Bitcoin Forum

I don't know if this has been discussed before, I hope its not exactly in the same perspective as this one, I will sure lock the thread if a previous thread/discussion is exactly same lines as this one.

I believe we all are aware that OFAC-(office of foreign asset control) have recently sanctioned Sinbad - a bitcoin mixing service that was being promoted/advertised on this forum by users through their signature ad spaces.
https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/Details.aspx?id=44437 (https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/Details.aspx?id=44437)

Now, the escrow bitcoin address which held the fund used to pay Sinbad signature ad campaign participants has also been blacklisted by Binance, and they are also investigating the transactions carried out through this same address.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/12/01/N3izf.jpeg

Now again, I did a little research on how possible it is for authorities to trace Sinbad services to this forum, I started by first searching the keyword..
"Sinbad" - and there was no mention of this forum all through, no result even showing sinbad as a mixer.

I decide to search the keyword..
"Sinbad bitcoin mixer" - and there was no mention of this forum in the search result until the 15th result which mentioned this thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5445243.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5445243.0)
And the 21st result which mentioned this thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5450517.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5450517.0)

I proceeded to doing the search with the escrow bitcoin address which was provided by @Royse777 in the Sinbad signature Ann thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5419242.0), and the Sinbad signature Ann thread came up second in the Google search result, after blockexplorer.one.

Now, my concern is, wouldnt it make sense to remove the Sinbad escrow address from this forum? And also remove anything that could make it easy for authorities to trace transactions from that address to this forum, and it's users?

Is this forum not going to be in danger if authorities trace transactions with services they have sanctioned down to this forum?

Maybe this is nothing, either way, consider me being over curious and conscious  ;D.

Authorities already know everything, lol you want to go around them. 😂

Sinbad was not declared as illegal before, until recently. Everyone promoting the service have removed their signature immediately Sinbad was taken down.

Recently, theymos think this kind of thing can still happen in the future and said no one should advertise mixers again on this forum, starting January 1.

Mixers to be banned (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476162.msg63251188#msg63251188)

No one on this forum is advertising a service that has been sanctioned or banned by authority.

Of course, they don't declare them illegal until it gets declared illegal, chipmixer for example started in what year again? 2017 or 2018 I think, and operated till 2022 or early this year (sorry, I am not a record keeper) before it got declared illegal and seized, same thing have happened with Sinbad, and one after the other, all mixers will keep getting seized, and the more this forum keeps promoting them, they more dangerous it becomes for the continues existence of the forum.

Yeah, I saw that already, I was probably still typing this thread when theymos posted about mixers getting banned from this forum beginning from next year, a confirmation of what I initially thought or assumed.

Binance is asking the details of the escrow wallet because the authorities are asking them. Why do you think that they don't know anything about the Signature Campaign. The know almost everything and in due course of investigation a lot more information would be revealed.

I don't think this investigation would harm the forum in any possible way. As of now the authorities have not termed mixers as illegal. The forum was only used to promote Sinbad mixer through the signature campaign. There is nothing wrong in advertising a product. Already Theymos has taken a precautionary step and banned all mixer from next year.

They can proactively do this without request from authorities because they are going to uphold their standards to keep their exchange more safely from regulations and sanctions.

They just were fined $4B because of failure in KYC, AML.

They even don't have to know about signature campaign. The Escrow address of signature campaign fund is mentioned from document about the Sinbad.io seizure so Binance do know about that address.

Even if remove or edit their name or mentions and also wallet addresses from posts, even then it cannot be possible to stop the authorities from tracing because they are all archived. All we can do now is not mention anything related to them in any future posts. And I think that's why Theymos is going to introduce the new rule from January 1st.

I don't completely disagree with the question you raised here, but I also do agree in some part because you already provided a screenshot of a signature participant who was given a notice by Binance. These don't put a person completely in danger, but they are causing some temporary harassment. Moreover, suppose the law enforcement agencies come to your home with a search warrant or take you into their custody for questioning. In my opinion, these are also one type of harassment.
Moreover, if we talk about the forum, theymos already mentioned some things.

But why Sinbad ban pose danger to the forum. The forum is only a vehicle for signature adverts and more and once the spot any suspicious or malicious activity associated with such campaigns the halt their activities or discourage participants and forum users from promoting and using the services.

Don't forget the forum is decentralised and open sourced and as such all activities done on the forum has to be public for reference, transparency, sanctioning and addressing.

