Exchanges not accepting mixed BTC, so is BTC no longer fungible?

[OROBTC]

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I have been reading that many exchanges are using Chainalysis (etc.) to look at transactions, and refusing to exchange BTC (or even accept them).  I also know that BitPay is using such blockchain analysis to NOT accept BTC that looked like they were mixed or otherwise have a "dubious" history.

This looks like it is going to be an issue, probably getting to be a bigger issue into the future.

If we define "fungible" as satoshis = satoshis, then it looks like that some satoshis are more equal than others.  Does this mean that Bitcoin is no longer fungible?  

This looks like a problem for BTC and possibly all of crypto, in that crypto NOW has / will have to be "proven" clean, else hard to exchange for fiat, other crypto, or even for large purchases?

Please discuss.

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[konfuzius5278]

Many exchange behave like their center of the wourld. But currently community has no other chance as use them.

I also hate these big exchanges using BTC legacy adresses for deposit messing the chain up....

[avikz]

I don't think exchanges are doing it willingly! Most probably it's the government who is playing from background and forcing the exchanges to have such things implemented to reduce money laundering. It's no secret that mixing services are being used as a great tool for money laundering. Few days back I was reading a similar article in Medium on how mixer services are being used as a tool for laundering money and then goes to exchanges for liquidity and distribution. You can also read it below,

https://medium.com/tozex/how-do-criminals-launder-money-through-blockchain-dc66916b5d81

So I think the exchanges are just trying to stay clean. Because all exchanges are centralized business entities unlike bitcoin itself and it is important for them to save their business from government's wrath.

Yes, it is disturbing the fungibility of bitcoin as virgin and clean bitcoin has more acceptability than the mixed ones. But I think that's the way forward. If stolen bitcoin remains very easy to exchange for real money, the hacking incidents, frauds and thefts will not slow down. While privacy is important but it is also important not to support illegal things happening around us every single day!

[Kakmakr]

I had some run ins with one major exchange about this, because they had issues with coins that was mixed just before it was send to me and then I deposited those coins into the exchange. I told them that I did not mix the coins and that Bitcoin as a currency would not work if they applied these rules and regulations on mixed coins.

You cannot help it if someone mixed coins before they send it to you... so how can they penalize you for that? It is something different if you mix the coins before you deposit it onto your account with a regulated exchange. <Then they can say that you did it>

[Twentyonepaylots]

I don't think exchanges are doing it willingly! Most probably it's the government who is playing from background and forcing the exchanges to have such things implemented to reduce money laundering. It's no secret that mixing services are being used as a great tool for money laundering.

I do think so, coz there is no way a business would turn their back to their possible profit, an example, let's say that the money from a person is from money laundering, government cannot blame them for depositing it through their platform right? So obviously this is a form of rule manipulation from one's government not the exchanges themselves. And for them, it is a continue operating or get reprimanded situation which they are left with no choice. The logic is simple behind this, there's no way that these exchange would implement such fool rule like this.

So I think the exchanges are just trying to stay clean. Because all exchanges are centralized business entities unlike bitcoin itself and it is important for them to save their business from government's wrath.

Exactly my point. There is no point for not taking a washed bitcoin, aside it is one of the advantage of bitcoin when it comes to traceability, it is hard to tracked once mixed.

[Sanugarid]

So I guess the mixers would be useless now? or Exchanges who has this policy would be a lesser option for anyone who is using mixers to wash their bitcoins?

The move was quite good, since there are lots of stolen bitcoin that is being mixed/wash so it won't be tracked from the blockchain and they can continue using the same old address of them.

But I got to ask one thing, why would the exchanges do this? I know they are not all has this kind of policy.

[coupable]

In my opinion, it's a stupid move. Just like governments forbid the use of bitcoin without noticing that bitcoin is not controlled by any authority and can't forbid users to connect with blockchain nodes.
Why? Because users may have a legit money but received from someone who received it from a mixer. With chainanalysis, will they be accused of money lundering? I can't understand why exchanges do this. Are they forced? If yes, based on what? Are mixers forbidden to be used?
I am really interested to understand this !

[Oilacris]

So I guess the mixers would be useless now? or Exchanges who has this policy would be a lesser option for anyone who is using mixers to wash their bitcoins?

