Help me to understand bitcoin mixing

[ABCbits]

Chainalysis admitted this? Which mixers?

I'm operating under the assumption that mixing algorithms not broken today might be broken in the future. This could be used retroactively to de-anonymize transactions.

Of course not, but few people who claim work at Chainalysis mentioned mixer/CoinJoin give them hard time. Check :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/c4so58/i_am_a_current_or_former_employee_of_chainalysis/
https://www.reddit.com/r/WasabiWallet/comments/c4vhlk/lets_talk_about_chainalysis/
https://news.bitcoin.com/chainalysis-whistleblower-shares-company-secrets-in-explosive-ama/

TLDR : looks like CoinJoin method which used by Wasabi is the most difficult to track, at least when the AMA happen & assuming the user wasn't lying.

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[Thirdspace]

Okay this "virgin bitcoins" thing is new for me. I like the name :-P

According to Dave Jevans, the CEO of CipherTrace, virgin Bitcoins are essentially BTC tokens that do not have a transaction (TX) record associated with them.

the way he described it sounds like reward coins in coinbase transactions
as we know new generated coins don't have input in its transactions
but the latter definition confuses me, how can we say it virgin if it was "sanitized"

However, what is interesting is the fact that criminal Bitcoin can be sanitized by local governments by them selling such commodities after making a clear note of their past transactional history. The best example of this is when the United States Marshals Service held a sealed bid auction back in 2018 for a total of 3,813 Bitcoins (estimated to be worth $51.5 million at the time).

[fillippone]

TLDR : looks like CoinJoin method which used by Wasabi is the most difficult to track, at least when the AMA happen & assuming the user wasn't lying.

This is plausible, as Wasabi is a decentralised solution, where you actually do not connect to any centralised server. Coinjoin via Samourai wallet instead imply connecting to their (Samurai) own servers, with inherent loss of privacy and point of failure for bad actors (g-men in this case) to spoil.

[BitMaximum]

Okay this "virgin bitcoins" thing is new for me. I like the name :-P

According to Dave Jevans, the CEO of CipherTrace, virgin Bitcoins are essentially BTC tokens that do not have a transaction (TX) record associated with them.

the way he described it sounds like reward coins in coinbase transactions
as we know new generated coins don't have input in its transactions
but the latter definition confuses me, how can we say it virgin if it was "sanitized"

However, what is interesting is the fact that criminal Bitcoin can be sanitized by local governments by them selling such commodities after making a clear note of their past transactional history. The best example of this is when the United States Marshals Service held a sealed bid auction back in 2018 for a total of 3,813 Bitcoins (estimated to be worth $51.5 million at the time).

Nobody can be sure that their bitcoins have a clean history of transactions. Virgin Bitcoins have zero history of transactions. That is why the demand in them is big because there is zero risks that the Virgin Bitcoins have a bad history. Financial Action Task Force against money laundering (FATF) tighten the control, obliging crypto exchanges to comply with AML procedures. More tighten is the control more demand in Virgin Bitcoins.

[Dabs]

Mixing the way the term is used, seems to me to be a misnomer, as the funds or coins aren't actually mixed but they are instead swapped or exchanged with a different set of coins coming from different inputs or transactions.

CoinJoin seems to be one of those things that fit the word itself, mixing, as it combines or joins all the inputs in one transaction, in a way that does not rely trust on anything but the system or protocol.

Centralized mixers can also do this, without disconnecting, but combining all the coins into one. This happens when coins you deposit on a site or exchange has some cold storage address, then withdrawals come from that address. Sometimes the address itself consolidates inputs into a giant coin. That way, any taint from any coin is "mixed" with everyone else, which might not a good thing if any other entity refuses to accept your coins coming from such a source.

On chain games like the old satoshi dice, while not really mixing, could give amateur chainalysers a headache too, but nothing that computers can eventually figure out. Just play a game with 100% chance to win, you only lose the house edge, which you can think of as the mixing fee.