Bitcoin Forum

theymos asked this for obvious reasons. What I'm curious about is whether any law enforcement was there behind the decision.

Nevertheless, staff were asked to stop advertising mixing services. We are promoting mixing services. Will it be an issue for bitcointalk forum in general? What about the people advertising the mixer? Would it be better to quit advertising mixer services? I was thinking about this ever since I have seen OmegaStarScream's quoted post. Is it time to think about this?

This is purely my speculation, but I think its more about being careful in case government knocks on the door rather than already getting some warning because if there was something like that it would be logical to ban mixer signature campaigns alltogether and not just restrict it to forum staff.

Thanks for the quote. I didn't know about that.

Interesting development tbh. I already had a feeling when some moderators and staff members changed their signatures a second time within a few days.


Same here. Hm.  :-\

the whole procedure could also be observed very well with the two new sig. campaigns run by icopress and Hhampuz. both bm's were looking for new participants for a new mixer each and if you looked at the applicants, there were no applications of staffs/mods to be found, which then again supports the quote of OmegaStarScream.

As I see it, mixing services are not inherently illegal. They can be useful for legitimate purposes, such as protecting users' privacy and security, or preventing unwanted surveillance. Banning mixing service ads would be a form of censorship and discrimination against a particular technology. It would also be hypocritical in a way, as the forum allows ads for other controversial or regulated services, such as gambling, ICOs, or even HYIPs. We should respect users' freedom of choice and expression, as long as they comply with the laws. So the question is, are all mixer services inherently illegal?

Of course it's because of law enforcement and the 3 letter agencies[1], theymos is trying to avoid future trouble and I think it was the right call, he also stoped offering forum adverts a while back, maybe it's related? It's better to separate the forum and its staff from endorsing any gray/black services.


I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I understand the forum itself is protected under section 230[2] that protects "interactive computer services" from any liability as a publisher for what the users post.
As for users advertising mixers or any other service really, they can do whatever they want as long as it's not promoting something illegal (e.g. drugs, etc...)


[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?ThreeLetterAgencies
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

I also support the motion of theymos from the OmegaStarScream quote. Because from what happened it lookef at if they know the secrecy of Chipmixer while they didn't. So to avoid such disgrace again it is better to steer clear from Mixer's campaigns. Instead it is better for the to join trustworthy casinos' campaigns. But also one mixer downfall should not be used to generalize others.

It's essential to follow the owner's instructions for the forum staff. Currently, the forum is owned by Theymos, who operates it as a non-profit organization. Theymos may want to avoid any legal issues with the forum, but he shouldn't control the signature space of users unless mixers are banned. Users shouldn't be restricted from advertising mixers unless there's a forum ban. However, if legal authorities demand a stop to mixer advertisements or seize the forum due to mixer ads, it would be an unrealistic action. This is because the forum isn't directly linked with money laundering and doesn't promote it.

Mixers are not completely illegal unless law enforcers change their view about it, so promoting it is not illegal. Marketers or us wearing signatures, promoting it will not be liable for any damage it may do.
Because if authorities will sue any promoters or the users, it will be a hell out of using lot of resources that's why hunt in its owners to stop the operation will be their best choice.

If theymos were asked to stop anyone in this forum to promote mixers then so be it, we will do, but not until it does, this will continue.

Its the forum owner who has the last say on what to advertise here in his own forum, there's nothing we can do but comply, as long as the authorities have not yet released what liabilities of promoters of Mixers and their views on the legality and illegality of mixers then it's still ok to run a campaign here.
So far after Chipmixer there's no other crackdown by authorities on another mixing, so we are good.

If there was a ban, @theymos could have kindly asked the campaign managers to stop advertising for any mixing service.
The only one who will give you answers is @theymos, but as long as the service is legal, I do not see any objection to continuing to advertise.

The weird thing is why now it's not the first mixing service to be sized and has signature campaign.

