderers and many people do not even know because of what the media tells them.

If there was really nothing suspicious about the service mentioned in OP, government must not have taken action against them. When something gets out of hand, then it becomes necessary for government to take action and this is what happened in case of chipmixer.

It is true that Bitcoin mixing is not money laundering, but it can be a tool or instrument to use in money laundering. There will be no money laundering activity if no one thinks to use the Bitcoin mixer for his bad intentions or purpose here. So what others said is correct: it depends on the intention of the bitcoin holders.

Even though there was no Bitcoin back then, there was money laundering happening in different countries. Even though there was no internet back then, there was money laundering happening already, right? The others even go through the black market, as far as I know. So, it means that other money launderers saw that they could use or abuse the Bitcoin mixer for money laundering activity. Though, this is not the main purpose of Bitcoin Mixing.

You are correct. I only wanted to tell everyone to be careful, however. Let me rephrase and let me share the announcement from Fincen.

Based on a recent report, this could affect more than 300 million users of unhosted CVC wallets insofar as a user’s personal information may be reported if their wallet is deemed by a covered financial institution to be involved in a covered transaction. Because there is no restriction on the number of wallets an individual may have, this number may overestimate the number of unique individuals whose personal information may be required.

Source https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/federal_register_notices/2023-10-19/FinCEN_311MixingNPRM_FINAL.pdf

@everyone. Based on this and if anyone has already used a mixer or DeFi with a certain wallet, be careful on using the wallet for centralized exchanges or gambling sites where you have KYC accounts if these new rules are implemented.

Lol. You think the government only take action against things which are illegal? The government works exclusively for themselves, and will take action against anyone or anything which threatens them, illegal or not. They'll take action against someone who did nothing except write open source code under the guise of tErRoRiSm, but they will ignore fiat banks laundering literally hundreds of billions of dollars for actual terrorist organizations.

And the internet is a tool or instrument in money laundering, and fraud, and terrorism, and lots more. Should be ban the internet as well?

the reason the mixer dev (as you want to pretend its all he was) was in legal dispute not simply for "just writing code" it was that he was financially benefitting from the proceeds of crime because he received funds from criminals that used his code.
also he offered a service and he took a fee per transaction, which made him a MSB/MTS, which comes with regulations.. it really does and should benefit you if you read regulations and court documents, instead of misinformed bias blog posts..

if you want to offer a service and publicise it to customers/clients. you are running a business
if you are running a business, you need to be business savvi to limit your exposure to customer liabilities and laws
if you want to offer a service but not be defined as a operating a business. you need to be extra savvi to operate in such a way that does not meet the definitions of such business

and banks do get penalised. its just the maximum penalty is:
for a bank: just X days fees 0.x% of liquidity
for an individual: more then they can ever afford to pay the court fine

also individuals do not set themselves up as legit businesses to shift the liability away from the operator. so by operatng a business but not doing o officially is a double hit personally

which is why individuals operating as MSB/MTS get hit harder because they are personally made responsible rather than the debt/claim/penalty/charge being pushed to the 'business'

That's exactly the part you fail to understand . Banks do that because there's not a public ledger that they're working on . Bitcoin was built exactly to eliminate that kind of operation . So that anyone can audit and make such behaviors extinct . To make even governments accountable based on evidence , not only banks . Guys like you are trying to create a new ( similar to old , but even more complex for audits ) banking system that gives everyone the opportunity to do what big/bad entities were able to do so far . You don't want a better outcome for the whole , but a better outcome for yourself even if that comes against the interests of the whole , because "privacy" . While we should be here discussing how to better protect our privacy - for example ZK proof for KYC/AML - we are wasting time on how bad governments are . If governments are bad let's make something that can make them better , and not us to become worse than them .  
Bitcoin can't be compared with banks , it can be compared with cash  . Bitcoin is a traceable electronic cash system . It was built to take away the worst part of traditional cash which is anonymity . You fail to distinguish the differences between anonymity and pseudonymity and why anonymity can lead to bad results as there are no consequences .    

Proof (Satoshi quote) or it didn't happen.

The government can pick any reason out of a hat to seize and stop privacy solutions and that is because the government stands against privacy. You must understand that money laundering and illicit activities are mostly perpetrated by centralized services and their institutions and not so much with BTC or BTC privacy solutions. But they want you to believe their lies, and the more people believe in the lies that they tell, then they wouldn't want to use privacy solutions nor protect their privacy, since they could be accused of crime if they do so.
Guns are tools that the police use in stopping criminals and protect citizens, but the bad guys also use guns to rob, kill and take hostage, do we then ban guns?

If you're living in the US and this bills passes, you should absolutely forget about centralized exchanges, as you may be accused of funding terrorism because of potentially bad coin history. Unless you buy and store all your bitcoin there, which would nullify Bitcoin as concept in the first place, and you shouldn't do it.

It didn't happen, usual nonsense again. There are lots of posts from Satoshi in which he talks about Bitcoin in terms of privacy, none of which he claims it's built to take away anonymity. Hell, he was even talking about "blinding keys" and "group signatures", techniques which are very similar to ring signatures and stealth addresses used by XMR: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=770.msg9074#msg9074.

That's baloney. The only way to remove "taint" (which is just an imaginary concept which was invented by blockchain analysis companies who sell their services to exchanges) is by making a series of transactions with a bunch of other people's outputs so that nobody is able to figure out what belongs to who.

In other words, a coinjoin, or a mixer - which is just a very large and continuous coinjoin by definition.

think harder

learn how regulators define mixers/coinjoin.. then think of practices not within those definitions
EG fiat example
a retailer receives funds. and pays out funds. they are not defined as a MSB/MTS nor mixer

however offering a service that wants to describe itself as a mixer then pigeon holes itself into the category.

think harder.. think about something not described/advertised/promoted as a mixer but allows money flows without MSB/MTS regulation

oh and "taint" is a bitcoin term created far before chainanalysis was even a thing..

Do you even know what ZK and KYC mean?  It is zero knowledge and know your customer.  How can you provide a proof that you know your customer if you have zero knowledge about him?


In FinCEN proposal it says that you can only use bitcoin through centralized exchanges that require KYC.  Their definition of "CVC mixing" is totally broad: https://fincen.gov/sites/default/files/federal_register_notices/2023-10-19/FinCEN_311MixingNPRM_FINAL.pdf, page 30.

read more and have a deeper think about it
you can use funds in many ways.

it actually says if a service is defined as a CEX then it needs to be regulated.. it does not say all services need to be defined as a CEX
learn about other services not defined as a CEX.

as for mixer if you are advertising the purpose of the service is to anonymise, obfuscate, distort the lineage of the funds. they you as the advertiser are putting your service into the "mixer" category

again learn about other services not defined as a mixer

learn what the definitions do say then think about what it is not saying. and think about things in the not said category

If a store accepts bitcoin and does not keep them in a regulated exchange, it can be considered "obfuscation of destination".  If you swap bitcoin for an altcoin and then the altcoin for bitcoin, it can be considered "obfuscation of destination".  If you move your bitcoin across your wallets, it can be considered "obfuscation of destination".  Anything can be considered to obfuscate unless you report all of your transactions to the government or do everything inside a regulated CEX.

read it properly.. stop making up things

Actually having a bitcoin mixer is good, so it's more private, especially since government regulations usually only impose taxes on crypto holders. Maybe it's small at the moment, but did you know, crypto is increasingly being considered a commodity that has a lot of interest, so taxes could be increased again. For people who work hard and want their money to be safe, mixing Bitcoin could be the solution.

The purpose of all this mixing is to maintain privacy, so why is it a problem when it comes to money laundering? What I am looking for as a commoner is decentralization, why are they accused of being negative, do they want to return to conventional as they want.

I think i know and i will give you an example . Let's say i want to subscribe into one exchange . Currently i have to send them my national identity or passport , proof of address , phone bill etc . With ZKP i can prove that i'm a citizen of a non banned country but they will never know from which country i am , that i live in my city without showing them my specific address and that i own a telephone number from a company based in the country i live and not an anonymous sim card . In other words i don't have to prove in detail all of my personal info but just prove that i'm eligible to be registered in that exchange .
Seems that you have a misunderstanding of what ZKP's can provide . A video that might help is https://youtu.be/D4iUeVbib_k?t=1141 , i'd suggest to watch it all . Another one close to eli5 is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ZWNFUHlRQ . Of course , i could provide videos in more detail but these are considered "anathema" here and i won't .

  

I believe so. They are called government to govern its people and territory, so technically they are not only against to illegal activities but also to something that possesses a threat for their government this includes decentralization like cryptocurrencies. Government knows the darkest side of the story of their country and won't even give a bulge about it.

Good analogy, not every mixing is laundering. I agree it is used in money laundering but that doesn't mean it is illegal. Same as guns as well, you can kill someone with it or you can save someone using it.

Everything is always "out of hand" when it involves crypto mixers. After all, governments don't want people to enjoy financial privacy. Now the US Treasury wants to target crypto mixers with the excuse that terrorists will be using them for money laundering. You can read all about it here: https://www.wired.com/story/us-treasury-crypto-mixer-hamas/ (https://www.wired.com/story/us-treasury-crypto-mixer-hamas/).