The move was quite good, since there are lots of stolen bitcoin that is being mixed/wash so it won't be tracked from the blockchain and they can continue using the same old address of them.

But I got to ask one thing, why would the exchanges do this? I know they are not all has this kind of policy.

Regulation!

This is one of the reason on why they do need to be keen towards into those bitcoin that are tainted and since these platforms are
heavily centralized then they would really abide with the rules towards money laundering etc. ..

I can say that theres really an advantage for this one but theres also some disadvantages. I dont know if they can able to trace
if a certain coin would be mixed out several times and been passed on several wallets + sending on other platforms
then receiving back into your wallet then you do make a deposit.

[CaVO32]

I had some run ins with one major exchange about this, because they had issues with coins that was mixed just before it was send to me and then I deposited those coins into the exchange. I told them that I did not mix the coins and that Bitcoin as a currency would not work if they applied these rules and regulations on mixed coins.

You cannot help it if someone mixed coins before they send it to you... so how can they penalize you for that? It is something different if you mix the coins before you deposit it onto your account with a regulated exchange. <Then they can say that you did it>

I think it will be unfair to the user that just received btc from someone who did mixed his coins. And also, mixed coins are not only because someone is hiding illegal activity, there are other reasons why he opted not to trace the btc from somewhere else. Like for example in gambling, there are exchanges which do not accept if it is from gambling sites even though it is totally legal to some countries. So to avoid flagging their account, they just use mixer services to avoid potential loss of their funds. I believe exchanges should weigh things before they can implement such tight rule over allegedly mixed coins.

[Baofeng]

I have open a thread about this issue before, Exchanges are now potentially banning btc sent to a mixing/conjoin services.

And far as I can remember, bitcoin's fungibility has been in question in 2015 when BlockTrail started to sell virgin bitcoin: BlockTrail Mint: Fresh Bitcoin Delivered From The Mines. But it seems that this offer have been discounted already.

[turkandjaydee]

Many exchange behave like their center of the wourld. But currently community has no other chance as use them.
(...)

People are able to not rely on exchanges if they use bitcoin directly to pay for almost everything. There are many services or merchants out there who already accepted Bitcoin as a payment option.

For example, you can see the list on this site : 20 Major Websites That Accept Bitcoins [Pay In Bitcoins]
But it's just for example and I can't say that all of those sites are trusted since I haven't checked all of them yet.

Unfortunately, we still can't pay for primary needs globally in every country so we still need fiat for that. But we are also supposed to save some fiat so this is not really a problem.
Keep your BTC and fiat in good proportion and you don't need to trade it too much on an exchange.

But I still don't know if in the future merchants and service providers will not accept mixed BTC too  

[gentlemand]

But I still don't know if in the future merchants and service providers will not accept mixed BTC too  

They themselves may well be fine about it, what they have to worry about is whether the next place they pass it on to freaks out.

Exchanges must know that they're playing a questionable game. If it's continued to the stage where the only thing they'll accept is a coin that's either straight from a miner or has an unbroken trail of purity back to 2009 they're not going to have a business sooner rather than later. The entire thing will seize up.

At some point they'll have to nominate firm policies about this for their sake as much as ours and they'd better be pragmatic ones.

[20kevin20]

I guess that's the way - seize mixed coins until the owner gives you the required information, if it's considered reasonable at all. Kinda sucks that you'd be using a mixer to earn some anonymity and they seize it and ask you for personal information and put you into some kind of interrogation, doesn't it? It's almost like these exchanges are becoming semi-authorities with some power you really underestimate when registering on their platforms

I dont know if they can able to trace
if a certain coin would be mixed out several times and been passed on several wallets + sending on other platforms
then receiving back into your wallet then you do make a deposit.

Mixing it once with a higher number of recipients is usually enough to anonymize your coins. But sending it to other platforms and then receiving them back to your wallet means trusting every platform you send to (especially as your coins'd come from multiple mixing and if the platform finds out you'd be even more suspicious than before) and then finally trusting the platform you initially meant to deposit on.

Now there's also a chance you might get screwed if the platforms you've used previously are going to notice the last one about the coin mixing you've done. Then you have fees. It's too much of a hassle. I'd just say don't use mixed coins on any third party platform.

