Authorities Shut Down First Bitcoin Transaction Mixer

[teddyelwyn]

Apparently this is the first time law enforcement has taken an action against crypto mixers.
It's funny because I am familiar with Bestmixer was just looking at it last week actually lol

https://www.coindesk.com/eu-authorities-crack-down-on-bitcoin-transaction-mixer

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[darylalban]

that is super crazy but honestly it was bound to happen sometime especially if they have companies like ciphertrace who help scout out bad actors on public blockchains

[talkbitcoin]

Apparently this is the first time ...

what about BitMixer?
it wasn't exactly a authorities kicking down their doors but the circumstances were suspicious in my opinion, they suddenly grew a conscious after years of giving service and mixing coins and shut down their operation and went away. there was a lot of talk about how they were under pressure from law enforcement.

[jdarren]

I've always been a bit suspicious about mixers. The websites were always so sketch imo like as if they couldn't be more obvious. I'm not exactly sure if  this was the first or not but it sounds like it may have been a big bust for Europe

[Kakmakr]

Mixers are the last man standing between governments controlling Blockchain technology or not and I think this action will prompt new innovation to decentralize these services in the future or to incorporate it into the protocol as a side chain service.

We saw what happened when governments tried to take down Torrent sites... right.  They had new copies of PirateBay up within a couple of hours and then many more sites popped up like mushrooms.  

[zenhu]

ah so that's why the signature campaign of bestmixer got to hold, I was wondering if this shutdown of bestmixer will affect any other bitcoin mixing service. In my opinion mixing service not exactly purposed for money laundering, but it can be used for that.

[LeGaulois]

You have to admit that hosting your servers in Europe may not be a good idea when you run a mixer. It's like making waves with your Tshirt "Hello, I'm here, look at me!"   I have to re-read some reports but I think it comes firstly from Macafee who snitched.
I still believe that if bestmixer got busted it's because of the lack of anonymity in its service.

Also, something I found interesting is the website displaying "bla bla bla seized.. YOU'RE NOT ANONYMOUS"
Making me think that's the first motivation was to teach a lesson to people. Including "you're not anonymous" in a text that supposed to be somehow "official text" is just using sarcasm. Why?
Why the news doesn't talk about the owner? Where is he? What are the charges?

Another thing, the same day a new mixer is introduced, I may be wrong but...got my point?...
this mixer is using cloudfare for ssl and cdn, to be sure to be hidden?

[stompix]

what about BitMixer?
it wasn't exactly a authorities kicking down their doors but the circumstances were suspicious in my opinion, they suddenly grew a conscious after years of giving service and mixing coins and shut down their operation and went away. there was a lot of talk about how they were under pressure from law enforcement.

Speculations, but they didn't get seized, so they might have gone into hiding at the right time.
There was a bit of speculation about them and the arrest of the guy running BTC-e but nothing got confirmed and probably will never be.

Mixers are the last man standing between governments controlling Blockchain technology or not

Seriously, if this is our last barricade we're f****.

We saw what happened when governments tried to take down Torrent sites... right.  They had new copies of PirateBay up within a couple of hours and then many more sites popped up like mushrooms.  

And torrenting is dying down. TPB is a shadow of what it was while Netflix is doing twice the traffic compared to all torrent traffic.
Besides, torrenting is not decentralized, you have to take the magnet link or the torrent hash from somewhere, and that's the weak point. Not even talking about privately marked torrents which are dead once the tracker goes down since you can't enable p2p discovery.

I have to re-read some reports but I think it comes firstly from Macafee who snitched.

Say what???

[Wind_FURY]

Mixers are the last man standing between governments controlling Blockchain technology or not and I think this action will prompt new innovation to decentralize these services in the future or to incorporate it into the protocol as a side chain service.

We saw what happened when governments tried to take down Torrent sites... right.  They had new copies of PirateBay up within a couple of hours and then many more sites popped up like mushrooms.  

But mixing coins that are not used, or intended to be used in the dark market, or from/to anything illegal might be more put at risk by mixing them through a mixer, in my opinion.