Isn't Fiat more attractive than Bitcoin for criminal activities? You can see there are other intentions besides preventing criminals from using a crypto mixer. With heavy pressure from the government, it's likely centralized mixing services will cease to exist in the future. At least, we won't be left "empty handed". Non-custodial (decentralized) mixers will ensure people get the privacy they deserve without fear of censorship or prosecution. As long as developers stay anonymous, no government will be able to stop people from using these services . I wouldn't be surprised if governments decide to hunt privacy coins next. Who knows if someday it becomes "illegal" to use a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency? :)

currency regulations about money service businesses are not new.  but governments were slow at understanding bitcoin to know whats a money service business.. and.. people wanting to run money service businesses are slow to realise their service is one

but here is where people need to learn.. by reading regulations. what makes them defined as a MSB and then tailor/customise their service to not be a MSB

if you are literally advertising a service that says its function is to take money in, and for a fee process it and hand it back out.. its obviously not advertising itself as a retailer/merchant. nor a taxi cab loyalty point system.. but advertising its a MSB

so these businesses that want to operate without MSB regulations (while resulting in experience of MSB) need to think smarter.
bitcoin has been known to be a currency and fit in the currency jurisdiction for 10 years. so while still defined as currency in law makers definitions, means businesses have to see if their business fits the currency service business.. or is instead a retailer/merchant/auction/property manager

if bitcoin remained as private property decade ago to now. we would not have to think that hard, as governments wouldnt have a fingers worth of power to point at us

What is the current status? Was the proposal been accepted?

It is still open for comment for another 77 days. There are currently 109 publicly posted comments which you can view here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FINCEN-2023-0016-0001/comment. They are unanimously in opposition to this proposed piece of legislation, although I fully expect the government to completely ignore all these comments and opposition. They've never let the interests of the people stand in the way of their tyranny before.

I cannot view this from Tor.  It says:  "We're sorry, an error has occurred".  Does it happen to you too?

Edit:  Same thing from web archive:  https://web.archive.org/web/20231105052053/https://www.regulations.gov/document/FINCEN-2023-0016-0001

No, works fine for me on Tor.

The archive.org link also loads just fine for me on Tor but does display the error you mentioned in the archived page. This will be a problem with their archiving though, not with Tor.

Edit: Try this link: https://archive.li/sRjmi

If the bill passes it's going to make bitcoin a different coin to what Satoshi would've wanted it to be.

If ppl want to keep some or all of their transactions private by using mixers it doesn't mean they're trying to obfuscate them because they're trying to hide illegal activity. If the bill passes American's won't be able to keep any of their activity private.

For most people, that's already the case.

From the start of the whitepaper:

Now, how many people actually use bitcoin without a trusted third party? Do you buy, sell, or trade on a centralized exchange? Trusted third party. Do you spend your bitcoin via a third party payment processor such as BitPay or Coinbase Commerce? Trusted third party. Do you use a closed source wallet such as Trust or Coinomi? Trusted third party. Does your open source wallet sync with third party servers? Trusted third party.

This legislation will essentially make it illegal just to own your own bitcoin, but most people already use bitcoin in a way which is very different to what Satoshi intended.

Investors have made a lot of money in recent years. They also want privacy, namely requiring anonymity when transacting cryptocurrencies to be comfortable, in this case BTC. To do this, this is where they need an intermediary who is willing to do this for them, one of which is a mixing service which of course can be trusted, but this mixing service also has weaknesses of course.

That is, the government can at least see if there is something strange and always wants to intervene in terms of regulations. Well, regarding the legality of mixing services will depend on where the user comes from and the laws that apply there, but I think perhaps these people (Investors) have built in better security and are prepared for the additional costs that will arise.

It's true Bitcoin's being used in a different way to what Satoshi would've intended but we've still got a choice how to store cryptos. If ppl are holding the power in their hands they'll decide if they want to use exchanges. If ppl get forced by legislation it means they'll lose the choice so it's messed up. If the bill's passed it's going to put Americans off buying cryptos.

Is the bill going to apply to American citizen expats the same as it's for residents of America?

After you create an innovation, it can be used in different ways and even in ways you did not imagine.

Gun powder, gun are examples of different ways to use an innovation. It can help human civilization or can bring painful experience to many people. A good innovation can be exploited by criminals but it is a different thing.

Criminals are not barriers to shut down human creativeness and innovations made by legendary people like Satoshi Nakamoto. There are always dark areas and wrong usages of any innovation.

It will apply to anyone who interacts with an American based exchange or other service, for now. But we are already seeing other countries start to adopt similar rules, where fully KYCed exchanges will only permit sending and receiving bitcoin from other fully KYCed exchanges. It is quite clear the majority of governments in the world want bitcoin to be entirely contained within a system they have complete power over, and can monitor and control as they desire.

It isn't a secret about the majority of govts wanting to take over control of bitcoin but it won't be easy. Are you saying decentralised exchanges which aren't located in America won't get affected by the bill so it's about Americans who want to exchange cryptos for fiat transfer to their bank accounts?

Not by this specific regulation, but as I said before many other countries are advancing similar pieces of legislation. Any exchange registered within a specific country could still be targeted if they refuse to comply. Hodlhodl for example is based in the UK, so would be easily targeted. AgoraDesk is based in the Seychelles, so is likely to be safer. The only exchanges completely immune to such regulations will be ones which are entirely decentralized, such as Bisq.

Other countries usually copy America's model, so they will end up "banning" centralized mixers for good. What we will see in the future is a new wave of mixers that are fully KYC/AML compliant. It will look good in the eyes of the government, but it will defeat the whole purpose of "anonymizing" your BTC transactions. At least, we'll have non-custodial mixers to keep us by. I know they will be "illegal" for mainstream use, but people will resort to this option if they want to obtain true financial freedom and privacy. Everything will be done under the radar of the government.

With institutional investors getting in the game, it should only be a matter of time before regulations become stricter. All with the excuse of preventing money laundering and tax evasion. I've thought criminals used Fiat currencies for said purpose? You can see the govermment has other intentions besides "legalizing the industry". It's all about power/control. As long as BTC stays decentralized, there should be nothing to worry about. ;)

Will probably be called banks.....

More and more banks are entering the Bitcoin business. In Germany at least, we can see that banks are slowly integrating Bitcoin into their business. Advising customers, buying Bitcoin and managing it (Wallet hosted from banks) . The customer does not have to worry about anything....

I think that breaking up the transaction history (mixing) will also be allowed in the future. But this work will be taken over by centralised institutions like banks.

And because of that, it's plain stupid for the Bitcoin ecosystem to voluntarily hand over that power to the government. Centralized exchanges, third party payment processors, even mixers (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5467457.msg63053706#msg63053706) buy the notion of taint nowadays.

Let's hope it will remain that way. I can think of regulations which target the members of the DAO as well. That wouldn't make the network susceptible in the same sense, but it wouldn't be completely immune.

Exactly. Banks will be the only entities allowed to "mix" or obfuscate transactions. The rest of the people will be forced to comply with KYC/AML in order to keep using Bitcoin. There's nothing we can do about it, especially when "Wall Street" is in the game. It has always been about money, power, and control. Eventually, no-KYC centralized mixers will be shut down for good. You will only be able to mix your Bitcoin through a non-custodial mixer.

Of course, it's likely doing such a thing will give you serious consequences in the long run (jail time or fines). After all , governments don't want people to enjoy true financial freedom and privacy. Being a "slave" to the current monetary system backed by banks is what governments like the most. As long as Bitcoin can be controlled via centralized exchanges, don't expect Fiat to go anywhere soon. Just my thoughts ;D

If decentralised exchanges aren't going to be affected by American regulation it's something cryptos ppl have to start getting used to it now. I didn't complete my test on Bisq but it's got a positive rep so it's user number's going to rise.

Centralised exchanges are a central part of the bitcoin ecosystem so if they're surrendering their users to American regulation they'll see smaller profits. If they push them away they'll use decentralised exchanges setting a different way to trade so it's going to hit their profits.

I think that these exchanges are going to risk losing a part of their clients if that's what it takes to be able to transact in the country.
What choice do they really have? Give up users or shut down. They can also fight the government in court but that could take time and be expensive. Only the biggest exchanges will try this.

Do you think the governments don't know it that people will run away from centralized exchanges if they start sharing information about every transaction with the IRS and other 3 letter agencies?
It's great news for them because less legit exchanges means less legitimacy for the crypto ecosystem and slower adoption. In other words less competition for CBDC.

Yes, it is true that Bitcoin is not money laundering, but exploitative people only use Bitcoin from fiat to Bitcoin, and then they go through Bitcoin mixing to hide their true identity. Because the Bitcoin mixer hides the address, the person who holds it cannot be identified.

It seems that the money seems to be passed through the black market; the system seems to be like that. So it is very true that Bitcoin is a money launderer; it is indeed a digital currency, and if it is true that it is a money launderer, it will not last for sure for 14 years in this industry.

I don't know what would happen if they wanted to register their exchanges in Seychelles but if they aren't falling under American regulation there shouldn't be a claim on their users trading data. If the biggest exchanges challenge the govt in court it's going to help the smallest exchanges stay in business.

Governments will do what's in their best interests. Mixers and truly-decentralized cryptocurrencies pose a threat to banks' very existence. You think governments will let this pass by? They will do everything in their power to try to reduce crypto's dominance in the mainstream economy. That's by either regulating it or making it "illegal".