---

Bitblender closed his services (Bitcointalk Topic: Bitblender shutting down? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5147982.0)) after some of his addresses were placed on the US sanctions list after it was revealed that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus used the service to launder the proceeds of cybercrime.
you can read it here https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05/06/us-treasury-department-sanctions-crypto-mixing-service/

Bestmixer is run by @Hhampuz  Topic: [CFNP] BestMixer Signature Campaign | Sr. Members - Legendary | Up to 0.01225BTC  (Read 12291 times)  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125389.0)

Better safe than sorry, I guess. The administrator might just be avoiding possible repercussions to the forum when staff themselves are promoting mixing services. If worst comes to worst, this forum might be dragged into the controversy, and god knows what will be the fate of this forum if such event happens.

But I guess the forum could easily get away with certain responsibilities if these controversial services are only promoted by ordinary members rather than the forum's staff themselves.

Don't you see a contradiction here? You just joined a mixer signature campaign.

Currently, I am willing to accept any decision made by the forum administration regarding the restriction of signature campaigns for Bitcoin mixers, even if this is my first time being accepted into the highest-paying mixer signature campaign as of this writing.

The only thing that anyone who is currently advertising mixers can do is to ensure that they are contributing to the betterment of the forum, even though mixing services are a controversial topic that could be perceived as either good or bad.

Time will tell what will happen in the next few weeks or so..

even though he's in a mixer signature campaign but it doesn't matter what opinion he thinks.

I don't fully support the campaign from the mixer in this forum being stopped because the mixer has many uses rather than the damage it causes, especially to protect privacy, so this discourse will only cause eternal debate.

It's not as if you have a choice, when Admin decides something ;)

I think he is talking about staff members and not members of this forum, Theymos forbid his staff from participating in a signature campaign that is mixing-related, Agbe is not recommending members not to join a mixing signature campaign, because right now there's no news that mixer signature participants have liability, but of course, I want Agbe to defend himself but I'm sure he will also share my opinion that it's only for Staff members, it's just a misinterpretation on your part.

Good decision to take since its like avoiding the possible conflict of the law on certain countries especially if law enforcement will seek for those platform who help this mixers to advertise their services. For now its not an issue for private individual to advertise on this forum since there's no strong advisory from government against it and no signal came to them that they are discouraging all of the user to participate on any campaign related to mixing services.

Though I'm not completely sure, I think if law enforcement was behind the decision, it wouldn't only be about the staff or mods not advertising mixer services, but there would have been a forum-wide ban on advertising mixing services and already running campaigns would have been force-closed by the staff and moderation team.

It must only be a precaution for the storm that might hit the forum sooner or later for not complying with the laws or going against them. Hopefully, there won't be issues like that but if there are, I don't think anyone can do anything.

There's no news or decision that comes out about mixing marketing and the admin decision to stop staff from advertising mixing is a way to protect the forum administration from liability but I'm sure they are following the news about these mixing services, so we will know in a couple of months before there is a ruling about mixing marketing on forums and other advertising platforms.
Bitcointalk has established itself as the number one community of the Bitcoin industry, the authorities will not flag it without giving a warning first and we can't do anything about the admin decision.

I respect any decision announced or applied by Theymos; this forum administrator has a long-term view of whether or not what might expose him or his staff teams to legal accountability; he applied this decision to the staff and not to all forum users. After Chipmixer was closed due to irregularities and legal crimes by the U.S and European authorities, and before that, it already had a signature campaign here in the forum, and it was closed after years of promotion; this is what made most people take a bad impression of mixers, but I see that the good side of mixers is that it gives users the benefits of privacy, security and complete anonymity. It is also an excellent service for those who deal in crypto in countries that ban cryptocurrencies and do not want to be pursued by governments and others. I know that criminals, outlaws, hackers, and those who deal with money laundering may also use them, but in my opinion, whoever misuses these mixers is supposed to be punished, not those who promote them.

