Can we see coin mixing services as money laundering services ?

[Jiuks]

I dunno what to thinks about this services.. do they make money laundering easier

[onlinedragon]

Well that is hard to say maybe you can ask yourself first the question is Bitcoin actually money. Also not only coin mixing services but also exchanges could be used. But atleast you can say that a lot of people who use a mixer have to hide something.

[European Central Bank]

they make anonymity possible. that's way more important than money laundering. even if you're doing nothing wrong, sometimes you gotta mix. for instance anyone anywhere who wants to gamble is gonna get shut down if they use coinbase without mixing even if gambling is fine in the country they live in. us law gets everywhere.

[xuan87]

i personally think yes, the main idea of money laundry is get rid of the money track so nobody can find out the source of your money, well in this case the mixer main job is to give the coin new address that difficult to be track, as i can see there are similarities money laundry with mixer job, but mixing coin is not always considered as a bad things, sometimes you need to mix your coin so your address is more secure

[unholycactus]

Something special about mixing is that there's no guarantee you will get clean coins. Most of the time you'll actually get coins that come from undesirable sources (since some people are getting rid of them).
I view it more as a tool to protect your anonymity and not as a way of getting "clean" coins.

[Jiuks]

You all mentioned positive and negatives points so I still dont know what to think.. lol

My opinion was that these services owners were unmoral persons who made profit thanks to criminals, murderers, drug cartels money lauderin wishes..

Do we have proof these services are really used by that type of persons or is that just platforms used by few paranoids geeks or persons who really needs anonymity

[JeffBrad12]

I dunno what to thinks about this services.. do they make money laundering easier

That's, it's possible for calling that like laundering service because the purpose for using a mixer for eliminating your trace and I think this service is the reliable service for who wanna for laundering their money.

[Pursuer]

yes and no.

there is always going to be discussion about how people want to keep anonymous to prevent invasion of their privacy and how some small portion of these people are bad people trying to hide some illegal action they have performed using the same system as their cover up!

but this never makes the main purpose of mixing bad. mixing is made to help us improve our privacy and keep anonymous.

[gentlemand]

My opinion was that these services owners were unmoral persons who made profit thanks to criminals, murderers, drug cartels money lauderin wishes..

What use would a murderer have for a mixing service? And drug cartels traditionally have a slightly higher turnover than the average mixing service can handle.

It's sensible to cut the link between your coins and their past.

[Sharma]

I dunno what to thinks about this services.. do they make money laundering easier

No.Money laundering involves various channels to hide where the currency gone and is shown different source in accounts.
Bitcoin mixing will make your coins anonymous but it wont change value of your coins once you convert it to fiat hence it will remain accountable

[dollarneed]

There's always negative and positve, however the mixng service just provide a service in order to protect the anonymity due to the bitcoin transaction itself is pseudonymous, they don't care those money where came from,is money laundering? or something else ? what can i say it's depends on people who use it, but the most important this business will never die, at least bitcoin transaction being anonymous like monero but i think it's impossible.

[senyorito123]

I dunno what to thinks about this services.. do they make money laundering easier

No.Money laundering involves various channels to hide where the currency gone and is shown different source in accounts.
Bitcoin mixing will make your coins anonymous but it wont change value of your coins once you convert it to fiat hence it will remain accountable

I think he's pointing about making the life of launders by using mixing services and i would say yes its because if their launderd money will pass on mixer well it can make their stolen money untracable and anonymous and i think many frauds are using that service just to wash their dirty money so they can use it without fear to be trace up and thats the reason why we can't trace those hyip owners who turned scam.

[zend7]

My opinion was that these services owners were unmoral persons who made profit thanks to criminals, murderers, drug cartels money lauderin wishes..

What use would a murderer have for a mixing service? And drug cartels traditionally have a slightly higher turnover than the average mixing service can handle.

It's sensible to cut the link between your coins and their past.

Well some mixing services have 2000 up to 5000 btc which is an amount much higher than any hitman can ask for doing his dirty job.

I am not placing links to such services from the dark net as it's against my moral values, but what I want to say I have seen such services in the deep web asking for 3000 USD prepayment and than 25 up to 5000 USD when they finish the job. It doesn't seem to me that these persons don't need mixing as this value is up to 82 btc the most.

For drug dealers I don't think they use bitcoin in such a massive way yet although I know there are some of them using it.

Bottom line is, mixing services are always useful mainly for privacy but some people like criminals can use them for their dirty intentions.

[gentlemand]

Well some mixing services have 2000 up to 5000 btc which is an amount much higher than any hitman can ask for doing his dirty job.