I see no future for Bitcoin mixers, unless they stick to being "non-custodial" (which means decentralized). Tornado.Cash was a non-custodial mixer, but that didn't stop the US government from sanctioning it (although it was still possible to use it by interfacing with smart contracts directly). This will be a never-ending battle between crypto and governments + banks. With centralized exchanges getting ahold of the crypto market, we could say governments have some sort of control over crypto. They will have trouble regulating DEXs, though. Who knows what the future of crypto will be? :)

taint is a term even early adopter/dev bitcoiners use for the UTXO path back to its proven creation (coin-reward).. its a real thing.
even back then discussions were said about "blacklisting" "colouring" "tracing" coins

its actually part of the audibility of bitcoins open ledger, that each bitcoin has a origin/spending path

taint existed before mixer/obfuscation services existed
taint existed before any chain analysis company started operating
taint existed before any government cared about bitcoin

yep "taint" has been a buzzword in bitcoin for 12+years.. is not something the government invented

however if dex/de-fi traders use bankwires for fiat trades, they are not immune.

Bitcoin is not fungible, so dirty coins can easily be identified on the Blockchain. The transparency of BTC is not a bug but a feature. It's a great way keep an eye of the flow of transactions on the network. This can help detect malicious actors on-chain. Addresses don't have an ID linked to them, so there's no way to tell the coins belong to you unless governments use surveillance/analytics tools. Using a new address for each transaction, avoiding centralized exchanges, and using a mixer would be your best best to help protect your privacy.

Unfortunately, it's hard to remain anonymous when regulations are becoming stricter by the day. There so many limitations aimed to make your life impossible. Governments have done their part by shutting down as much centralized mixers as possible. The public now believes mixing is a very bad thing (thanks to government propaganda and misinformation). Non-custodial mixers will survive, but they will only be used by a small number of people. Expect privacy on Bitcoin to be a contentious subject for a very long time. No one can predict the future, so lets hope for the best. :/

No. Bitcoin is fungible. There are no dirty coins, there are only people claiming they provide a service which can de-anonymize the blockchain to an extent, and which is evidently inaccurate and based on utter guesswork.

The transparency of Bitcoin is not to make transactions identifiable, but to retain the property of open-source, free software.

Misinformation appears to be pretty effective based on your post.

You're wrong because bitcoin's fungible that's the way Satoshi created it. Bitcoin's got nothing to do with identifying dirty or tainted coins on the blockchain. Bitcoin was created as fungible that can't be denied but if we're talking about govts wanting to control crypto by regulating it's a separate point.

Yes. That's what I've meant. Please excuse the typo. If each Bitcoin were non-fungible (unique), it would be a hell of a lot easier to identify tainted coins. With BTC's current state, governments can only guess which coins belong to whom and where. They've censored centralized mixers hoping people don't get access to privacy.

Would you imagine if developers added ZKPs or other privacy technique to Bitcoin? That would create a lot of controversy, possibly resulting in mass delistings from mainstream crypto exchanges. With institutional investors getting in the game (Blackrock, Fidelity), it's best to keep Bitcoin as is. If you want privacy, just use a non-custodial mixer or a privacy coin such as Zcash or Monero. Lets hope BTC stays decentralized forever. ;)

blackhatcoin has not idea what fungibility even means


just look at how they treat invested fiat(capgains) different to employment income or inheritance..
look how they treat lumps of $1000 different to lumps of $10,001 at the borders

bitcoin is treated differently eg spent with merchant vs deposited to cex
the issue is not bitcoin itself. its due to being declared a recognised currency in 2013

Enforcing every coin to go private would surely shake the investors as regulators would be completely hostile to it. That's what I like with bitcoin. Privacy is not mandatory on a protocol level.

How the state treats you financially based on your economic activities is nowhere related to fungibility. Taxation on inheritance being different than in your monthly income is nowhere related to cash being fungible.

A typo at the wrong time doesn't help if you're trying to make a point so thanks for fixing it. I've understood it now & agree about non custodial mixers giving privacy to ppl. I don't know how Zcash works but if ppl want to substitute a mixer for coins they've got try XMR because Monero's a privacy coin.

So? Centralized exchanges are scams, which exist only to make profit for themselves at the expense of your security and your privacy.

Why? So we can sacrifice the very core of bitcoin so we can all make some profit? That's not why I'm here.

I already use Monero (and Zcash isn't private), but that doesn't mean I'm giving up on Bitcoin and letting it be taken over by governments and centralized exchanges.

I don't understand why people claim BTC is not fungible, but XMR is.

Bitcoin is fungible. I can send you 0.1 BTC and you can send me back 0.1 BTC and it will be exactly the same.

USD is fungible. I can give you $10 and you can give me $10 and it will be the exact same thing. Provided that the bills are not damaged of course.

XMR is fungible. I can send you 10 XMR and you can send me back 10 XMR and it will be exactly the same.


Monero (XMR) is indeed more private, being untraceable, meaning that you can't link the sender with the receiver.

However, Bitcoin and USD are both fungible. Indeed in Bitcoin you can go back to the coinbase transaction that created the UTXO that you own. But, so what? History doesn't spoil fungibility. If it did, then you wouldn't lend your friend $50 to buy his favorite PC game, because he would never be able to send you back the exact same dollar bill.


Personally I mix my UTXOs. The reason is not that I am afraid that the UTXOs I own are linked with illicit activities. I do it because I don't want anyone to know how much I own. The history of my UTXO isn't erased after the coinjoins. The only thing that happens is that I make my UTXOs unlinkable, so if someone sends me 1BTC, they will always know they have sent me 1BTC but thanks to coinjoins they will never know which path this UTXO has taken on the blockchain. And YES! Monero has this by default!

Bitcoin mixers is a good tombler, which however helps to mix different transactions and send as ananymous. But people choose to use the negative side of it. I believe the inventor never invented it for negativity maybe for fast and secure transaction to avoid Crypto hackers from tracing a transaction.

But in other words it is also another means of criminal to remain anonymous. And use it for atrocious dids. One thing is for sure, everything that has an advantage also has disadvantages. So we can not deny the fact that it can be use for money laundering. Its just like gun, there is a popular saying that "Gun dont kill people, people kill people" because gun can not on it's own kill a human, except it is use for such.

Of course it can be used for money laundering. Of course it can be used for illicit activities. So... ?

It doesn't matter what other people do with their money, just do your part and everything will be allright.

Any type of money can also be used for illicit activities with various techniques. It doesn't matter at all. You are not a criminal if an $100 bill that has been used for illegal actions 5 years ago ends in your hands. You can't know. You don't have to know!

We know about criminals wanting to remain anonymous that's why they use mixers. So what you're saying to ppl is just because a service exists for average bitcoiners to obfuscate their trades it doesn't mean the service's invented for criminals or they're welcomed to use it. You're right but if mixer owners get arrested they've got to have best legal teams in the world to defend their position or else it's going to end badly for them in courtrooms.

Definitely sure! Me talking about the disadvantages of it, doesn't change the facts about bitcoin mixer. There is nothing I and anybody else can do or change anything about that. All that we can do is to take advantage of it rather thinking of the negative side of it.

Whatever criminal has don to tanish the image of mixer, doesn't change anything rather making people to know more about mixer, just like the way bitcoin was painted bad. And people still see the brighter side of it. And continue adoption.

Criminals who want to remain anonymous already know that bitcoin is not a right place for illicit activities. If we look at the data from Chainalysis, only 0.12-0.24% (https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2023-crypto-crime-report-introduction/) of all transactions in Bitcoin are probably connected to crime and more than 90% (https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-mixers/) of bitcoin mixing transactions are made by law-abiding users who just want to increase the level of own anonymity. And the illicit activity percentage in bitcoin falls with years.

So, right, same tools can usually be used for good and for bad, but if we talk about bitcoin it becomes more and more suitable for honest and respected and not for criminals. And mixing bitcoin is also what is needed for honest and respected users as well, so criminal share in it falls like in all bitcoin transactions.

Well , i don't think so . Reality shows the opposite https://b10c.me/observations/08-missing-sanctioned-transactions/?t
Mined bitcoins that never moved or newly minted are not the same as the ones that have a transaction history . There will be a huge demand for those in the future as more and more cases like the OFAC one come forward .

This is a potential threat that some miners comply with the "rules" that organizations and governments try to apply in order to hold Bitcoin back.

What I do know is that 1ECeZBxCVJ8Wm2JSN3Cyc6rge2gnvD3W5K successfully moved to 16r7U7GqbVPeKukgfd3mUN9LCkuoKbfpXM in this block https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001bae714c1fbc509fcc40dac3ade7becff09ccd772a3f6 on ‎2023-09-21 06:59

This has nothing to do with fungibility. The recipient received many inputs of 0.0002 BTC. All of them are equal. The difference is that some miners will comply with the regulations that authoriarian governments make.

It's not a problem though.

The address 1ECeZBxCVJ8Wm2JSN3Cyc6rge2gnvD3W5K paid 16r7U7GqbVPeKukgfd3mUN9LCkuoKbfpXM again in this transaction https://mempool.space/tx/34e962671a1da560ada50c453e4f41443ca44cb084dda0d45799e2fbc7a84128 on 2023-10-12 05:07

Bitcoin is ok after all. Let them try harder!