[salamat700]

We have to accept the fact that centralized exchanges can easily imposed regulations, restrictions and requirements for their users and there is nothing we can do but to follow them, otherwise the best thing to do is to find alternative platforms that can cater to our needs. I don't see this development affecting the fungibility of Bitcoin, at any rate. I am sure we still have (and more in the future) of platforms that do not care if you are availing of mixing services or not.
Centralized and government-approved exchanges have to be careful in all facets of their business because they don't want any agency of the agency taking notice which can surely affect their business and ability to be making big bucks.

[jseverson]

If we define "fungible" as satoshis = satoshis, then it looks like that some satoshis are more equal than others.  Does this mean that Bitcoin is no longer fungible?

I'd like to note that this is only really an issue because of exchanges. Bitcoin was meant to be peer-to-peer after all, and was actually designed in such a way that lets you avoid middlemen. It's fungible in essence, but using it in an unnatural way (i.e. exchanges) compromises that.

You cannot help it if someone mixed coins before they send it to you... so how can they penalize you for that? It is something different if you mix the coins before you deposit it onto your account with a regulated exchange. <Then they can say that you did it>

Yeah, this is why the policy is flawed. They're going to be asking you proof of financial capacity (like in this case with Binance), which is a problem because you're placed at the mercy of another person.

One important question to ask though, is do they automatically flag coins suspected of being mixed, or are they only flagging suspicious patterns? The case I shared above apparently mixed some of their coins directly post-withdrawal -- if they had sent it to a different address before mixing, would it have been flagged then? It's too early to sound the alarm, and blacklisting all mixed coins sounds a bit too draconian considering how easy it is for them to change hands.

[pooya87]

centralized services will always do things like this and it will never have anything to do with fungibility of bitcoin. for example i can say that i won't accept payment from any address that starts with "123". that is my personal decision and won't change anything about bitcoin.

the reason that allows exchanges to do things like this and get away with it, is that people don't seem to give a shit! if whenever an exchange pulls some crap like this (or sells users information) they simply boycott that malicious exchange, the next time they are thinking about doing something like this they would hesitate.
look at Coinbase, have they lost any volume? no. so they will continue doing whatever they like.

[Lucius]

I have been reading that many exchanges are using Chainalysis (etc.) to look at transactions, and refusing to exchange BTC (or even accept them).
This looks like a problem for BTC and possibly all of crypto, in that crypto NOW has / will have to be "proven" clean, else hard to exchange for fiat, other crypto, or even for large purchases?

I recently took part in a similar discussion, and we can think whatever we want, but if someone says that your BTC is not what he wants based on any criteria, then in that particular case that BTC is actually worth nothing. We all know that every banknote has a unique serial number, but when we pay something, the cashiers do not check every banknote to determine where it came from. Of course, it’s about the fiat being part of the system, while the BTC is just the opposite.

I share the concern of those who see this as a problem, because it can really happen that someone one day wants to use their BTC to pay for something or wants to sell them for a fiat, and everyone rejects it because coins are from some suspicious sources.

Here is something interesting about how BTC could be categorized in the future - > Classify coins (UTXOs) in several categories

[Yogee]

They want only "clean" coins haha! In other words, all that centralized exchange withdrawal limit and KYC stuff are inutile. It's not enough even though they really don't need all the personal information of their users.

"Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need." - bitcoin whitepaper

[sayulita]

Many exchange behave like their center of the wourld. But currently community has no other chance as use them.

I also hate these big exchanges using BTC legacy adresses for deposit messing the chain up....

But the people can avoid using such exchanges as of now. There are many alternatives to these exchanges. Or the other alternative is to stop using mixing services which is a pretty good option if you ask me, or use privacy centered coins like Monero for moving funds and storing them later in bitcoins.

look at Coinbase, have they lost any volume? no. so they will continue doing whatever they like.

This is because majority of users don't use mixing services for their bitcoins and those do they already have other plans if they face these kind of problems. So you always have to be responsible for your funds or else there are many people in the market to who want to con you.

[Leviathan.007]

It was completely predictable. Since all the exchanges usually ask users for KYC/proof of address and some other personal information such as SSN in US. They will need to answer the governments they asked them about identify of any user or source of the transactions.
If they allow users to use the mixed bitcoins none can track them easily for some security purpose in future in order to track drug/gun dealers and avoid money laundry. However, there are still some exchanges where you can easily use your mixed bitcoins without of any problem.