Riiight.

I'd bet my life that every single hitman on the dark net is an 11 year old scammer.

Do you accept 5-6 BTC to murder a stranger and potentially spend the rest of your days behind bars. Or do you accept 5-6 BTC, or perhaps half upfront, and, like, not do it?

Golly, that's a poser.

[Hazir]

First of all. Bitcoin illegal activities and therefore profits from it - compared to standard FIAT are so insignificant that it is not worth any media coverage.
Bitcoin money laundering is highly overhyped by media, hence scale of the problem overestimated by users tainted by that mentality.

In theory there is possible to launder money by mixing but then again, it is possible with any service where you deposit coins, for example: exchange or casino.

Why do we have some many scammers who failed to cover their track?

Mixing failed or they never done it?

[bitlancr]

The problem is that a mixing service can be seen as both an money laundering service probably used by criminals but also a service that enables common and honest people to keep their identity protected. I have used it a few times to see hot it works, but will probably never user it again.

[leopard2]

Good question.

If a bank exchanges your cash bills for other cash bills, is that money laundering? Certainly not.

Mixers do not really turn proceeds from a crime into legal-looking profits, like money launderers do. They just exchange fungible units of a currency against other such units. Being a layman, I believe that making money flows untraceable is not automatically money laundering.

But I am pretty sure that authorities would just come up with some twisted argument and file charges against the operators if they could. 

[tee-rex]

I dunno what to thinks about this services.. do they make money laundering easier

Bitcoin itself makes money laundering easier. Say, you have a few million dollars of cash from drug trafficking and you need to conceal the origins of the money obtained in this way as well as transform the proceeds of such an activity into legitimate assets. You start buying bitcoins for cash, for example, using LocalBitcoins userbase. 1M dollars equals roughly around 1,500 bitcoins at the moment, therefore it may take some time and surely is not the most optimal way if you want to make this conversion. Nevertheless, after you convert your dirty dollars into bitcoins, you just sell the latter at some exchange and get clean dollars transfered to your legitimate bank account. You may even want to pay an income tax if you consider yourself a law-abiding citizen of sorts.

Disclaimer: I am neither engaged in nor encourage any such activities

[OrangeSeller]

My personal opinion is yes.
these mixing service can make things easier for money launder.. because they can easily move their money to any other address anonymously and no one can trace the third address where the btc went out.

but at the other side it have some positive uses also. people use mixing service to be anonymous and safety..

Basically it depends on the person.

[morantis]

sure, it can and is used for laundering, but that is not the only purpose.  also, the more people that join into bitcoin, the more that use these services for more ethical reasons. 

the actual truth is that any one that has a real need to launder funds and knows what they are doing will be doing it themselves and not using services like these.  you are traced and tracked in more ways than just the address and these services likely get more people caught than they protect.  the big case of laundering that got the silk road interrupted was cloaked by some mixing and tumbling, but it was not enough.  the most common secondary tracking method is endpoint amount tracing.  if the FBI knows that i received $10,000 for an illegal activity and that i was likely paid within this calendar week, then they can find the start point, you can even do that.  simply search for TX's of that amount in the date range.  the list will be pretty small and you can narrow it down with a little research

so, they see the original TX and then i throw it into tumbling and mixing.  the FBI software takes 16.38 BTC and prints a pyramid shaped cone, the overall fee for a TX at level 1 for 16.38 is 0.01638.  TX fees are percentage based, so even if that is split between 10 TX's the amount is the same.  the software iterated outward for ten or so TX's, printing the results at each level and you have a simple chart that tells you how much is left from the base number after 1, 2, 3.....numbers of TX's. 

so, you want your funds back in one or two accounts after laundering.  let's say you used a tumbling service, it took in 16.38, went through several accounts and spit out 16 to your other "clean" account.  the fbi software will show that after say "5" TX's the original 16.38 is now 16.2, the software reads like this.

Level 5 TX's      16.2 left after TX fees, 16 after TX fees+common tumbling fee

and there you are,  one of maybe 50 addresses that received 16 BTC one week after the alleged paid crime.  They are watching for that amount and ten other amounts based on the software, plus amounts that are one half and one third those amounts.  it is all on one piece of paper, i have seen it.  you end up as one of maybe 1000 TX's meeting those criteria, but then other software purges a bunch based on other factors, common addresses and such.  that is how Interpol closed that money laundering case and put the silk road in the lime light. 

it is like triangulating position, the first laundered TX and you might be part of ten suspects, once you do it a second time, it is all over.  there are much better ways to attain absolute anonymity and tumbling helps, but it is just one tool in a larger system