Mixing / Swapping bitcoin

[btczar]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

[Yakamoto]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Swapping it doesn't really work because both people just literally swap the same amount, and nothing really changes. It can still be tracked and the swap would still presumably go to the same address, making it more obvious that the person still has "x" amount of Bitcoin, just with a different string. Mixers can send smaller amount over a period of time to a different address while also mixing up the strings and making it harder to follow, and it can make your address look like a completely different one.

Hypothetically swapping would work, but it's harder to do that than it sounds.

[ezehy2014]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Why will I ever want to swap my bitcoin with anyone, what will it profit me since we would send to each other the same price, I don't think that is a very good idea

[btczar]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Why will I ever want to swap my bitcoin with anyone, what will it profit me since we would send to each other the same price, I don't think that is a very good idea

Why do people use mixers?

[DannyHamilton]

I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.

Why should I trust you?  How do I know for certain that you'll send to my address?

Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Nope.  If anyone asks me where I got that bitcoin, I'll tell them I got it from you.  Not very difficult to track at all.

Why do people use mixers?

In most cases, they do it for a false sense of anonymity.

[Kprawn]

Will you accept Bitcoin from just some random person? This could be some money launderer or someone who just murdered someone for payment or some paedophile network hiding their tracks. I

know I will not do that, so for that reason I send all received coins through a mixer services, just to rinse them a bit and making sure I am not pulled into something I did not do. I would much rather

mix my coins than sending it to some unknown person, with shady intentions. 

[rphk]

Swapping BTC is not good idea  because you are exchanging same thing and there is no benefit. instead of swapping bitcoin to bitcoin exchange with fiat currency  or any goods etc  will be the best options

[Strongkored]

Swapping BTC is not good idea  because you are exchanging same thing and there is no benefit. instead of swapping bitcoin to bitcoin exchange with fiat currency  or any goods etc  will be the best options

Yeah, plus more if you are exchanging with people who turned out to be deceptive. You may be losing the 10 BTC. bitcoin exchange with fiat I think the same, but you should choose a trusted website.

[franky1]

I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.

Why should I trust you?  How do I know for certain that you'll send to my address?

Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Nope.  If anyone asks me where I got that bitcoin, I'll tell them I got it from you.  Not very difficult to track at all.

Why do people use mixers?

In most cases, they do it for a false sense of anonymity.

swapping can be done by multisig.. and should never be done by just putting funds into a standard address of a stranger(who you cant slap with a wet fish if they run off)

each person creates a priv/pub keypair and only sends each other the public keys to generate a new multisig public key.
(keep the privkeys a secret, obviously)
they both put funds into the multisig

and then both create the transaction to "spend" the inputs.. and ofcourse both sign it..

obviously if they both dont sign it they both cant spend it.
if you dont see your getting the amount you want. then ofcourse you dont sign it. meaning the other person cant get what they want either.
by both signing it means they both agree to the transaction.

but with that said. its stupid to think swapping/mixing coins needs to be complex or that swapping/mixing coins makes you invisible/anonymous

[Relnarien]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

No. Instead of trusting a faceless organization, you would now be trusting a single individual who would get firsthand knowledge of your Bitcoin address. If you know that individually personally, then the track will be ever so closer to you. Otherwise, you just trusted someone who doesn't owe a shred of loyalty to you with information that would lead back to you.

If you want to thoroughly mix your coins, then repeatedly swap them for altcoins (with not-so-volatile values) under multiple accounts and using different IP addresses, transferring them across multiple wallets during the process. That will require a lot of effort, and your balance will take a hit from multiple fees incurred, but you'll obfuscate your tracks to a degree that it would become obnoxious to follow it. You can even throw some into a mixer along the way since that's what they're for. Whether mixing coins itself is justifiable, I leave to your own rationalizations and delusions.

[ivanst776]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Then these bitcoin will still be able to track that you swapped between two or more users, but what bitcoin mixers do is that they have many inputs from lots of users and they swap the bitcoins but in this case their bitcoins is harder to track. I'm not a specialist on this but I think more actions are made in background before you receive the mixed coins.

[Ned Kelly]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Congratulations!!! You invented the coinjoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoinJoin

[btczar]

Thanks for the information! Someone I know said they wanted to mix some coins and I was contemplating just swapping some of my cold storage btc with him.

[danfoda]

I dont see the point in it

[krumblez]

There is no total anonymity to Bitcoin, it's like if you walk across a beach backwards with a stick hiding the footsteps, they are still there, you have just blurred them some, mixing adds other footprints, so now instead of just one set there are many, makes it much harder to track, but the footsteps are still there.

Take a banknote, unless it is brand new from the mint, do you think no crime or nefarious activity has been associated with it? Even if it is new, look a layer up to the Politicians... Crimes and wrongdoings are everywhere, you simply cannot get away from it.

Mixing adds a false sense of security.

Of course, if you have tainted coins you want to get rid of, send them to 19hyum5jc4QpX9zPaYELtEys4umaL4aKhF 

[NorrisK]

You can check out the nice inforgraphic that bitmixer has on their website:

https://bitmixer.io/how.html

It clearly shows why you use a mixer instead of just straight swapping coins.

[yenxz]

I'm not a specialist but I think the action is created in the background before you accept a coin mix . because we know that bitcoin This still will be able to track that you bertuka between two or more users . but what is done by bitcoin mixer is that they have feedback from many users and they swap Bitcoins , in this case Bitcoins they are more difficult to trace .

[btvGainer]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

Why will I ever want to swap my bitcoin with anyone, what will it profit me since we would send to each other the same price, I don't think that is a very good idea

You dont make profit with mixing either.Mixing is done to keep coins untraceable.
Swapping is risky as you act on the trust of other party.Mixer usually use mult-addresses to mix coins making it harder to trace.Bitcoin swapping,on the other hand,is exchange of coins between two addresses that doesn't makes it untraceable

[BTCLovingDude]

I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?

because there is no anonymity in that, you both will know where the coins have gone and can easily link it to the other person. and any of you can be a shady person, so the trust between two individuals can never be created unless you two know each other very well and have the trust before doing the exchange.

but if you are satisfies with the mixing that a simple swap provides you, then i guess it is safe to say you don't even need to mix your coins ever.

[TastyChillySauce00]

swapping bitcoin just like the method you're explained above is such wasting time and effort,and keep in mind that you can't trust anyone in bitcoin world so it's definitely not more useful than mixing while you could've done it with ease