If you think that tainted coins and addresses will have the same value with clean coins then i don't know what to say . Only a fool would pay to get those coins . It would be like accepting to exchange your cash for cash with blue paint ( not a good idea , don't try it ) .  
If someone offered you to buy all the usdt that's in banned addresses would you buy it at 1/100 of it's real value ? or would you consider those wasted money ?

Yes! I do think these coins have the exact same value!

No worries, I don't want you to say anything. Keep doing what think is best. Cheers!


Ok!


What is USDT?

Edit: You mean Tether.


No I wouldn't buy this anyway. I would only accept it as a gift, only if I could convert it to BTC.

Surely they have the same value, the problem here is centralized exchanges and services, and whatever they do doesn't reflect the nature of BTC. Centralized exchanges and services can blacklist certain utxo's whenever it enters their addresses, but it does not mean that BTC isn't fungible, the network is not responsible for what services like Binance does. You should store your funds in self custodial wallets, make use of privacy tools and p2p exchanges and services.

Take note that the idea of tainted coins is a way for the government to attack BTC's fungibility, and if bitcoiners used more of p2p exchanges and services, just the way BTC was supposed to be used without a third party, then maybe these centralized exchanges would not have become this 'powerful' in trying to 'control' the network alongside the government.

You probably don't realise that this is starting to happen at pool level . If pools decide to ban addresses or reject blocks from pools that contain those , things will start to get rough .

I am aware, but again, for this to escalate into a major problem, the censoring mining pools have to control 51% of the hashrate to totally blacklist tx's from being mined, and if they don't have that much control, other pools that do not censor tx's will pick up the tx's that they rejected and add it into their own block to be mined. Take note too that when a mining pool goes down the censoring lane, individual miners would leave such pools and their hashrate would drop.

There are decentralized exchanges which don't enforce this nonsense, and where you can exchange any bitcoin with fiat or other cryptocurrencies. All bitcoin are equal in value.

Except that the bitcoin cannot be counterfeited.

Except that the bitcoin is not a centralized shitcoin under the control of one company.

If a pool decides to censor a transaction, then another pool will sooner or later mine it. If lots of them start censoring, then miners will begin migrating elsewhere for the sake of the profit.

This absolutely true and exactly my point in this post:

BSV doomsayers... how cute!  ::)

Plz don't bite their bait...

if all the people in this topic truly believed all btc was fungible and there was no difference between one bitcoin vs one bitcoin... they would not be also trying to promote that people should use mixers

if the coin you have had nothing bad about it and was no difference. why need to change it

again the real reason is.. those promoting other should use a mixer is because the ones already using it are noticing their cauldron of coins in the mixer are more dirtier, than previous years. they want fresh coin in the mix. they want the clean coin and leave new people with the dirty coin
for years they have seem people mixing the same coins over and over and over again. with less fresh clean coin coming in to swap with

they pretend no coin is dirty to fake trust that people are not going to be harmed when handed dirty coin.. but if no coin was dirty. there would be no need to do these swaps

different bitcoins are treated differently
coins in a custodian are treated differently then coins on someones own private key
satoshis stash of coins is treated differently then an equal 1.1m coins in a CEX
satoshis stash of coins is treated differently then any other coin
mixed coin is treated differently than unmixed fresh mined coin

the mixer fanatics will want to tell you its 1:1 because they dont want to free market their de-valued crap. they want 1clean coin for 1 of their dirty coins. even though a freemarket would want a premium to take a dirty coin for a clean coin

if you realised the coin you receive if you used a mixer with your clean coin. that what you get could trigger services to deny you access to  services. you would want to charge them a extra for the risk. EG 1.2 dirty coin for 1 clean coin

I don't like deleting posts, but you've fundamentally misunderstood fungibility. If you continue derailing this with this false perspective, expect deletion.

Privacy ≠ fungibility.

Because I want nobody to know how many coins I own. Simple as that.

Mixers don't erase history. Mixers make it impossible to tell for sure which input is linked to Which output.

mixers dont make you private.
read regulations. just using a mixer makes you get higher recognition. services actually then go and seek out more information about the inflows and outflows of mixers to gain more information about mixer users and where they get their funds from and where those funds end up

as for blackhatcoiner
fungibility not about privacy.. true and false
but why try to talk about fungibility in a mixer topic if you think they have nothing to do with the "purpose of mixing"

fungibility. is not also limited to 'blacklisted' its linked to many many things that alter the perception of uniqueness or exactness, including tax treatment and other things.. its not a simple yes no answer

yes you might find someone that does 1:1 but someone else may see differences. welcome to the world of speculation

Basing on different payment freezes and account bans made by centralized services I can say that they don't really need a significant trigger to do so. They don't like p2p in general. They prefer you to use their service and only their service and even that will not prevent them to act against you. If not that bitcoin hardly ever was anyhow popular. So it is not a surprise that interacting with any centralized service is a risk each time. If you use centralized services you should take that risk into account. And as long as they don't disclose the way they evaluate the "dirtiness" of the translation, you can only guess what will trigger them. Most people use mixers don't complain on any further problems. Many who complain about centralized services never use mixers. So you can never be sure anyway.

its actually written in regulations, which money service businesses(MSB) and virtual asset service providers(VASP) follow, which says those services should look out for mixer users and flag them as risk/suspicious .. end of story.. no ifs or buts

mixer mixer promoters want to pretend regulation dont exist or regulations dont state to treat mixed coins differently.. but REAL WORLD FACT regulations do exist and do apply to specifically want to flag mixer used funds.. no if's or but's about it.

the guys in this topic deny it because it hurts their affiliate income if they cant recruit users, the people in this topic in denial are not posting using common sense or logic or stating facts that would help users avoid being flagged/monitored. all they care about is lulling people into a false narrative that mixing is harmless.. trying to recruit more victims to cause those victims more trouble just so the promoters can get paid or use victims clean coins while stinging the victims with the promoters dirty coin

if these promoters actually cared about REAL PRIVACY they would actually want to read the regulations. learn what is and isnt described and think outside the box for solutions not even using the word "mixer" "obfuscation" "anonymity" and instead be creative with a new service that gives the privacy end result but in a way thats not stipulated in regulations

its like uber doesnt call itself a taxi service, to get around taxicab regulations
its how homoeopaths and nutritionists get to play doctor selling snake oil without needing a doctorate, because they are creative with the description of their service
its how supplements can get away with health claims without needing FDA approval, because they are creative

if even now after so much time of mixers knowing their service is on a list. if they just continue as they are just trying to promote they are mixers. they dont care about their customers privacy they just want the commission

---

there are many many many things in many regulations about mixers, ill give a short example

https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/guidance/Updated-Guidance-VA-VASP.pdf  (made in 2021, so plenty of time to read)

they are not saying "mixing is illegal" they are saying that mixing is a higher risk that requires a higher amount of supervision and flagging it as suspicious

notice 85.. it also talks about subnetworks like LN. so LN is on the list too. just not as big a supervisory risk as mixers

if privacy service operators want to stay in business and not cause issues for their customer. they need to become more creative or find out that they and their customers get blacklisted/flagged/supervised at best or banned from other services at worse

Main problem is, as I said, that you can't be sure that you'll get no problems if you'll try to stay in unclear boundaries. Detecting mixing usage is a matter of probability: maybe some transaction is a result of mixing and maybe not. You can think that you reduce your risks in interacting with a centralized service and in fact they will react the opposite. If the rules and criteria were clear, it probably helped real criminals, but it could ease the life for law-abiding users as well. But many who get blocked accounts sometimes for a single p2p transaction or payment in address of some small shop, show that any interaction with a centralized financial (and not only) service is risky. Any. And everyone should think by himself how to reduce his own risks.

Saying that you didn't interact with some exact names of services probably can help if you'll get to the court, but I guess you'll can provide all data in there to show you have nothing illegal in your transactions. But many problems with centralized services appear when you have no plans on spending your time to go to court. And they don't really care... They use other criteria, which they don't disclose to us.


Improving service for the benefit of a customer is always good, I see no reason to dispute that. :)

The first thing is that Wikipedia is not an authentic source of information because every person can upload their suggestion or views on Wikipedia and that does not mean that a thing that is prohibited for them would be illegal for all the persons and in every state. There is a religion where gambling is prohibited but it's only for the belivers of that religion,  the rest can do it.

This is a mentality that shows how much they are in opposition to Bitcoin. Bitcoin mixing is a tool that some people use just to hide their identity. There are some illegal activities but that does not mean that it is spreading allowing criminal activities.  The ratio of money laundering and bitcoin mixing is like 3/100 which is very rare and more activities are occurring in government affairs than this money laundering using bitcoin,  but the Thing is that they want to find a route to ban bitcoin on the wish of the elite classes bankers.

Well, with the recent events with Sinbad mixer, we've got a statement (https://www.fiod.nl/fiod-takes-large-crypto-currency-mixer-off-the-air/) of the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service of the Netherlands in which they supported what is written in a topic title: Bitcoin mixing is not a criminal activity per se:


So we can suppose that the government of the Netherlands sees the difference between mixing bitcoins for own security and safety and mixing bitcoins for some criminal purposes.

you quoted a section to make it look like mixing is fine.. but you missed a crucial part


they also said

So , what is in bold shows that there are on the one side criminal funds and on the other side their exit liquidity from "privacy seekers" .
Good luck to the second group proving who they actually are and that they've done this just to enhance their privacy . By anonymizing transactions you just flush to the toilet any evidence you have to prove your innocence .  