If you're in mixer signature campaign, now you don't have to do anything. There is no need to show initiative. Mixer campaigns is allowed on Bitcointalk as long as theymos won't decide different. If one day he will decide to ban mixer campaigns, then you wouldn't have to make decision to leave campaign - all mixer campaigns simply would end then.
What theymos told to staff members is different story. Bitcointalk staff isn't same thing as regular members - they can be considered as employees of Bitcointalk. Emplyees of Bitcointalk advertising ''money laundering'' related stuff - it can bring problems for Bitcointalk. While regualr members can continue advertising basically everything, not just mixers, but also all kind of scams.

I don't think there is, it's more of a precautionary measure, an insight from a website operator's perspective

It frees them from direct liability if ever, there's a difference from direct forum advertisement where the forum administrator is getting paid for showing ads and what members are promoting, signature feature is an incentive for members to their promote services and products not endorsed by the forum.

Enjoy it while it lasts. Wanting privacy and less surveillance and eyes watching you is directly the opposite of what the government wants. That makes you a threat to their ideals. The perfect citizen doesn't mind having its email, social media, phone, and their whole house equipped with surveillance equipment and smart gadgets. They are not illegal yet, but the suites will, sooner or later, find ways to make it look like they are solely for criminals. After that, it's about collecting enough votes to blacklist them.

right, the staff are part of the BTT forum and they have to be prepared with the joint decisions made by the administrators while ordinary members like us are just ordinary registrants who join the forum. then when there is a warning from the government (because enough advertising activity is being monitored), it won't be a problem and the administrator can still debate it with the government.

These days there are a lot of mixing campaigns popping up on bitcointalk. There was a time when we only had the gambling campaigns dominant with only one mixer campaign (chipmixer).
I think for the time being, only the staff has been told not to join the mixing services but overall such campaigns are not banned on the forum.
Theymos must be closely looking at the situation and if he wants he can disallow the mixing campaigns in the future. However, as of now, there is no issue with it and we can promote the mixing services on this forum.

For now no proper government ruling about totally banning mixers and declare this as illegal. So I guess ordinary forum user can enjoy their participation on mixer without any worries about it. But if government put a legal action to ban mixer and its usage then maybe its really up to the forum administrator to file any action regarding on advertisement since they might get a trouble if government will find out that mixer advertisement is rampant here. This will be bad for us forum user if government include this forum to shutdown because of that activities.

You are speculating too many steps in advance... so first of all, we already know that some governments may well be skeptical of mixing services, but then if they create some laws against such mixing services, then it is likely that some kind of a consideration would need to be made in regards to the language of the law.  The same is true when there is an enforcement action that takes place, then there still could be questions regarding what is the conduct that they are proclaiming to be illegal.. is it the creation of the mixing service?  is it the general use of the mixing service?  Is it the committing of fraud or the knowing allowance of others to commit fraud?  How about advertising such service? or talking about such services?  is it illegal to advertise or to talk about such services? 

Those are different categories of things that would have to be included within such government action that you are proclaiming to potentially be illegal, and then there is another question regarding the extent to which a forum (or a website service provider) might be held liable for the conduct of its users versus its own conduct.. and when you are referring to governments, there is no world-wide government or entity that necessarily would have jurisdiction over all of the world or all of the conduct, so there could be some questions about whether a government entity could either request the shutting down of some services or request the offering of such products be discontinued, and surely we have seen that some jurisdictions (such as the USA government) do attempt to engage in broad reach of their jurisdiction (which some folks label as overreach).