Even if we did changed or edited everything, it still wouldn't matter. If a newspaper publishes an advertisement without knowing it's a scam, will the newspaper company be called criminal? I don't thing so. All the signature campaign participant started the campaign without knowing their bad sides. But now the accuse has been made, and the culprit has been caught, it is better to stop using or advertising their campaign. And as an additional plan to prevent any legal issue theymos already implemented the new rules. So, I guess nothing to worry about then.

Well if the problem is about getting dirty money, why not ban using Bitcoin as a payment method and give them the chance to pay in altcoins?

If may get what theymos said about mixers, all post that is related to mixers or mentioned about any mixers will be Deleted or archive by some mod at this point don't you think Roys777 address won't be trace anymore since we have only less than 27 days for all details to sweep off from this forum. Again the interaction with that address doesn't have anything to do with  campaigners rather it's directly associate to Sinbad, So at this point manager is free everyone who promotes it is as well has nothing to do with entire sinbad rather they ran an advert to promote this site.

I do not think that any authority is tracing any Sinbad to this forum. I mean that, seizing of the website and all the coins in it could be their priority.
I was even more scared during the seizure of Chipmixer whose offence was more severe than Sinbad. Even on the publication of chipmixer ban, bitcointalk was mentioned as a place of advertisement and nothing happened. In like manner, no authority is tracing Sinbad to the forum.

Let me explain something, do you know what stealing is? When you take something from someone without asking for permission/ it's called theft, now whether this forum or the whole planet disappears, it doesn't matter, because God knows everything, and that's all it matters.

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How old are these members and where do they live, not knowing these things?

It's too late now. Blockchain analysis companies have had months to collect data.

From an Elliptic.co blog post (https://www.elliptic.co/blog/analysis/has-a-sanctioned-bitcoin-mixer-been-resurrected-to-aid-north-korea-s-lazarus-group) in February:


These companies will harvest as much data as they can find from this forum and across the entire internet. It doesn't matter if you're on a blacklist or not, they already have whatever data has been openly available.

Definitely, that awareness will cause a great scare in the camp of ex-Sinbad promoters (both here and elsewhere). Anyway, let's not even debate if the authority will get all the recipient addresses or not, let's try to look at the time this is happening and the way the market isn't even bothered by such FUD. I'm sure if this happenstance had taken place during the bear season it would've plunged Bitcoin further.

Your concern is valid but you should also know that the deal had been done and information on the net aren't snipped that way. I'm sure screenshots and grabs had already been taken before the seizure was made public. There's nothing that can be done to erase that.

We don't know yet and I believe that's why theymos had to spontaneously step in to make that announcement banning mixer services here. I think authorities may want to check what steps were taken once the seizure was made, assuming the forum was ignorant of whatever ill Sinbad was accused of. They may want to judge from going forward and not backward.

I have long seen offers on other forums to sell “dirt,” that is, funds obtained in not entirely honest ways. I am sure that a lot of time has been spent investigating Sinbad, and now it is completely inappropriate to talk about hiding something. Investigative authorities are always interested in the "head," and they probably know who and where could be guilty of what, excluding simple advertising of mixers. The users advertising this, to sane people, look like people just making money. Moreover, in terms of the volume of the mixer itself, the earnings look meager. Considering that the one who publicly writes that he is selling “dirt” has been alive and well for many years, and they simply do not pay attention to him, will anyone delve into the posts of people simply communicating on the forum, sometimes on completely distant topics from mixers?
If this is really so important and is a crime, then very soon the world will turn into the novel “1984” by George Orwell.

This is a very interesting link. It shows Sinbad received bad money even before they started. It looks more and more like they weren't "a good site also used by bad people", but they were "a bad site that needed good people to hide their bad money"! If that's the case, they had it coming. But taking down this site won't change anything except for slowing them down. Long-term, they'll continue elsewhere.
As much as I like privacy, I don't like criminals. And especially criminals who abuse good people's need for privacy to hide their own crimes.

I've seen those offers on Bitcointalk too: "old Bitcoins" for "new Bitcoins" at 10% discount. It's either a scam, or shady as hell.

At this point, it's pointless to try to delete or remove anything relating to Sinbad simply because we're trying to outsmart the authorities. Don't you think it will look shady? Because believe it or not, the government already knows about this forum, they've seen everything already, they've seen the escrow and it has already been traced to this forum so what is the point in acting like Sinbad was never on the forum even though it was just in just an advertising campaign? Deleting everything related to Sinbad won't still make things difficult for the government, besides if they (sinbad) are truly criminals, should we be making it difficult for the authorities? Shouldn't we be cooperating with the authorities on how these criminals should be caught?