Why should people have to prove their innocence to corrupted state officials? :o

You remind me of COVID fanatics: everyone is guilty (virus transmitter), unless proven innocent (via a COVID test).

No, fuck them, I have nothing to prove (I don't even use mixers, but I don't care if people wanna use them or not).

Hell, some people even pay exorbitant fees (up to 83 BTC) to clear the money trail. Would I do it? No. Is it risky in case it goes to a pool you don't control? Yes (unless you control the majority of the hashrate).

People can do whatever they want, as long as it follows BTC mainnet rules. Deal with it.

Mixing BTC is NOT money laundering - you're trying to gain privacy, this is perfectly ethical. You're not harming anyone.

They've simply used these terms to make you feel like a criminal.

Ironically, they're the ones laundering & counterfeiting our money. That is harming all of us.

The right thing to do is stop supporting these crimes by using fiat, paying taxes, using their smart tech - phones, credit cards etc. Most won't do it, but they should.

The hidden hand behind government is the leading cause of death, they are committing every crime imaginable under the sun. The conspiracy is so large & so vast that most can't comprehend it.

They're basically lying about everything. Only you can figure it out though, no one can tell you. Like Morpheus said: No one can tell you what the Matrix is.

I don't know from where to start and where to end . But i will say only this , the criminals using the bank system to hide their money do something completely ethical as they're trying to gain privacy according to your logic . Correct ?
And you will say to protect your position that many are not criminals and are just trying to protect their privacy . My question to that is , how you can prove that you do this just to increase your privacy ? And how it feels to be exit liquidity to those laundering criminal money ?
Laundering money as far as i know involves a high fee , as launderers may face criminal charges . So , they do it for profit . You guys are just handing them your clean money for free and may face charges . Good for you , keep it going . I'll stay on the sidelines with my four hands .

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/11/30/NFIFz.png (https://www.talkimg.com/image/NFIFz)

They are literally taking half of our paycheck and using it to bomb children in Palestine.  


Please tell us your full name, phone number, where you live, how much money you have and share us your transaction history.  If you do not because you consider this information private, can you please prove to us you are innocent?

No.  You do not have to.  The default position is innocence.  You are not guilty until proven guilty.

 Not in every country just some.

I'm saying it isn't fair for govts to say ppl who've used mixers are doing something illegal. They know mixers like banks can be used for good or bad reasons so they shouldn't put all bitcoin traders in one criminal bracket. Criminals have taken advantage of crypto so that's why it's getting a hard time.

Well, despite that mixers are "not necessarily illegal" theymos banned their advertising and promoting on the forum starting January 1, 2024 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476162.0).

It doesn't stop the discussion about mixers, but I'd say it is an important statement in line with it on this forum.

I haven't used a mixer ever . Does that mean that everything you ask me to provide is accessible to anyone ? Doesn't bitcoin provide privacy ? Because i think there's a section in the whitepaper that explains specifically that part . And if at any time authorities ask me , i have the proof of source of funds . Do you ? How will you explain to them if your funds come directly from a hacked exchange or other criminal activities ?
- " Your honor , i'm a privacy seeker and i thought it was a good idea to mix my funds in a pool that 50% of the mixed funds are from criminal activity and 50% are legal . Trust me , i'm not one of those criminals . And remember , no one is guilty until proven otherwise " .
- " Do you have any evidence to prove your innocence ? "
- " No , just my word "
Guess the verdict .



I thought bitcoin was created so society can get rid of those banking tactics that everyone dislike . Do we want to have a more advanced money laundering system than the banking ?

Oh well, I guess some people will stop (shit)posting... ::)

I know someone who made $1200/month (not a lot of money in the USA, but still plenty enough in poorer countries).

If people don't like Theymos' decision (that's fine), they should start a decentralized forum, because bitcointalk.org has always been centralized. Deal with it.

people say the same about guns "i have the right to bear arms"
yes but if you are seen walking along a sidewalk openly waving a gun around shouting "this is my right i will defend myself" you will become a suspect of possibly wanting to use the gun for illegal purpose like shooting someone, they will want to know what you mean by and how you intent to "defend yourself"
you will be approached by cops for suspicion of inciting fear and terror

many cops also have the right to defend themselves. so if they see you waving a gun around they may see you as a threat..

and thats how america got so bad.. right to bear arms = cops allowed to shoot if feeling threatened
also cops can stop and search you and ID you to make sure you are permitted/licenced to have a gun.

if you want to have a gun. dont advertise it to make yourself a target.. in short: use it dont advertise it
if you want use/be a mixer. dont advertise it to make yourself a target.. in short: use it dont advertise it

---

posting from another topic ITS ABOUT MIXING AND BLACKHATS THOUGHTS SO ITS ON_TOPIC AND RELEVANT
(topic about putting mixer tools into core)

blackhatcoiner KNOWS core is the default CORE(central) reference client thus it is the defacto protocol decision maker these days. so wanting to make core become a mixer tool is the biggest red alarm where everyones coins will be treated as suspicious

the idiot wants to think if every coin is suspicious the analysis businesses will give up analysing.. he doesnt understand by making every transaction suspicious they will enact more policy and lobby more regulation..

people can make their own wallet software (forked code of core and rebranded) into a mixer tool manager. however making the reference client everyone use into a mixer is stupidly going to cause more problems for all users.

blackhatcoiner is more interested in sales commissions of promoting mixers, than caring about the repercussions on the users of such

mixers should be just a side niche service not everyone needs. but for the idiots that want to get tagged as suspicion can remain idiots and use mixers to get listed on a watchlist by using mixers..

the solution to being tagged and watchlisted, is not to recruit everyone to be tagged and watchlisted. though i feel blackhat earns more commission if everyone was

Less sig campaigns means there's less spam so that's a benefit but there isn't a ban or restriction on talking about mixers. They won't be promoted or advertised so they've been banned in the forum. It's going to affect sig campaigners so we're going to see less income ops now but if it's the safest action for protecting the forum theymos made a good decision.

Many people abuse mixers for the purpose of embezzling funds from crimes resulting from corruption and other illegal funding, because they can disguise the user's address.  This is an important concern for the government to investigate cases like this, in fact crypto has become the main choice for irresponsible individuals, Because there have been many criminal cases involving misuse of mixer services for certain purposes. Maybe this is one of the main causes, even next year a ban will be implemented on promoting their advertisements here

It would've been different if criminals didn't use mixers. It's unfortunate bitcoin mixers are being used for bad criminal tumbling cash to launder. That's one of the reasons mixers are going to be banned in the forum next year. If govts form an alliance to ban mixers they'll become illegal. It means ppl shouldn't use them because they'll break the law.

BlackHatCoiner, could you add this point to OP as additional information for mixer definition, please.

It is not a mixer definition but is part of elements to consider a mixer is illegal or not.


It won't change anything because the admin decided and Mixers to be banned (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476162.0) but I think with that quote, it can add a useful information for your topic.

LN is by default a money transmitter service , and could be also placed in the category of money laundering services as it anonymises transactions . This has been mentioned many times in the past in here and those presenting the problem were consider loonies . A whole community is waiting for the overenginnered "holy graal" which will be proven a waste of 8 years and a serious delay in bitcoin adoption . Probably we will see devs working on LN facing charges like the tornado cash dev at some point ? Authorities work slow but they will act at some point .

tornado dev didnt get charged for just writing mixer code. he got charged for receiving a fee for being personally involved in shuffling funds used in a crime

its like silk road owner.. if he just operated a craigs list platform where he never touched any coin.never took a fee.. his life story would be very different

LN devs wont be charged just for writing LN code. but if they operate a node channel that allows routing of their funds to process payments for a fee on behalf of others..  and if they take a fee for routing. then they are operating as a MSB. and thus need to be doing things as suggested by regulations. if they dont and if found they processed and profited from routing to a threshold that treats them as a business.. but never registered as one. then trouble begins
if they then ontop are found to have processed criminal/illicit payments. then they can be charged for bigger crimes.

tornado dev didnt get charged for just writing code

I wasn't aware of that , thanks for pointing out .

I agree with you on that approach but mixers are a little different. Mixers aren't as famous as guns. Someone has to promote mixers in order to increase awareness. There are people on this forum who are capable to promote mixers and take care of their privacy at the same time. If they use it and advertise and are making themselves a target, it's their problem. You, as a member, see the pros and cons of mixers and you can use it without promoting or suggesting it to other people.

We have Monero for better privacy, thanks god, it's legal and untouched and it's not necessary to ruin Bitcoin by making changes that will worsen the situation in crypto world and will lead to more regulations.

By the way, I don't know if blackhatcoiner promotes the mixer usage to gain more profit because he probably doesn't own mixer and profit generated from mixer signature is not enough to live or survive in Europe (he seems to be from Greece). I can't talk about BHcoiner but there are genuinely some people who advocate for protecting privacy.