So merely having vague and general proclamations by governments that mixing services bad or some other bullshit would not necessarily automatically either cause people to stop a certain kind of behavior, such as offering a service, or to even give up upon finding some way around it or even to potentially fight against any kind of government taking that might have had occurred - which is one of the things that seems to be boiling up around some of the USA banking services (or even some of the regulatory agencies such as the CFTC or SEC) recently (maybe we could characterize some of these matters as "operation chokepoint 2.0" as Nick Carter and some others have labeled it) in which there are some claims and even potential legal actions against USA governmental regulators in regards to a variety of the lack of due process practices that some of the entities are following, and even in the USA, historically there have been due process rights including that agencies are supposed to either be following mandates that they have or they are supposed to either engage in their own rule making with opportunities for the public to respond or they are supposed to follow clear guidlines, and there are quite a few questions regarding the extent to which various agencies are following procedures that they are supposed to follow and the mere fact that they might have gotten directives from persons higher up (whether congressional or executive) may well not save them from their requirements to follow the law, even though we are seeing that stupid ass desperation seems to be part of the various formulas too.. in regards to the status of the dollar, scares about bitcoin and "crypto" and sometimes these fears are framed in terms of vague categorization of "national security interests," terrorists and criminal money launderers, or protect the children or some other things that may or may not be part of the actual factual foundation.

Theymos is like the president in the forum, and the staffs are other arms of his government in the forum. In this community, every regular member can advertise whatever they like, including scams, but the level of scamming is regulated, just like it is in every country. But aren't there going to be some questions about why the president allows such service to continue in the community? Well, since there is no law yet against mixers, Thymos will not yet rule out the mixers campaign in the forum. We can enjoy it while it lasts, but I really don't think there will be any laws in the future about stopping Bitcoin mixers. It's a regular saying now that mixing is not bad, and that's a very true statement. It's not bad for a person to choose to increase their asset privacy. Perhaps not every individual who chooses to mix their coins obtains the coin in an illegal way.

For example, if a robber, a thief, or all different kinds of bad people go to a bank, hospital, or higher institution, shall the government decide to shut down the organization because crime commuters are carrying out illegal activity there? The answer is no, they can only carry out their investigation unless it's a serious case before they can cease the place until their investigation is over. The government cannot shut down every hospital in a country just because one hospital treated a thief, or can they?

It's very logical from forum owner's perspective to disapprove the advertisement of mixing services for staff members. This isn't typical forum, this is a forum where bitcoin was born, were satoshi was posting, where a lot of altcoins, startups, crypto and blockchain businesses were invented. The advertisement of mixing services from staff looks different in this case, it looks like staff is into. And you know, there are some problems and dislike from governments, so, it's not a problem today but can be a problem tomorrow, so this forum decided to be one step away.
Also, a huge problem can arise if somehow it happens that one of staff member is into it, then the whole forum can be in trouble. Just my thoughts.
 This isn't a problem right now but can be a problem, especially if we keep in mind that Bitcointalk was mentioned in Justice.gov files for the first time in it's history if I am not wrong.

We, the members of this forum, are a lot of people from all over the world, from different countries with different laws and without connection between each-other. Also, we do nothing wrong right now, it's 100% acceptable. If it becomes problem, then no one will let you to promote mixing services.

Scams are not regulated at all here. You however cannot advertise malwares on your signature.

I doubt he would ever. As long as there is a mixer to operate and run a signature on the forum it means it is active and legal. If such mixer experiences some issues and gets seized their signature campaign would stop automatically, but I don't think the admin would shut down a campaign for a project that is fully functional.

Your various analogies are a bit weird.

I am not going to proclaim to know all aspect of requirements or obligations, but it does seem that when we are making comparisons we need to attempt to make the right kinds of comparisons in order to get some sense of the right answers, and I would imagine that any kind of entity that is offering internet services (such as a forum) is going to seek some levels of counseling and advisors, in order to have some sense of parameters regarding how far that they might be able to go in terms of offering services or if they might be personally liable for the conduct of their members or any services that they offer.

I am not really opposed completely to the idea of theymos as a president of a company, but I think that the fact of the matter is that the forum is not a company, but it is completely owned my theymos.  I am pretty sure that it was him and Cobra, and then they worked out a deal in which it is ONLY theymos... so in that sense, owner is different from president.

I am not sure if I should go on more, but a better analogy might be that if theymos is an principle, then if anyone receives any kind of benefit from him in terms of representing him or the forum, then things that they do could be attributable to the owner (the principle).. the forum members are different... I doubt that anyone really wants to attempt to flesh out these kinds of matters within public threads, and that is sometimes why there might be consultants who are involved in regards to perhaps understanding the extent that there might be boundaries that can be crossed or that should not be crossed.