There's also the Wasabi Wallet if you want to mix them without giving up custody, or risk leaving any logs that might be traceable to you held in a server, https://www.wasabiwallet.io/

[MakeMoneyBtc]

This kind of websites are supposed to mix our coins so that our transactions can't be traced back to us but apparently they can't even cover their activities and remain anonymous. It seems like bitcoin mixers are not as safe as everyone thinks, especially because most of them don't even complete the mixing process the way it should be done.

[jseverson]

So I stumbled upon this:

While cryptocurrency mixing services are legal, "The legality changes when a mixing service advertises itself as a success method to avoid various anti-money laundering policies via anonymity. This is actively offering a money laundering service," said Fokker.

So for as long as mixers don't show a faq as to why you should mix your coins (which Bestmixer had), they're perfectly legal? Or are there other factors at work here?

And torrenting is dying down. TPB is a shadow of what it was while Netflix is doing twice the traffic compared to all torrent traffic.

Lol to be fair, Netflix's (and other streaming services like Spotify in general) success seem to be credited more than authorities' efforts for that.

I have to re-read some reports but I think it comes firstly from Macafee who snitched.

Say what???

The security firm McAfee, which has no connections to McAfee anymore, was involved in the seizure

[stompix]

So I stumbled upon this:

While cryptocurrency mixing services are legal, "The legality changes when a mixing service advertises itself as a success method to avoid various anti-money laundering policies via anonymity. This is actively offering a money laundering service," said Fokker.

So for as long as mixers don't show a faq as to why you should mix your coins (which Bestmixer had), they're perfectly legal? Or are there other factors at work here?

This is pretty interesting..
I've been googling for some time to check if this one is indeed the first mixer seized and I've found a lot of mixers, some very old that are still online, so I really think there was something fishy that applied to bestmixer only.

But I have a feeling nobody will hear more than we already know about this case.

I have to re-read some reports but I think it comes firstly from Macafee who snitched.

Say what???

The security firm McAfee, which has no connections to McAfee anymore, was involved in the seizure

He used Macafee and snitched and I thought he was really poking fun at the eatmything guy
Still, I find it weird seeing the company involved in this, one more reason to never install software from them.

[hatshepsut93]

Privacy coins will be their next target, they'll politely ask e exchanges to delist them, or they will close them, and exchanges will comply. But the most interesting part is how would they react to future privacy features of Bitcoin protocol - Lightning transactions are not public, Schnorr will make chain analysis much harder. Banning Bitcoin can be viewed as tyrannical by western investors, even if they never touched Bitcoin themselves, so my guess is that regulators will double down on KYC requirements for Bitcoin-using businesses.

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

So monero has massive botnets mining it and a thriving malware industry to infect and mine and not only that there was the crypto jacking service coinhive and nothing happens to them but the moment you mix some bitcoins your a criminal?
Something is very very wrong here.

If bitcoin cannot or will not take note that we are under attack and we must push for more privacy tools in the space then we might as well give up now..

And yes Mcafee seemed to play a part in this one.

https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/other-blogs/mcafee-labs/crypto-currency-laundering-service-bestmixer-io-taken-down-by-law-enforcement/

[Jating]

Apparently this is the first time law enforcement has taken an action against crypto mixers.
It's funny because I am familiar with Bestmixer was just looking at it last week actually lol

https://www.coindesk.com/eu-authorities-crack-down-on-bitcoin-transaction-mixer

Obviously, there was a recent signature campaign is this community so I'm sure there's a lot of awareness to this mixing services.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125389.0

Unfortunately though, it was seized by the Dutch authorities and it looks like they're tracking everything and found out that this mixing services have been used by some bad actors, however, the authorities was able to de-anonymized, followed the track that leads to this services.

So this might set precedent, but I'm sure mixing services are doing their best right now to stay 'anonymous'.

