Why mixers?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Cash is used to scam people. Should we make that illegal? Encryption is used by criminals. Why isn't that illegal? The internet is used by pedophiles, cars are used by bank robbers, guns are used by terrorists.

If you make illegal perfectly legitimate goods or services which have been misused by some, then pretty much everything would be illegal. As with most things privacy related, governments and law enforcement sticking their noses in to your business, building backdoors in to messaging apps, trying to ban encryption, tapping your phone lines, monitoring your internet history, or even banning mixers, does next to nothing to stop criminals and terrorists. It is a mass surveillance tool, nothing more.

I can't understand why anyone involved in bitcoin would be pushing for less privacy, not more.

There is a big difference with your examples. Cash is helping the society more legally, than illegally. Encryption is helping the way internet works more legally, than illegally. The internet is helping more innocent people than pedophiles and so on with the other examples.

But if mixers are used 90% for illegal purposes you have to see the thing a little more ethically no matter how much you like privacy.

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[DarkDays]

Because Bitcoin mixers don't work in the way that you described.

They mix the inputs and outputs of a huge number of addresses in such a way that you can't tell who sent what to where.

In this situation, the only thing you can really tell is that all of these people likely used a mixer, but you can't prove why they did it or whether they were engaged in any illegal activity.

Simply using a mixer isn't an illegal activity, and people often use them simply for privacy reasons.

If you sent 1 BTC to 1,400 different addresses manually, it's possible blockchain analytics and forensics teams could use the timestamps of the recipient addresses and their onwards transactions to piece together a common origin.

More chaos = harder to reverse the transaction tree.

[o_e_l_e_o]

But if mixers are used 90% for illegal purposes you have to see the thing a little more ethically no matter how much you like privacy.

Please read my previous replies. As I've said multiple times in this thread, the majority of coins passed through mixers are entirely legal.

Go and watch this presentation from Chainalysis: https://register.gotowebinar.com/recording/8980410054773689612 (you can enter any details in the the name and email boxes, it is irrelevant). If you don't want to watch the whole thing, skip to 37:12.

Only 8% of mixer activity is stolen funds. The majority of funds come directly from exchanges.

https://hashed.universdev.com/only-8-of-mixed-crypto-coins-tied-to-illicit-activity-report/

[eaLiTy]

I was thinking as you mate, why mixers still legal?
The exchanges have to send the bitcoin back if they come from a hack but why no one says the same for Mixers? Those are money laundering machines and no gov is interested in stopping them.
Maybe governments are ignorant and they don't know a tool like this exists. That's why they are not getting banned yet. But they will not live forever.

Hope you missed the news about BestMixer.io where the authorities raided them and arrested the owners claiming that they helped launder hacked BTCitcoins and on hearing the news another mixer bitblender ceased their operation and the owner went missing owing customers their coins.

But if mixers are used 90% for illegal purposes you have to see the thing a little more ethically no matter how much you like privacy.

Don't you think that you are contradicting here, which data and analysis gives you the value that 90% of the coins mixed are for illegal purposes. There is only a few trusted mixers in the market and if anyone has to come up with a data like this they need to crack their mixing techniques, i have not seen anyone breaking any mixers in recent times, i have seen mixers getting busted in the past because they lack good mixing techniques and people were able to determine the output mixed coins and those mixers are dead and dusted.

If you are talking ethics, everyone has their rights to privacy and i would like to hide the destination of my coins from exchanges or gambling sites but that does not mean i am doing anything illegal, it is my rights to my privacy ethically and morally and if anyone has to see my destination they need to provide a court document implicating me.

Despite all this, if there are legal implications from using mixed coins, i might distance myself from doing so as i do not have the time to fight the legal battle to prove every time that i am not doing anything illegal and not because of ethics or morality.

[20kevin20]

There is a big difference with your examples. Cash is helping the society more legally, than illegally. Encryption is helping the way internet works more legally, than illegally. The internet is helping more innocent people than pedophiles and so on with the other examples.

But if mixers are used 90% for illegal purposes you have to see the thing a little more ethically no matter how much you like privacy.

Mixers only make it harder for your mixed coins to be traced. It's highly probable that, if I ever commit a mistake and somehow link my coins to my identity, I will mix them afterwards for no illegal reasons. Wanting to have privacy is not illegal activity. This applies to everything: using cash instead of card, old Nokia phones instead of Google-infected "smartphones", Signal instead of WhatsApp etc. Pedophiles using Signal is not and will never be a reason to enforce me to use Zucc's data-collecting falsely-encrypted WhatsApp.

Some people use burner phones to avoid having their main phone number found out. I do this as well. The fact that drug dealers also use burner phones doesn't mean I should not have access to purchasing them.

Saying that cash is helping the society more legally than illegally makes me smile. I can't even imagine how much cash is used every single hour in tax evasions alone. Romanian bars do this on a regular basis: take the customer's cash but keep it in your pocket and don't print the paycheck so that, as a business owner, you don't pay taxes for your earnings. There are probably so many billions of money in cash all around the world that are cashed in on a monthly basis without taxes being paid.

Everything is going to have an illegal use case as long as criminals find a way to do it. Probably even soap or rubber ducks. Even after we get CBDCs and cash goes out, there will be other ways to do illegal stuff without being on the radar. We simply cannot have the perfect thing. You can't have freedom but not have it. You have to choose between the two.