Your hospital, bank or higher institution analogy is also kind of strange because the use of various services in the meat space will have differing obligations.  For example, in a hospital, if a person goes to the hospital for treatment, and in the course of treatment, the medical staff learns that crimes might have been committed, they may or may not have obligations to report the crimes, and the extent to which they can refuse services is likely going to vary depending on if the services are life threatening or not or if the disease is communicable, they might need to report it... or they might have obligations in regards to whether they can share information about the medical treatments and conditions of their patients.  The obligations of banks have changed through the years, and maybe we go back to some of the concerns of overreach in which some governments try to impose obligations, even if it might be questionable if they have jurisdiction over the activities.  We could go all over the place with your attempts at analogies, and I feel that I already have said enough, even though I have my doubts about whether if anything I said was very helpful.

Mixer Signatures have been running on the forum for a very long time and seeing this new development could be that the  dust has not settled from the Chipmixer saga and the call to keep mods off mixing services is trying not to give a stamp of approval of services that could bring the forum in disrepute , and if things go on as they are i foresee a situation where mods could actually be paid for their time spent on the forum to keep this place functional (***don't take my word for it***)

Totally agree!

Btw what makes mixers illegal if i may ask, them promoting  anonymity and privacy or because  owners dont put a face to their businesses ??

Doesnt bitcoin fall in this category too as its illegal in some counties...

And where does this  leave coins such as Monero ?

The question that puzzles me is, will one of the staff agree to withdraw from his position in return for wearing the signature of the mixing campaigns? I mean, if we think about it, the amounts that are paid to the staff are small compared to about $ 150 per week.

We note that the United States has become strict with crypto, and it is only a matter of days and mixing services will be banned, so sooner or later these campaigns will end, so if you are thinking in the long term, it is better to avoid joining them.

I am not claiming to have known it all, but from what I have learned so far, no government has declared crypto mixers illegal; it's either they end up ceasing the mixer or blacklisting it for use by citizens of their country, and these things only happen if they have discovered or linked any money laundering activity to that mixer. Not because the mixers promote anonymity or the owners doesn't show their face.

An example of a former case ban is the Tornado Cash crypto mixer, whose use by the country's citizens was banned by the US Department of Treasury as a result of a $7 billion case of money laundering activity.

The Bitcoin mixer is only designed to protect user privacy and synonimity, nothing else, but due to some people that use it for illicit activity and crim to launder money, that's why the Treasury Department is against it.


Bitcoin is not illegal; it is only banned in those countries.


Monero also protects users privacy, so it can only be banned in some countries that also disagree with the privacy of crypto users, just as Dubai has placed a ban on privacy coins.

Are you sure about that? I recently checked some of the Mod-payments, and they were higher than I expected. Of course, this is different for each Mod, but so are signature payments.

I don't think theymos will stop Mixing companies to advertise their products in the forum, and the only time theymos can do that is when a president strongly confirmed that the mixing is a scam  or money laundering company them at that time he might make a pronouncement to stop his members which he has done not to participate but to stop the company in the forum is what I can't not tell because All the allegations level against 1Xbit both the forum and outside the forum yet 1Xbit is still running well in forum therefore, the mixing company might still run in the forum but limited members will like to promote such a company.

And not Mixers companies are bad or have a fraudulent activities, some of them are genuine, so we can't use what happened in one to generalize others.

I've only once seen theymos ban a signature campaign, for encouraging spam:
Even though this exchange had many scam accusations against it, that's not why it got banned. After 2 months, it continued (with slightly less spam).

Less spam because most active spammers were banned and the campaign was managed by yahoo62278 after all. He blacklisted many spammers from that campaign and rejected to pay for spam posts.

List of banned participants in the Cryptotalk Campaign (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5188200.0). It started with Yobit, then changed to Cryptotalk.

