Sure, these particular transactions they describe make the entire process more expensive, because when the time comes they spend these, they'll have large sized transactions. But, the same attack can be executed without adding anything to the UTXO set, say sending 0 sat to OP_RETURN.

A 3-of-4 multi-sig with two keys owned by the same person can be useful, if say, one needs to sign regardless. For example, users A, B, C, where either A and B or A and C have to sign to spend (but not B and C alone). I don't know, is there a more efficient and standard way to do this?

I've had began a similar thread a little while ago, check it out: What happens if pools try to maximize fees by congesting the network?. My conclusion is that it requires coordination between miners, which can go against game theory.

It'd be the same as mining an empty block, with the exception that if another miner mined that block, they'd take those miners' transaction fees.

To trick those others into paying more with replace-by-fee, to get better priority.

Is there a chance some really big shit is going on in their lives, and they are incapable of going online? For like... A month? I really can't believe this is an exit scam. The service seemed legitimate.

I'm really pissed off, and not because I lost money; fortunately, I had grasped that "don't leave coins to third parties" cliché. I'm so pissed off because I've been advertising and recommending this shit for months, in such a way that I'm practically part of this scam. And it's just feels awful.

It makes you question the integrity of the service you're currently carrying in your signature.

Because, almost every exchange I've known cooperates with blockchain analysis firms, and tries to de-anonymize every activity related to you. But, using a decentralized exchange (like Bisq) to do BTC <-> XMR swap may not be a bad idea.

The tl;dr is that it's a lot less effective and more expensive.

The question at hand is how users of a decentralized protocol will collectively determine which ruleset to uphold. Running the software represents an expression of intention, although its execution would be significantly swayed if there was a way for us all to convene and acknowledge the prevailing majority's preferences. We probably can't do that efficiently, so we have to separately run software, and see the consequences later.

That, alone, is a disincentive to separate networks by hard forking. The consensus we currently have is invaluable. The risk of introducing turmoil to the current state of the network outweighs any potential benefits.

Forfeiting the privacy in a third party is exactly what privacy stands for; selectively revealing your activity to the world. I don't care if I reveal my activity to some mixer, as long as I keep it private from the people I exchange bitcoin for, and from those that I spend it on.

Sure, you have the uncertainty that the mixer can sell you out, and that's basically the worst disadvantage of using such a service. That's why I'm in favor of decentralized, non-custodial options like JoinMarket, but they tend to be less effective and more expensive to use.

I haven't ever tried converting bitcoin to XMR and then back to bitcoin. Has anyone any thoughts on that?

If you're afraid of being Tor-censored, you better leave the place altogether. I know that might sound nuts, but if you think about it, you're living under a very authoritarian regime. Censoring people who use Tor is the practice of "everyone guilty until proven innocent". I'd absolutely not want to live and make a family in such country.

You should use a private email server, before that becomes censored. Also, you could perhaps use the free wifi of cafeterias to get into torproject.org?

Absolutely not, and this is fundamentally how a UASF works.

First of all, miners don't have to be known. There is already a fair percentage of miners who are anonymous. We only know that the majority of the hash rate comes from known pools. Secondly, if I can't vote, how can the miner know if he's made the right choice?

For this specific service, I don't know, as I haven't tried it yet. The past two services that I've used, ChipMixer and Whirlwind, charged me nothing.

You don't have the evidence to support that claim for neither ChipMixer, nor for Whirlwind. You just make assumptions.

They do provide privacy, but not as much as with the methods that involve absence of transaction connection. ChipMixer was giving you chips that were generated before you deposit, and contained no connection with your deposit. That was better than with coinjoin.

And yet, nobody knows what this 7 TB is all about. As far as we can tell, they got access to chips, but that's all we know.

You do have to pay that price if you don't want to do coinjoins but you want to have your coins mixed, and there are at least two reasons you might want that; mixing cost and effectiveness. You also have to pay that price if the coinjoin company that provides sufficient liquidity thinks you're naughty, which hasn't happened with mixers I've used to use so far.

There is no evidence of ChipMixer being a honeypot. The Justice department page just says they've taken it down. No data leaks as far as we can tell.

The abstract idea of nodes voting for a change by just running a full node software is just terrible, in my opinion. The majority isn't determined by the number of Bitcoin clients, for if it was, we wouldn't have mining; we'd select the order of the transactions by voting as in Proof-of-Stake, but with instances of Bitcoin clients instead of money.

There has to be a way of collectively voting for a change without giving absolutely every voting power to the miners, isn't there?

Awful. But that's the price you have to pay when you trust your coins to some stranger. You may never get them back. As for data leaks, I have never used a mixer that was known to be a government honeypot, neither do I know of any such.

Wanna tell us how it is to tell someone he isn't worthy of having his privacy protected, while at the same time pretending to be the ultimate solution to Bitcoin's fungibility?

Confiscated, shut down etc.

The response to the reuse of the strawman argument is one of sarcasm. In the case of the instances where mixers are declined, the response is that you are informed beforehand that they are neither trustless nor non-custodial. It also requires a minimal level of intelligence to understand that they are not permanent since they are centralized in nature.

Yes, it is. Security that relies on the limit of attempts isn't true security. You have unlimited attempts to break a Bitcoin private key. You have unlimited attempts to break into someone's password-protected wallet. Both are very secure. On the other hand, the PIN in Mixin is not secure, as I have already said in my review, because there are less than a million different combinations.

That isn't necessarily correct. Dependent on the amount transacted, you might pay a lot more via lightning. Even though, currently with people paying 10 sat/vb, that is less likely to occur.

I'm also going to ask the same question as with Zoomic; have you tried paying via lightning? Because, most people I know who are super excited with it, haven't seen it working in practice. If you haven't, please lower your expectations. 

Not necessarily, because you can use bridges. These are Tor relays that aren't publicly known, as with most Tor nodes, so they help you circumvent censorship. Although, completely hiding that information from your ISP is not really possible, because you have to install somehow Tor (by visiting the clearnet), and even if you do this anonymously, nobody can guarantee you bridges aren't honeypots.

In addition to what o_e_l_e_o said, I think the best way to anonymously load your wallet's balance if you don't run your own full node, is to create lots of wallets, each of which contains only one address, and load each wallet via some hidden serviced Electrum server, in different time periods, and by choosing different servers each time.

And even that does not provide guaranteed anonymity, so just run your own node.

Yes, Kruw. We want to scam other people's coins. That's exactly what we're doing in here.. This is our ultimate goal. Lol. 

We've, ourselves, said that the software reveals no such thing, we're just criticizing the part where you're lying about fungibility and funding mass surveillance firm. You can reuse that strawman as many times as you want, but the fact remains the same.

By the way, these "scammers" will let mix coins that were denied service by the ethic guidelines of zkSNACKs' coordinator, so we're at least superior on the fungibility part.