Lol. Bold of you to assume it has not already been traced to this forum. We don't have anything to hide. This is not the first mixer on the forum that is having similar issues with the authorities.

Mixers would be out of the forum starting next year, I have my reservations about that decision but I can also try to see the bigger picture. Mixers bring in a lot of heat and the forum doesn't need that much heat.

A lot of what you said here is potentially not factual after further clarification from recent posts.

Sinbad was a mixer that started by mixing illegitimate bitcoin, and achieved its goal by mixing the illegitimate bitcoin with legitimate bitcoin.

Chipmixer may have had the same origins, but it may not have too. That fact is still yet to be discovered. I believe that chipmixer ent down because it had too many bad people using it - LoyceV put it perfectly:


It seems to me that ChioMixer was a genuine effort for Bitcoin privacy, while Sinbad was an operation made to mix the operators legitimate coins.

It could be. If the bad guys were in charge of Sinbad, that explains why they were quickly trusted enough to send them millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Pretty much anything can be used for good or evil, but starting a business for evil is very different than a legitimate business being abused.

It made me curious about Tor:

Didn't google started with motto Don't be evil, and they later removed it for unknown reasons, so I guess they are now allowed to be evil  :P
We could also argue that banks and whole military industrial complex started with evil intentions, yet I don't see many people talking about that, because government is behind them.
I have to say that it's very convenient when you have invisible hackers and terrorists to blame them for everything.

I believe theymos have learned about the Sinbad dirty act and how they will always come up with a new business name and website to use good people's funds to hide their dirty funds is the reason why he wants the promotion or conversation about the mixer to end next year.
Sadly, a lot of decent people who utilize their services will suffer harm.

I think there is no need to delete about Sin Bad in the forum if it will not cause anything to the forum or forum members here, logically in this forum that has cooperation with Sin Bad, someone who works with Sin Bad has no problems, because of them Just like working to get wages, without knowing how the background of the Sin Bad company itself, and monitor their activities in real time every day.

Just like other marketing projects, both bounty, sigcamp or other services. It might be if they confirmed the mixer, and they claimed that marketing in this forum, and when the authorities conducted research in this the forum, but they did not find evidence and only met him in the archive, I thought it would be complicated finally.

This forum is a marketing place, if you think about it when using other forums or other social media, such as twitter, facebook, will the authorities blame facebook or twitter because they facilitated the marketing of the mixer project? I think also the campaign manager verified the mixer project first before they brought it here to be marketed, this will be difficult because what initially had a good vision of the project mission changed at a certain time into something harmful and or illegal actions.

So I think the forum will not have any problem if the authorities investigate the Sinbad case to this forum. IMO

Remove why? Do we have to hide anything? People hide things when there is something wrong done and want to hide traces because they know they did something illegal and are going to get punished for that. By hiding traces, e.g. removing Sinbad escrow address from this forum, I think bitcointalk declares that it's guilty too while it isn't as we all know. Moving thread in archival was the best decision.

They want to ban bitcoin but they can't. Now is the time when bitcoin is very popular and many businesses are built around it, tons of money is invested in bitcoin and with the help of its decentralized nature and independence from 3rd parties, governments understood it's better to integrate instead of separate. They are integrating and have a huge progress in analyzing of bitcoin blockchain. That's all they wanted, they gain control on transactions, they can track transactions and blockchain is open book, every transactions is placed on blockchain. They control everything and that's all they wanted. We know that governments launder money via banks but they can play with bitcoins too with the implementation of bullshit AML score. You just mark unwanted transaction as a bad one and you mark your favourite transaction as a good one, easy to launder when you are the one who judges and sets AML scores.

I think this is not something new. Even Bitmixer owner admitted that many people were using his mixer for illegal transactions and asked other people to not create bitcoin mixers. He said something like this: Will you sell knife if you know that majority of your customers are murderers? My pastor said no. Every mixer that becomes famous ends up being a tool mostly used by criminals. Every mixer had a higher volume of illegal transactions compared to transactions that were done by those who care about their privacy, we can't deny that.

Dude, what are you talking about? You should proofread your texts before publishing them, or something. I can barely understand what you're saying.