Because it is not registered with a legal entity,
As for mixer services, basically it is impossible to get legality because serving "privacy" is not liked by the government. Then, any unregistered service will be inferred to be illegal and to contain "malicious" activity as is generally suspected.

Bitcoin pseudonymous, not anonymous and it's not really private because any address, balance and transactions you can view on Bitcoin explorer.

Some countries just don't want to get involved with Bitcoin and choose to ban it, even though they have a way to expose criminal if the criminal ever submitted KYC or not learn about privacy.

That's why many centralized exchange ban Monero, although some centralized exchanges still accept it, maybe they will ask your KYC before you can withdraw your money.

and being registered means it's going to become centralized and there isn't going to be any privacy again; I don't know though, KYC may even be required before one can be allowed to mix,  ;D ;D

If you are taking adequate privacy practices, then you should not really have anything to worry about. If you are browsing BitcoinTalk on plain IP, you can be sure that it would cause you some issues for talking about mixing services let alone being paid by one to indirectly advertise one from posting. Even using a VPN on an OS like Windows would be considered not enough to be considered private.

At the very least:
- Use Linux and a VPN as a minimum.
- Access BitcoinTalk by Tor over VPN or another custom solution that is more than just a singular connection to a VPN.
- Avoid Javascript where possible.
- Keep your personal information completely separate from your campaign earnings and your BitcoinTalk account.
- Prioritize decentralized exchanges, kyc free swap utilities, non custodial wallets and P2P marketplaces over centralized exchanges wherever possible.

These practices shouldn't just be for BitcoinTalk and your signature campaign. They should be employed in your day to day usage. The more you learn about cybersecurity and privacy, the more peace of mind you can gain. Anyone who believes that cybersecurity and privacy should be a board on the forum, support this request (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5434404.msg61581530).

I think that you are framing this matter wrongly in a couple of ways Mate2237.

as far as I understand, theymos is an owner not a president of a company... so there is less requirement that theymos has to get anyone to agree with him.. a president of a company would have more need to appease shareholders and "the board" for example...

Another thing, there is no need to determine that something might be fraudulent or a potential scam in order to attempt to distance yourself from liability as an owner,.. and specifically we have to see the owner within the context of a service that allows for the sharing of information on the web.  The removal of representatives, or agents or even employees (though they are most likely not employees) is largely just to create more of an arms length between what he (theymos is doing - or through his agents) and what users of the service (the forum) are doing.. yes, even mods are users of the forum service, so there might not even be any need for theymos from stopping what they are doing, but if he is trying to keep some distance between himself and what members are doing, then sometimes it may well be more prudent to recommend, suggest, order the mods not to engage in such conduct of wearing certain kinds of signatures (in this case the mixing services).. so may well just be a precautionary measure that may or may not be too much.. but surely discretionary..... but may well be prudent.. and surely I doubt that any law enforcement agent told him to do it or gave a warning, but you also never know that sometimes there could be discussions with government officials that are "off the books" and surely consultants and attorneys might have some ideas regarding some of the internal deliberations of some of the enforcement agencies, too.

What issues do you have in mind?
I agree with all the steps that we should take to be more anonymous on this forum, but I see nothing bad in advertising anything in your signature, be it a casino, a mixer, a torrent site, whatever.
It's just a link that you have in your profile. If having something like that had any legal repercussions, people would get banned and prosecuted for having pictures they don't have legal rights to in avatars and having a TOR marketplace in your profile picture would be a criminal offense.

AFAIK in the EU we don't have specific laws regarding mixers and a mixer does not fall into money laundering service category, because although it's possible to use dirty money to buy bitcoin, run it through a mixer and convert it back to fiat, you still have to buy bitcoin somehow. This means that if you have drug money, you have to register at an exchange, wire it there somehow (using a bank account?) and then wire it back to an account.

When they make a law that says mixers are banned, running, or using a mixer is against the law, and so on, I'll have to stay away from them.

Can you estimate the average or at least the limits of those payments? even if the numbers are not accurate.