Look at this, they want to completely control what people do:
EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems (https://mullvad.net/en/blog/eu-chat-control-law-will-ban-open-source-operating-systems)
Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU (https://mullvad.net/en/blog/stop-the-proposal-on-mass-surveillance-of-the-eu)
EU Digital Identity framework (eIDAS) another kind of chat control (https://mullvad.net/en/blog/eu-digital-identity-framework-eidas-another-kind-of-chat-control)

firstly.. dont cite blog posts of tin foilers.. actually take time to read the regulations the tin foilers paranoia over.. form own opinion
the eIDAS is not actually requiring all EU websites to certificate and then ask for ID.. its actually simply that government run websites will have a log-in security certificate, which they want webbrowsers to have a wallet extension/add-on which recognises a EU government site to allow people to log in using a government ID on government sites (not normal websites). the actual debate is the government wanting browsers to have these wallets installed as default extensions where the wallet is closed source so browser operators are unsure what the wallet actually does.. thats it

secondly
advertising a swap service where whats deposited is not the same coin origins as whats withdrew can be advertised creatively as a different service that does not even sound anything close to the words "mixer, tumbler, obfuscate, AEC, privacy" however those wanting privacy can figure out what the service does wink wink nudge nudge.. cough satoshi dice cough

but blatantly advertising that more people should use mixers and pretending that users of mixers are not monitored more closely is dumb

as for thinking those advertising mixers "on this forum. who are capable to promote mixers and take care of their privacy at the same time" pfft
blackhat isnt capable
angelo is from greece and his home interior walls where he plays with his gadgets is painted blue.
oeleo was a doctor, windfury was into woodwork/carpentry. ud be surprised what these people reveal about themselves.. they dont care about their own privacy, they definitely dont care about other peoples privacy. recruiting people into being monitored more highly..  they just care about promoting a service they get income from

i for months have been suggesting they need to re-vamp the services they promote and tweak things, maybe i was too subtle with the hints. yea yea i dont spoonfeed babies.. but they just wanted to play dumb pretend there is not problems and their promotions offer users guaranteed invisibility .. pfft

Bitcoin mixing originally doesn't seem to be wrong, but I think it depends on those using it. The Dev has a unique plan for it, but some people with criminal intentions have found a way to use it to hide their track which negates what Bitcoin is supposed to be known for.

One has to know how to use mixer safely and overall, things are very complicated. If someone sends money from Electrum lightweight without using proxy but uses mixer, then the privacy of this person is not protected and it's meaningless to use mixer. Also, one has to understand that any mixer can be a honeypot. Things are way more complicated.

How are we sure that angelo is from greece, oeleo was a doctor and windfury was into carpentry?
They can claim whatever they want but that doesn't mean what they say is true. I can give you a false senes that I am a professional doctor by talking about anything related to medicine in live chat with you but that doesn't really mean I am a doctor, maybe I am just a person who was obsessed with medicine and spent years to study it at home? Maybe I speak English, Spanish and Russian very well but my native language is none of them but I can pretend that I am a Russian, right? What if all the image they created is false? Maybe I am British and intentionally use American words and sometimes bad grammar in order to create false persona? Maybe that's why I say color instead of colour, favorite instead of favourite and so on?

I haven't seen many posts of yours but what you were saying and say here about privacy, etc, makes sense for me.

If bitcoin provides privacy to everyone, then it contradicts your initial statement that for one to want privacy they need to prove they are innocent.  Every user can enjoy certain levels of anonymity with bitcoin without proving they are innocent.

You register in bitcointalk.org under a pseudonym.  That means you want some privacy.  Can you please prove to us you are innocent, otherwise why would you want privacy?


Lmao.  Very reasonable.  So, if someone cannot prove they own coins (or owned coins in the past), they must be treated as suspects?

Oh my , why i waste my time .
Dear , try to understand the difference between privacy and anonymity . You are trying to create something based on nothing . I want privacy , you want anonymity . Understand the distinction first and then we can procced .
That individual in your example will hold coins from criminal actions . Hello ? Does anybody live in the upper floor ? Or it is uninhabited .

I am trying to keep up with your posts.  I know the difference between anonymity and privacy.  So you are in favor of privacy, but you are opposed to anonymity.

So what you are saying is that you want privacy, but from strangers on the Internet, not from the state.  The state must surveil everything according to you.  I am not going to counterargue with an Orwellian (we can agree to disagree on this part), but I want to point out that you contradict yourself.

Let me put forward my thought.  You say that the people should be forbidden from mixing, because without mixing you can prove to the authorities that you own addresses affiliated with a criminal (or not).  I say that you can do that with a mixer as well.  What is stopping you?  Take an example with coinjoin.  You can sign a message from the inputs and the outputs. 

Another way to tell you that you are wrong, is that Bitcoin does not provide you enough privacy to begin with.  There are many ways you can mess things up and reveal to the entire network who you are, it is trivial to link your addresses together.  In other words, the state can monitor you (as you want) but strangers  do so as well.

Bitcoin mixing may not be money laundering, but money launderers use mixers to launder money. That basically means anytime someone steals crypto and sends them through a mixer, that mixer is now guilty in laundering money and all those associated with it could also be seen as breaking the law. So mixers are all basically just waiting for their own shutdown.

BlackHatCoiner earns $1200/month (his words, not mine) from advertising mixers.

Trust me, that's enough to live in Greece. The minimum wage is €660/month, so he earns more than that and he even loves shitposting and arguing with franky1 and others to increase his post count (again: his words, not mine).

I'm able to confirm it. He has also participated in other Greek forums.

You can also check his posts in the Greek subforum of bitcointalk.

I'm not in favor of mixing if we're talking about laundering stolen money from exchanges (such as MtGox). Traceability is a good thing in certain cases.

Unfortunately, yeah, some people aid criminals.

I don't believe everyone who uses mixers is a criminal, but you can definitely be associated with criminals and get in trouble.

If people want true anonymity, they should migrate to Monero. I know BTC maxis will disagree, but BTC wasn't designed to do everything and Satoshi disappeared all of a sudden.

i too dont believe all users are criminals.. but there lays the problem.. mixers only worl if they can recruit innocents.. the innocent people with coins unrelated to crimes usually deposit their clean coins and end up withdrawing the bag of crap dirty coins.. thus aiding the criminals by handing them clean coins
the victims are then left being treated as suspicious to a higher threshold as they now have a taint path back to a tagged criminal act before the mixer, but handed to victims via the mixer

What if the criminal uses a non-custodial mixer? Would the government prosecute developers instead (considering that they can't shut down the mixer itself)? Considering that most developers reveal their identities to the public, hunting them down would be a "piece of cake". The non-custodial mixer would remain in operation, though. Especially because of its decentralized and censorship-resistant design.

You can see how the US government was unable to shut down Tornado.Cash, despite sanctioning it. Developers even made a fork out of the non-custodial mixer. Be aware though, using a non-custodial mixer to "obfuscate" your BTC transactions would catch the attention of the government (if you're careless). Even if you're not doing anything illegal. I guess privacy on Bitcoin will be a never-ending battle. Unless people stand up and defend their right to privacy, governments will win. Who knows what the future holds for Bitcoin?  :-\

got to love the irony..
transparent open public blockchain... and people want to talk about privacy.

anonymity is different to privacy
anonymous is different to private
and no currency has ever had any human rights or national constitutional rights about financial privacy

people have financial privacy against other people. but not the government
heck even in the UK the government are making laws to easily access people bank account details without court order for those in receipt of social security(pension, welfare)
so dont be surprised that currency does not offer any human right protections, because it never has

Not that I agree with this logic, but do you think you have privacy against other people with bitcoin?  Coin control is very limited and you will likely merge inputs together at some point. 

Can you find my entire transactions history ? Or franky's ? I have a lot of merged inputs so it must be an easy task .

Of course, someone paid 83 BTC fees to clean the money trail. And no, it wasn't a fat finger mistake. :) Still a bit risky though (if you don't know which pool is gonna solve the block).

People will always find ingenious ways within BTC's mainnet rules, that's for sure...

i have a known vanity address i use for worthless meaningless public stuff

i have MANY addresses for my private stash that i have accumulated over 11 years. .. try to find my real stash.. goodluck
i never used a mixer, but i know you wont find my stash
enjoy trying though

---

yep setting a contract with a specific pool to pay them in tx-fee's your value. and they later using a different reward pay you back is a way to get clean coins.. but a 83btc in 83btc out is easy to spot. however smaller amounts can go unnoticed

Can a chain analysis company find it (since you said you've never used mixers)?

1. my real stash never touched a KYC'd exchange.
2. my real stash never used illicit or suspicious services to warrant a investigation to tag my coins
3. any deposits made into services and out of services never used the username "franky1"
4. when doing private trades or purchases or sales i dont do it using any info of real life or forum persona
5. i wont reveal the other ways i changed things over the years

What will you do once you need to consolidate them?  Or is that not a possibility?

If the government has a backdoor on either a non-custodial wallet or a cryptocurrency's node software (with the help of developers), then yes, it will be impossible to have financial privacy against said entity. But code is readily available online (open source), so it will be easy enough to detect the backdoor. Decentralization must be preserved to render governments' efforts to destroy or minimize crypto useless. Centralized mixers will be shut down for good. But not decentralized or non-custodial ones. Tornado.Cash mixer is still running despite the sanctions, as well as, its forks.

