I'm trying to discuss the actual numbers with you. Bitcoin Magazine is a red herring, so please stop distracting people. I am asserting that according to the published Chainalysis data, only 10.8% of mixed funds could be linked to illicit sources -- and that should be obvious to anyone willing to look at the source.


That generic slide that's an ELI5 for how mixers work, which contains no supporting data? You're grasping at straws.

You said, "Chainalysis [doesn't] publish guesswork, and whenever something is uncertain, they state so." And Chainalysis has reported exactly how mixers are used, down to the percentage of each use case. So, why are you ignoring that data? Because it's completely at odds with your beliefs?


Let's put it this way: There is zero data supporting your assertions that mixers are predominantly used for criminal activity. The data from Chainalysis -- the only data we have on the subject -- does not support your claims in any way.


No, it's more relevant because it reports actual data rather than baseless opinions. This discussion was about actual usage but you seem uninterested in that now that the data doesn't support your outlandish claims.

Maybe you were thinking of Overstock. That's the only company I've ever seen that disclosed holding onto bitcoin payments: OSTK to HODL: Overstock to Keep 50% of All Bitcoin Payments as Investments

I'm not sure why you're obsessing about Chainalysis' wording. It's very easy to deduce that "only a small percentage of mixed coins" have illicit origins based on the published data:


The other categories being exchanges, other mixers, mining pools, gambling services, coin generation, and unnamed services.

Are you saying that 10.8% is a large percentage? What would you call the other 89.2%? I guess we can let people decide for themselves. Either way, the myth that mixers are only used by criminals has been debunked.

Those words are quoted from a news article. Who cares if Chainalysis didn't say the words verbatim? They published data that speaks for itself.


Moving the goal posts, are we? This is what you were trying to prove:


Can you at least concede that you were utterly wrong about that?


It's interesting that you chose completely generic slides summarizing how mixers work, when Chainalysis gave us actual data that disproves what you're saying. And you already know this. It's almost as if you're being disingenuous.

Here's a more relevant slide:

The issue is more complex and nuanced than that.

Do you really have a problem with people freely buying and selling drugs? Who are they hurting? The principles that early adopters like Ross Ulbricht stood for -- are they lost on you? Did you ever consider how important the Silk Road was in proving Bitcoin's utility?

Whatever Bitcoin was made for, it wasn't for bowing down to the authorities. On the contrary, it was made precisely so we could avoid them. Sadly, later adopters often take this for granted.


Criminals are going to exist no matter what.

The only thing you'll accomplish by arguing against mixers -- and in favor of blockchain analysis and law enforcement -- is attacking Bitcoin's fungibility. That only hurts you and everyone around you.

Same here. I'd prefer to stick with BTC myself -- the way it's always been. Trying to use mBTC and especially smaller units always screws with my head. Everyone trying to change the unit all the time -- especially with no widespread agreement among mBTC, bits, satoshis, etc. -- just makes things confusing for everyone.

Some people obviously just want to link the unit to dollar value. To them I'd ask, are we just going to keep adjusting units every time Bitcoin increases (or decreases) in value? Is that really a logical approach?

Indeed. Compared to Bitcoin it might look pathetic, but the fact is that it has a genuine community, some influential supporters in terms of mining and exchanges/services, and is comfortably the #4 coin by market cap. It's not going anywhere.

If you've only bought bitcoins and haven't sold them, there's no tax liability yet. Once you actually sell, trade or spend some coins, you need to report the gains on Schedule D and Form 8949 of your tax return.

It sounds like you can just ignore this for now.

Consider one thing: Ledger incorporates closed source elements in both the hardware and firmware of their wallets. You are putting a lot of trust into a third party.

I prefer to use a fully open source wallet and a fully air-gapped cold storage solution.

Like AGD mentioned, many people only consider physical key security. They often neglect to secure themselves from the $5 wrench attack. Part of your security model should involve being private and not discussing your cryptocurrency holdings. Greed is a powerful thing.

How, pray tell, would we accomplish that? There are algorithms that are [temporarily] ASIC-resistant, but nothing we know of that could "delete" ASICs. Hard forking from SHA-256 would be highly contentious no doubt, especially if no one believes that the end goal -- no ASICs -- is possible.

