I was just reading through the news of BitMixer.io shutting down their business.
While there are other alternatives, I was wondering what stops anyone from using a dark market (such as now-defunct AlphaBay) to mix their coins?
Using such markets over other alternatives will surely provide some benefits:
- Traditional mixers such as bitmixer.io have high fees
- We can use exchanges like Poloniex to mix coins but they require KYC for high volume deposit/withdrawals. Moreover there are chances they'll blacklist any addresses associated with hack/ransom attacks and won't accept coins from such address.
- Traditional exchanges can also have cooperative relationship with governments which can expose you
Dark nets being TOR-based services, once can just deposit some BTC in their account and then withdraw after some time. Won't this be a safer way to mix coins which are associated with hacks/ransom attacks?
Be very, very careful about using the Darknet.
There are some crazy sites there and viruses everywhere you turn.
If you have lots of Bitcoin try using a different computer/device with VPN.
Obviously use TOR, but keep in mind even then you are not safe as the exit node can see your traffic. To avoid this use a bridge.
If you use a different PC with TOR + VPN + Bridge and be very careful, then you should be fine.