With Bitcoin getting smart contract features via the use of sidechains, it's possible to build a decentralized/non-custodial mixer that would live on the Blockchain forever (immutable). I wonder what new tactics will governments come up with to prevent people from obfuscating their BTC transactions in the long run? :D

How about freezing addresses at a pool level ? Forcing big mining farms to point their hashrate to specific pools that obey court  or state orders ? Forcing pools to reject blocks that contain transactions from banned addresses ? Putting devs behind bars like the tornado cash dev ? And much more that are not as obvious right now ? 

you do realise that governments are already defining services that perform subnetwork channel routing as money service businesses.


blockchains and smart contracts dont ask for ID. but when you start promoting yourself publicly and advertising.. guess what. thats how the cross hairs of a target start pointing at you

if you think a subnetwork is private. just check out the "gossip" database of a certain subnetwork, it lists all channel ID, (it maps the network)
heck check out 1ml.com and see how it tags all funding locks to services/names

governments can even hire  analysis sites to set up honeypot's
https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/guidance/Updated-Guidance-VA-VASP.pdf

It recently happened with Foundry:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5475157.0.  But then Stratum V2 was announced:  https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/demand-launches-worlds-first-stratum-v2-bitcoin-mining-pool.  I do not believe that the community will turn into a censorship playground. 

and they (using regulated services) get services to look for illegal acts using mixers.. by monitoring and trying to identify all mixer users.. thus making mixer users exposed to monitoring.. thus defeating the purpose of mixing (for users that dont want to be monitored)

for services that monitor particular transactions with more scrutiny. using a mixer makes users on that particular list of extra scrutiny of following their spending paths.

---

as for running a mixer just developing or running one is not illegal. no one has been charged purely for developing/running a mixer. however if the operator directly involved with facilitating criminally sourced funds transfer, and takes a fee/commission for processing it.. then they are charged

a few years ago, when the bitlincence was new for NYC . financial enforcement agents in NY actually registered with services their home personal address and seen if the service(not regulated) accepted them as customers. purely to honeypot trap them and charge them as running a unregistered money service in NY or for NY customers, without a bitlicence

there are delegates in sanctioned countries that will register their address in sanctioned countries to see if they can move funds through services to see which ones ignore the sanctions

they even have court warranted agents that are allowed to sign up and deal on darkmarket sites and use known darkmarket tainted coins that are on watch lists to move funds through services to see which services allow funds to flow.

I can't imagine how governments will be able to pull this off (controlling the mining pools), especially when miners can decide to move to another pool that doesn't promote censorship. With a new mining protocol underway (Stratum V2), it's expected mining to become less-centralized in the future. I've read somewhere there was a decentralized mining pool called "P2Pool" (not to be confused with Monero's P2Pool.to mining pool). Whenever it will take off in popularity or remain a niche, it's yet to be seen.

Regarding putting devs behind bars, I'd say governments are going to have a hard time doing this especially if the developer is anonymous. Just like Bitcoin's Satoshi Nakamoto. New protocols and/or privacy techniques need to be developed in an anonymous way to avoid government prosecution. If the developer reveals his identity (like Vitalik Buterin and others), he would be nothing more than stupid. I know the excuse is that investors will think a project is a scam without publicly-known developers, but this is the way to go if we want to preserve decentralization/privacy/censorship-resistance. With centralized mixers on the brink of extinction, Bitcoiners will have to use decentralized alternatives for true financial privacy. Hopefully, non-custodial mixers and privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies will survive for generations. As long as we defend our right to privacy, there should be nothing to worry about. ;)

I think it's too easy to control pools and miners , especially with the current status . Most hashpower is based in US and China . Forcing big mining farms to commit their hashrate to specific pools will be the easiest part . Comply or go to jail , easy choice . And if you don't agree as a big mining farm , shut down your miners and move to another country by loosing a big portion of your profitability because in the meantime new gen machines might make your investment even more unprofitable . Most people haven't really understand how hard this is for a company that want's to make profit . And the fun part is that people that haven't even mine say that nonsense that miners will move to non regulated pools . They haven't understand how things work , technically and financially .  
As for the stratum v2 , i have explained here why it won't work https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5475844.msg63254857#msg63254857 .
As for the p2pool , can you guess why it's not still present ? Think of how decentralised mining would work , and you will see that there's not such think as the reason to mine is profit .

Full anonymity on the internet is a no go . If three letter agencies decide to track you down , you are doomed .

Sure, it's not easy, but care to explain how Satoshi's identity still remains a secret 15+ years after BTC's announcement/whitepaper?

default, zero effort anonymity online is a no go
people actually have to put in personal effort to disguise themselves. this includes learning what agencies look for to then know what to evade doing

EG
if they are now particularly interested in watching users of mixers.. dont use mixers, because using them you will be on a watch list

i would not be surprised if theymos had been contacted by monitoring services to pass them metadata* about forum users whom overtly advertise mixing

*ip addresses, geo locations, sign up email addresses, session data, etc
https://bitcointalk.org/privacy.php

This still doesn't answer my question regarding Satoshi's secret identity... I never said he used mixers or gmail/hotmail or his real IP (Tor exists for a reason).

If what you're saying's true it's eating at users privacy. You're saying you wouldn't be surprised if it happened that's better than saying it's definitely done. I don't know if theymos would give users info to govts before starting a thread explaining what he's doing but it's scary times.

this is a PUBLIC forum. you have no sense of privacy in public unless you create it for yourself



too many people ignorantly think that just because bitcoin does not ask for ID. that businesses and services can bypass laws, sorry the real world doesnt work like that

people have to put their own effort into what information they give away and find ways to prevent the hidden metadata their own computers give away. its not upto a business to work for you, you have to work for yourself

franky1 you're right it's a public forum so we don't have privacy but that's about public posting. There's actions which aren't public but gets collected by the site like email & ip addresses. We're expecting those info's going to be kept private but if we're going to protect our data we've got to follow steps limiting what we're giving away.

you "expect". again just because its a bitcoin forum dont expect anonymity by default. try reading a services terms and conditions.. businesses and services are not "bitcoin"

try reading the privacy link

it explicitly says  what i even quoted and red highlighted..
if you dont want your IP disclosed its upto YOU to use tor/proxy/vpn.. its not theymos's job to get fined and in trouble if subpoena'd, by refusing a court order
he is not going to put loyalty to you as some data guard above his own freedom. nor should he.

also its not just IP data.
if you write something in a PM to another user. expect the content of that to also be supplied if a court order asks for it
its up to you to not reveal secrets on the forum even in PM's.. if you dont want people to know it, dont say it

You fail to understand that you are not the all seeing eye . That you or i don't know who satoshi is , doesn't mean that satoshi's identity isn't known to everyone . Who are the ones that know it ? If i had to guess , people close to him that are good in keeping secrets . Oh , and of course three letter agencies , if an order to find him was given at some point .

That's true you're right theymos can't compromise his own freedom by refusing a subpoena or court order so it's users own actions which's protecting their privacy. If they're using tor there's less info stored in the forum server that's true. Every user should have attention to the info you've red highlighted.

Mixers are usually used to avoid government taxes. Mixer allows you to trade your bitcoins in the most confidential manner. Since transactions are completed secretly through mixers even with official approval, it would not be wrong to consider it as illegal, but it cannot be compared to money laundering. We have learned several times how bad money laundering is. There's a good reason Mixer has been criticized so much lately because there have been several popular Mixer campaigns on this forum that ended up being scams. The forum may have decided not to allow any more mixer campaigns on this forum due to popular mixers being scams so as not to damage the forum's reputation.

That's what it looks like. Things happened so theymos decided to ban mixers because it's realistically going to damage the forum. I'm with UniJoin sig campaign so I'll be affected but if protecting the forum's rep is a priority for users it shouldn't be a problem when banning mixers from 1st Jan happens.

How do you know that? Show me statistics that say that 60% of all coins that went through mixers were later used to hide from taxation. Most people don't have to mix coins to avoid taxes. They just need to exchange privately into cash and boom, nobody can prove that you bought something with your bitcoin. You can go to a post office, pay your bills with cash and there's no trace it came from bitcoin.

Even if you could prove that statement (which you can't) is avoiding taxes really a bad thing from the point of view of an average citizen? I always thought that if laws are unjust we shouldn't obey them.

It happened that they knew about this. We would not know if someone is trying to evade taxes from government or mixing cryptocurrencies from illegal activities such as hacking.

How can we know that it cannot be compared to money laundering? we know for a fact that hackers/frauds are using mixers to avoid being caught though this is hard to explain because we can't have a proof.

Theymos are keeping the forum's best interest, not to taint it with some bad reputation in public so he did it. I would agree with his decision to ban it in the forum as it will cause chaos to the forum in any time possible if he didn't do it. Good thing he gave us all an ample time and didn't ban it right away.

And three-letter agencies have done absolutely nothing regarding Satoshi during the last 15 years because...?

There are a few countries with a large concentration of hashrate (mainly the US and China) on the BTC blockchain. But that doesn't it's the end of the world. If Bitcoin becomes compromised, the minority can create a new chain with decentralization/censorship-resistance in mind. Centralized mixers on the other hand, can be stopped because of the way they're designed. That's where non-custodial (decentralized) mixers come in. People can still enjoy financial privacy on Bitcoin by using these alternatives.

Even if governments declare bitcoin mixing "illegal", there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it secretly. There will be a truly-decentralized economy that no government will be able to get its hands on it. Decentralization must be preserved to render governments' attempts to destroy crypto futile. BTC has gone this far despite strong opposition from banks and governments worldwide. So I'm certain it will survive another 1-2 decades from now. Who knows if BTC ultimately beats Fiat currencies for good? :D

Word, my thought exactly.
I don't understand why mixers get such a bad rep!! I mean people like privacy, where is the problem in that.
Sure there are some that use mixers for no so legal reasons but you can't throw all users in 1 pot, that's just not right!