As for pools, I think this sentiment from gmaxwell still applies:



4 per year sounds excessive no matter what, given the size and scope of the network. Either way, I don't think it's possible now. Maybe it would have been if a culture of hard forking had been adopted very early on.

There's plenty of altcoin communities peddling this message. Maybe you should check some of them out. There's literally thousands and thousands of them. Have a blast.

People who are serious about the security of their money hold bitcoins. The market has made that abundantly clear.

I doubt that's their model. It's far too risky in terms of volatility. They likely have hedging mechanisms so they don't need to worry about the hour-to-hour volatility of Bitcoin. I recall reading that they sell everything OTC now -- likely at a premium -- and don't use exchanges for converting BTC/BCH to USD.

Their Bitpay and Copay wallets are infamous for drastically overestimating fees. I guess we shouldn't expect anything different from their business.

Don't lend what you can't afford to lose. People often don't understand that P2P margin lending carries significant default risk. The recent 1,800 BTC loss incurred at Poloniex illustrates this well.

Do the interest rates justify the risk?


I doubt it. Their banking partners were apparently commingling funds with drug cartels and more recently were charged with bank fraud and unlicensed money transmission. That money is long gone.

Sadly, it's the norm. Poloniex badly screwed up by exposing margin lenders to extremely thin markets, which resulted in lenders losing 1,800 BTC. What did they do? They offered victims "reimbursement" via trading fee discounts.

I suppose this is the price we pay for using exchanges registered in Malta, Bermuda, Seychelles, etc. and operated from who knows where. There's zero accountability.

I was obviously referring to the confirmation time. I don't think any newbies complaining about transaction speed are referring to propagation time.


I thought that was adequately covered by "enabling/supporting." If an implementation of Lightning relies on Segwit, e.g. to fix transaction malleability, then the choice of words was correct. Sure, we could have implemented LN long before Segwit but the UX would have been absolutely horrible. What's your point?

The Trump administration seems fairly concerned about synthetic opioid trafficking. They recently blacklisted the cryptocurrency addresses of Chinese nationals sanctioned for smuggling them into the US.

I suspect most proceeds from this activity are laundered through banks, and that Bitcoin is somewhat of an afterthought to them. But it's obviously big enough to be on their radar. Remember Silk Road, AlphaBay and others? The Treasury department also blacklisted outputs associated with ransomware operators.

The SDN lists have always been aimed at banks and other financial institutions. They're just starting to include VASPs like Bitcoin exchanges in the mix now.

Another one bites the dust.

Unlike BitPay's recent changes, it looks like this only applies to merchants/vendors. According to OpenNode's terms, they put the legal burden of verifying customer identity solely on the client. So at least there's no KYC for customers who are buying goods and services:



Indeed. Payment processors are going to implement KYC one by one. I'm hoping this starts incentivizing people to use BTCPayServer rather than centralized third parties.

In 2019? I'm amazed. Most sites switched to email logins years ago because this is such an easy avenue to brute force weakly secured accounts.


Yikes. I was already paranoid about my TOTP shared secret being stored on exchange databases as it is. Localbitcoins seems to take the cake for terrible security practices.

The threshold is 2 BTC per day. That's $20,000 per day at current prices. How many people do you know that need to withdraw more than that?

Plus, you can have multiple unverified accounts at Binance to circumvent the KYC thresholds. Binance support told me a couple months ago that they have no explicit policy against multi-accounting.

Granted, Binance accounts are not fully anonymous. You need to provide an email address, and they are logging various data like IP address and browser information. But this is miles apart from some exchanges who require SSN/Passport #, ID and selfie, etc.

Segwit transactions are still on-chain Bitcoin transactions -- beyond the moderate fee savings, they are no different than standard transactions in terms of speed. The point was never to speed up on-chain transactions, which are always subject to the fee market and Bitcoin's 10-minute target block time. It was more about enabling/supporting future features -- Lightning, Schnorr signatures, sidechains, MAST smart contracts -- by adding script versioning and solving transaction malleability for Segwit transactions.