Several years ago, I remember this was brought up, and the average was about $60 per week ~240/month (depending on board) but for most it is less than $100 per month.

You can check for yourself: all Mods have their Bitcoin address in their profile, then find the monthly transaction that pays several Mods.

I took a random sample and it looks like 5-8 make less than $600 a month (a good average you can get from signature campaigns)
However, some addresses get more than $250 a week, which is an average that all signature campaigns cannot. Honestly, I was surprised that it could be considered a part-time job and not just a bonus.

It is just a precautionary measure from the administration side of bitcointalk since the most reputed mixing service is under seize now so they don't want any legal issues for the staffs but as a user it's your own decision whether you want to participate or stop due to the risk behind advertising mixing service. However I don't feel there is much threat for signature campaign participants even if the mixing service face legal actions so just choose it in your own.

I doubt that it would be just a monetary calculation for a mod to give up his/her mod position in the event that theymos is telling him/her not to participate in certain signature campaigns that may well be the highest payers, such as mixing campaigns.. but of course, there may end up being other reasons that could come into the calculation, and the monetary portion might end up being the part that ends up causing a decision to give up upon being a mod..


I tend to agree with this idea that on an individual level we are not very likely to end up being accountable for which signatures that we might choose to wear, even though personally, we might have some issues in regards to our preferences and/or our willingness to wear certain kinds of signatures, and surely any of us might want to calculate getting involved in any kind of signature campaign (or even other matters of following a project or volunteering to help) in which either the ongoing continuance of such project might become questionable and even if they are changing their payment terms a lot of the times, merely because of some of the regulatory uncertainties that they might face or even enforcement actions...

Sometimes it could just be a hassle to have to bounce from one signature campaign to the next to the next or even to get sucked into having to follow what is happening with any signature campaign (that might have some drama too) that any of us might choose to wear - which surely was part of the reason that I stopped (in early 2018) getting involved with my own personal participation in signature campaigns.. For me, at that time, it was just too much bouncing around in regards to my own tolerance/(willingness to go along) for such..and I am not even completely disagreeable to the idea of wearing a signature (because I can), but there can be some quasi-conscious burden with any of those kinds of things too.. just in terms of sometimes other members might judge you based on the signature that you wear... which might serve a kind of "cost of doing business".

^ yeah I saw both the extremes of availability of signature campaigns on bitcointalk and also its evolution, there was a time its available for everyone then in 2017 people found they can make money stumbled on bitcointalk with tons of accounts to make money via bounties and campaigns then in 2018 merit system was introduced to dodge that and it worked well compared to activity requirements alone for ranking up.

Well as an user we also need to be picky when choosing what we choose to wear, I am never going to put anything related to investment scam because from my experience everything went as scam over the period, then now gambling its legal in my region and I do gamble as well occasionally so I took the chance and making use of what bitcointalk gave us which is something called signature, we can even advertise our own service(s).

I had a lot of help in that campaign from regular forum users. I would get pms daily reporting users spamming sections and it led to many bans. Even though the campaign was about cryptotalk, once it turned into advertising yobit, the campaign ended. I was not comfortable with the change.

As far as mixers go, I'm too ignorant to have a real opinion. I've never been interesting in using them. I am sure they have good and bad things about them, but I would rather not risk it. Governments, especially the US Government, have a habit of making things their business. Yes, legit users might use a mixer for 10 million dollars worth of transactions, but criminals will use mixers for billions of dollars in bad transactions. The bad outweighs the good IMO.

- 23% in 2022 and 12% in 2021 of the funds sent to mixers come from a crimial activity
It's the total opposite

- And with the 23%, half of the amount was coming from Hydramarket and 30% from Lazarus group.

- 10% of funds sent from illicit addresses are sent to mixers. So 90% do not send to a mixer.

https://twitter.com/chainalysis/status/1547570192011522050

Actually, we are participants in the mixer campaign main goal is not to legalize and endorse money laundering, terrorism or any kind of crime, the main purpose is privacy, which is often overlooked by many people or the government. And actually, not only that (mixer) even gambling, exchange or new token have the risk to be scams or use for other crimes if not the right hand.