I used mixers before, not to hide anything, not to circumvent taxes, not for anything illegal, just for straight up security of my privacy! What does that make me?

If they're made illegal in your country it's different you can't use them so now you can't be a criminal for using mixers to get more security or anonymity. It's probably going to happen soon but we don't know when.

Your thoughts on the reply's same as me. I don't know why mixers get bad rep if they're used for privacy. If they're being used for crime it's a different thing govts will go after them but if they they're supplying services to ppl wanting to increase privacy they shouldn't be considered money laundering factories.

It also doesn't really solve any problem if they ban mixers. There are so many services that essentially allow users to break traceability by going back and forth between different cryptocurrencies, or of course use Monero. And for as long as there is a need and a marktet for mixing services, there will be mixing services. They can maybe shut down one of those services every few weeks or so, but that doesn't stop anyone from setting up the next one. I was wondering if authorities should run their own mixing services as that would be an effective way to gather as much data about people as possible.

Too late to rock the cradle at this point. The dust has settled and mixers are going to be unwelcome in this forum from January 1 onwards.

And while you make a compelling case about why mixers aren’t to be considered as AML-defying machines, the thing is that, they are still used to conduct and protect people who commit illegal activities. Hackers and scammers getting away with millions of untraceable money in some cases all because of mixers.

Believe me, I’m more about keeping mixers in the forum and in the crypto industry as much as the next guy since privacy is the crowning glory of crypto apart from decentralization. But the thing is, it has done more harm than good upon bitcoin’s reputation at this point that we’d have to come up with a better way to commit to security.

We don't know so I'll say they'll make centralised exchanges seize coins which came from mixer addresses. If Monero isn't going to be traded in centralised exchanges ppl will mix XMR in bisq but when they're sent to regulated exchanges they'll be seized that's what's coming to my head.

There's a market for mixing so it isn't going out of business soon. If mixing's outlawed in your country you shouldn't mix. Unless it's against laws in your country you're allowed to mix but you can't launder money it's a crime. The trouble begins when money launder criminals use mixers it's when they get seized.

Because the "the cat is already out of the bag". - The core idea of Bitcoin and its current implementation are unstoppable. Satoshi has nothing to say in that, even if he were to appear right now.
So in regards of Bitcoin it would be of little help for any government or agency to confront the real Satoshi in whichever way.


To bring this back to topic:

I still believe the only way to go about Bitcoin privacy is making it mainstream. Right now only a handful of dedicated wallets offer a coinjoin / whirlpool or similar option. If instead this was an integral part of most commonly used wallets (hard and software) and would needed to be turned-off first instead of turned-on, it would exponentially help the privacy of Bitcoin.
So it's up to the devs in the right positions to make this option more broadly available, easily accessible and ideally auto-on from the get-go.

Yes that's what I think as well, but besides outright bans there are other ways to force people into avoiding cryptocurrencies like Monero or mixing services. If someone wants to improve or maintain privacy while at the same time be an honest citizen paying taxes on gains etc., these people could still run into problems when a proof of origin is required, I assume? For Monero it is ok as you could prove you controlled certain private keys to public keys in a chain of transactions, but when you use a mixing service it could become a hassle to prove anything to complete satisfaction of authorities. But that is pretty much the same with most of these swapping services where you can send coin X to get back coin Y. The strategy could be to make it so cumbersome that maintaining or improving one's privacy becomes such a distress that people start caring less.

putting privacy enhancing tools into main wallet apps and even the main core node software will cause more legal issues, because coin join/mixers  requires a central manager and would effectively turn bitcoin from an open source software and turn it into a service. which then allows authorities to grab further jurisdictional footing into the bitcoin ecosphere

so no thanks. leave it as a separate service instead of making it part of node/wallets by default

what people that operate or use privacy tools need to do is think smarter.. rather then ruin bitcoin just for an idiots greed/laziness of actually doing nothing to preserve his own privacy using his own actions in a smarter way.. just hoping bitcoin will do it all for them even at the demise of bitcoins open utility,

Mixers cannot be banned. Especially non-custodial/decentralized ones. Those who care about privacy will move on with their lives by using another mixer that's truly censorship-resistant. We knew from day one that centralized mixers were going to be scrutinized by mainstream governments. After all, they don't want people to enjoy true financial privacy. The more people obfuscate their transactions, the less power/control the government will have.

With DEXs, atomic swaps, and privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies (eg: Monero), we'll never have to worry about government surveillance ever again. Let's hope BTC devs integrate a privacy mechanism into the protocol (Zero Knowledge Proofs?) for complete peace of mind. If they do this, expect constant opposition from governments in the long run. Satoshi never intended to please the government in the first place, so why should the community do otherwise? Just my opinion :)

If we're to choose over and over again I'd still choose anonymity and this is what Bitcoin mixers brings to the table. There's absolutely nothing wrong with me deciding to hide and conceal my business from the rest of the world,  I really didn't like the idea that anyone would be able to track my transactions  and trace it back to you so Bitcoin mixers partially solved that problem for me.

Now we all know that there are and will always be people who abuse anything and everything,  there are people who take advantage of this opportunity and use it for their selfish interest but it would be wrong to term mixers and Bitcoin mixing as money laundering because all it has done is increase anonymity in the use of Bitcoin

I couldn't agree more with this statement (marked in bold). If privacy is the default, then there is no way to flag/cencor certain coins and we have a fully fungible system, even better than cash in many ways.




Is that so? I thought there are already decentralized versions of mixing protocols available - or is this indeed something technically impossible: A decentralized mixing solution? Source for your statement please.

to mix or coinjoin different peoples funds. needs a coordinator..

otherwise your just moving your own coins into new addresses you own.. which is "tumbling" /"hopping"
which is not mixing nor coinjoin

when middlemen coordinators are deciding whos coins go to who to ensure coins dont go back to the funder.. it changes from being a software feature and becomes a service aka (VASP). especially if said middleman takes a fee..
if you read regulations and look at what they get services to do. you soon learn why we dont want bitcoin nodes to suddenly become "money services/vasps" because its letting in the regulators jurisdictions to set rules for node operations


core already allows things like partially signed transactions to aid in mixing/coin joins of multiple parties.. but requires separate scripts or human co-ordinators to actually perform the service...
the minute the core or its user starts co-ordinating such things the user becomes a service or if core does it built in/automatically and fully, the software becomes a service.. and making core become a money service is a big legal no no for many many legal implications

Currently, after the Sinbad issue, Bitcoin is being considered a laundering coin. The government would try its best to make it look like Bitcoin was the reason NK getting funds for their successful test of a missile. What I feel bad about is blaming Bitcoin and other crypto, what I think is the government lacked abilities to track the NK.

The original culprit was always China and its CCP regime but, the US ignored it as usual. They were doing it before Bitcoin even came into existence, for now, they found a way to blame everything on Bitcoin without even noticing the past. As for my understanding, it is nothing by hypocrisy and it would stay on as we progress to 2024.

no
governments recognise bitcoin as a currency. they are going after the SERVICES that use bitcoin maliciously
as for you narrative about china.. please turn off fox news, its not good for your mental heath and teaching you bad politics

I agree with you and this is why the bans are worthless the same way it was worthless for China to ban BTC back in the early days (and the several times they did afterwards :D).

But they still have some potential tweaks up their sleeves in terms of laws and regulations. I think the most powerful they could implement and harshly enforce is the proof of origin of funds.

I am not fully away of the newest mixing services available, but is it possible for the user of a mixer to prove after the process to authorities that funds received from such a service are legally obtain funds sent to the service? Because if someone legally obtains an amount of BTC and then obfuscates all transactions, then sells and makes a profit and wants to declare gains appropriately at some point in the future, authorities could perhaps still decline the declaration of origin of funds? Do you have any opinion on that? Let me know if I should further elaborate on my question.

the reason governments prohibit/ban/make something illegal. is because things before the bans were not illegal nor prohibited.. but by putting in bans. they can later come back with rules to permit accepted use under some licence, which comes with conditions. and thats how they gain jurisdiction
in short a permit/licence is: "its banned unless you follow our rules, meet our conditions"

we seen it happen literally overnight (in minutes) when the NY bitlicence activated.. before the date businesses could open bitcoin services in NY
now if your in NY and you want to operate a bitcoin business. its banned to you unless you register for their licence and conform to their conditions

same happens in many countries.. and china is just taking a very long time between the ban->licence to write out regulations to later permit bitcoin use

they done it with alcohol, driving, opening certain business over the centuries

You got that right. The US government treats crypto as it were mainly used by criminals, when it's all of the contrary. Fiat currencies (particularly the US Dollar) are the ones used mostly for money laundering and tax evasion. The main reason why the US and other countries are targeting mixers is because they don't want people to obtain true financial privacy and freedom. They want to have a full scope of what you do with your money.

With privacy, governments have no control over what you do with your financial life. This will be a never-ending battle between privacy/crypto advocates and mainstream governments. What matters is that crypto stays decentralized so it could render governments' efforts worthless. With non-custodial mixers in the game, I doubt privacy will cease to exist in the future. :)