[bittraffic]

Apparently this is the first time law enforcement has taken an action against crypto mixers.
It's funny because I am familiar with Bestmixer was just looking at it last week actually lol

https://www.coindesk.com/eu-authorities-crack-down-on-bitcoin-transaction-mixer

Obviously, there was a recent signature campaign is this community so I'm sure there's a lot of awareness to this mixing services.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125389.0

Unfortunately though, it was seized by the Dutch authorities and it looks like they're tracking everything and found out that this mixing services have been used by some bad actors, however, the authorities was able to de-anonymized, followed the track that leads to this services.

So this might set precedent, but I'm sure mixing services are doing their best right now to stay 'anonymous'.

So they weren't anonymous after mixing the coin after all because right now they were being tracked. Must be interesting to see the reports and find out who those bad actors laundering money through them. Its not a new thing though, there was a time when a mixer's name was bitlaunder but were soon busted as scam.

[CryptoBry]

Apparently this is the first time law enforcement has taken an action against crypto mixers. It's funny because I am familiar with Bestmixer was just looking at it last week actually lol

Apparently Bestmixer is based in a country which also has a strict anti-money laundering laws and when authorities saw that the platform had been used in that way then investigated further and then the rest is history. I am sure this is sending some shivers with other more popular transaction mixers but i am hoping this can't happen to them as there are really people who prefer to use this service for their privacy and protection and whether they are doing illegal or not that is not for me to decide.

[Artemis3]

You have to admit that hosting your servers in Europe may not be a good idea when you run a mixer. It's like making waves with your Tshirt "Hello, I'm here, look at me!"   I have to re-read some reports but I think it comes firstly from Macafee who snitched.
I still believe that if bestmixer got busted it's because of the lack of anonymity in its service.

Also, something I found interesting is the website displaying "bla bla bla seized.. YOU'RE NOT ANONYMOUS"
Making me think that's the first motivation was to teach a lesson to people. Including "you're not anonymous" in a text that supposed to be somehow "official text" is just using sarcasm. Why?
Why the news doesn't talk about the owner? Where is he? What are the charges?

Another thing, the same day a new mixer is introduced, I may be wrong but...got my point?...
this mixer is using cloudfare for ssl and cdn, to be sure to be hidden?

I'm guessing most mixers who don't want to implement kyc rules would have to move to the darknet, ie. a Tor's hidden service. Of course criminals would look at such services, take for example the Binance heist, how are they going to cash their ill gotten coins? We of course hope all mixers would cooperate with the exchanges when these things occur, but that also goes against privacy. Unfortunately privacy also aids crime, so you get put in a difficult position.

Well i guess you could have some sort black list of bitcoin addresses without divulging personal data from their owners, only the (verified) reason would be on the list (ie. Binance theft), which could be privately shared among all exchanges, mixers and casinos, etc voluntarily among themselves. Because anyone else can be a victim, so its in their best interest to help deter this.

Oh and btw, even if you are a Cloudflare customer, you can explicitly accept tor connections.

[Beerwizzard]

We saw what happened when governments tried to take down Torrent sites... right.  They had new copies of PirateBay up within a couple of hours and then many more sites popped up like mushrooms.  

Some EU countries are also have some restrictions for torrent users. I know a swedish guy that got fined some years ago for using torrents.

Seriously, if this is our last barricade we're f****.

I guess that some services would be working via Tor. So we still gonna have a chance to mix our coins.
The problem is that quality of that mixing gonna be questionable: after trying to mix my own coins I would definetely get some coins that were related to different illegal activities.

Privacy coins will be their next target, they'll politely ask e exchanges to delist them, or they will close them, and exchanges will comply.

Yes, but until that moment all those privacy coins have to be somehow popular.
Maybe now some people would understand that possessing a crypto coin does not move them to another world where they can do everything they want.

[Bulgarianhawk]

Closure of mixers is only a small part of actions taken by authorities against bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a phenomenon. I don't think they care about fraud or even money laundering too much, but rather they are trying to push people out of crypto to buy more themselves - it's likely to be the true reason of such closures.