So with this case, we have to be aware in the post, do it wisely in order to get considered good. Don't make people think we are here as endorsing for crime services.

I do the same as OmegaStarScream I only accept non gambling ads but sometimes when I do really need money, I pick one.

and as you can see that Mixer ads is very tempting and the salary is good. I just hope the mixer campaign last long :D

As far as I know, campaigns have broad meanings (many), they are basic guidelines, you can mention support, implementation, activities, propaganda, movements and so on, that's all regardless of whether the campaign acts as fraud, fake, legal or illegal.

I quoted one of the laws that apply to my country, maybe international.

Note: the above quote points to individuals/companies, marketing or freelance advertising that are not legal for them.

In my opinion, this Forum is an intermediary, marketing, web which is basically just advertisers, not actors/campaign owners, logically, if you look at the quote above, it can be concluded, if there are problems at a later date with the campaign, the forum is not involved hands off, it is the company that bears the risk, the bottom line: no one knows what will happen in the future to the companies that advertise themselves in this forum, whether later there is embezzlement, fraud, fakes and so on, the forum is not responsible for that.
The proof:
It can be seen from several gambling campaigns that act as fraud, they are still here, even though law enforcement agencies have made outside efforts against the company.

My understanding, if one of the campaigns or companies that advertise on the forum, the forum has no right to close down the company, if so who has the right, namely: relevant international/electronic authorities, informatics law authorities can act to block fraudulent/fake websites, based on the evidence that has been gathered.

The mixing business is here to stay the authorities cannot make it disappear, there is a dark web where they can freely promote and on advertising here on Bitcointalk so much depends on when authorities start looking on platforms where they are being advertised, and how the forum admin accept these platforms to have a space here in Bitcointalk.
Chipmixer started it all and all the other mixing platforms existing now are just following the thread Chipmixer laid out.

Authorities only get interested to find out and targeting a mixer when there's an incident of hackers sending hacked funds to mix on any mixer platform to avoid getting detected. Say a hack happen on an exchange and the hacker reported to used that specific mixer. This happen to all those mixers who got shutdown. As long there's no analysis of mixirs getting used by hackers then i'd say they are say.

each country has its own law and reportedly from what I read in several reports, because the mixer's job is to disguise bitcoin transactions so it violates banking compliance and money laundering laws, but the question is whether everyone who uses mixers is a criminal. Of course not and that is a matter that will continue to be debated.
regarding monero, compared to bitcoin, monero transactions are very private (although tracking can still be done) while bitcoin is pseudonymous.


why do you feel like what you're doing is wrong, as long as you don't do things that harm other people then there's nothing wrong with that, I personally respect the staff's decision. ;D

The difference is that the authorities can track the activity of any of the gambling platforms, since most of them have licenses, and it is enough to activate one of the condemnation decisions to stop their activities. Mixer platforms do not operate any of them under legal cover. On this basis, any targeting of one of the hackers was after it was proven that it was used to hide the hack.
To some extent, I agree with the idea that promoting these platforms does not constitute a crime, because you are not responsible for the purposes of those who will use them.

An important point is that the Bitcointalk forum is the only platform (as far as I know) where mixrs promote their services. I mean, once a decree is issued condemning the promoters of those services, it will be easy to track them down. I am not saying that this will happen, but it is likely to happen and it can be thought about.

True, there is no need to panic right now. There will be an announcement if this forum would be banning the mixing campaigns so no need to speculate things too much.
I doubt, theymos will never ban these mixing campaigns. Also if you note that ever since the chip mixer campaign has ended, many new mixers have started advertising here.



If one need to do the KYC , then what is the purpose to the mixing of the coins.
One bad day, government will get all the KYC data from the mixers and then check who were involved in mixing the coins  ;)

Whether or not that matters depends on who you're hiding from.