Remember, mixers are only there for improving your privacy. They do not support illicit activity, as far as I am aware. And my personal opinion is... even if mixers were used in a significant percentage for illegal activity, banning them means taking away my right to privacy. This is what people don't get: we're literally setting our own right to privacy on fire by wrongfully placing privacy and crimes in the same pot.

[suzanne5223]

That's why you use mixers. Good mixers will completely break the chain between inputs and outputs.

Why are mixers legal? The only purpose I find on them is to money launder.

The purpose of mixer was not for money laundering and it to provide people the privacy they need which is the reason why they are legal not because hackers seized the opportunity of using it.

They are literally useless if you don't have anything to hide.

No, they are not and if you're whale you'll understand that you actually need to keep your holding from the public and not to be hackers target thats the usefulness of mixer.

[hulla]

Recently a man was deceived by someone who had change the electrum source code on an old version of it. He lost 1400BTC(!)

This is a sad story but you never provide a link or another other form of evidence to be sure the incident wasnt a fabricated story.
Back to your the why mixers? Crypto mixer come in the picture when people are advised not to use a single wallet thrice for security reasons.

If he send 1BTC to 1400 owned addresses, though, no one can prove that the person that owns those 1400 addresses is the hacker, right? They can only ask them where did you get that one bitcoin.

Creating 1400 addresses would be stressful and it will be better to move those coins to privacy wallets while send some portion of it once in a while to the tumbler site.

[pixie85]

The purpose of mixer was not for money laundering and it to provide people the privacy they need which is the reason why they are legal not because hackers seized the opportunity of using it.

And what if it was used for laundering. It's not the fault of the mixer that someone uses it to commit a crime.
It's also not the fault of a knifemaker that his product can be used to kill

They are literally useless if you don't have anything to hide.

And what if I simply earn coins every month and want to hide from people who know my address like my employer what and where I'm buying?

Most people have something to hide. If you keep exposing your privacy to the world sooner or later you'll regret it.

[livingfree]

I think I've seen whales did that, they've spread a lot of bitcoins for different addresses through batches.

The purpose of mixer was not for money laundering and it to provide people the privacy they need which is the reason why they are legal not because hackers seized the opportunity of using it.

And what if it was used for laundering. It's not the fault of the mixer that someone uses it to commit a crime.

Right.

Not the mixers fault, it's used in general for the privacy and anonymity of the users.

[Ryker1]

That's why you use mixers. Good mixers will completely break the chain between inputs and outputs.

Why are mixers legal? The only purpose I find on them is to money launder. They are literally useless if you don't have anything to hide.

I was thinking as you mate, why mixers still legal?

Well, just because of misused of those bitcoin mixers. The purpose should only for the privacy to avoid of being hacked and not for money laudering.
Example, --if you have a huge of bitcoin and you want to send it to your main wallet. You need to use bitcoin mixer just to hide where it goes and hacker will not be able to trace where your bitcoin sent and it should not be linked to your identity upon using costudial wallet that has your full personal information. But unfortunately, bitcoin mixers are used for fraudulent and the home to exit scammers of what they hack not to able to trace.

[Oilacris]

That's why you use mixers. Good mixers will completely break the chain between inputs and outputs.

Why are mixers legal? The only purpose I find on them is to money launder. They are literally useless if you don't have anything to hide.

I was thinking as you mate, why mixers still legal?

Well, just because of misused of those bitcoin mixers. The purpose should only for the privacy to avoid of being hacked and not for money laudering.
Example, --if you have a huge of bitcoin and you want to send it to your main wallet. You need to use bitcoin mixer just to hide where it goes and hacker will not be able to trace where your bitcoin sent and it should not be linked to your identity upon using costudial wallet that has your full personal information. But unfortunately, bitcoin mixers are used for fraudulent and the home to exit scammers of what they hack not to able to trace.

Its one of the cons and you cant stop people for them to use up mixers for illegal purposes thats why they do really get that negative impressions from some people that mixers are used for mixing
those illegal funds or making use to launder money which is partly true since its actual use do really enclosed nor do include such scenarios but actually its just really for privacy purposes.

On the situation had been illustrated then no hacker would waste up his time and fees on just sending 1Btc to 1400 addresses just to have a breakdown and dont able to be traced basing off on the original address but
if it were meant to be traced then it would really be easy since it would have only 1 input which do came from that 1400 BTC original address unlike if you do make use of mixers then
tracing it up would already be pain in the ass.

Why do end up on that 1btc >>> 1400 address analysis? hehe

[int03h]

The mixer is used by everyone for their privacy, but it's also a tool for bad guys to use to launder money.
The US government has also condemned mixers, but some still work and people love mixers.
Sending 1 bitcoin to 1,400 addresses can be quite complicated, but it is a way to avoid control and confuse everyone.

[Mpamaegbu]

You like people look into your pocket? Is the content of your bank account shown on your FB wall?
Do you use curtains at home? Is your door open?
You always have something to hide.

I like the concise analogy here on if Mixers only served criminal purposes.
Back to the OP, I don't know why anyone would take the risk of stocking such a huge number of Bitcoin in a single wallet putting into consideration the value of the coin in today's world. I wouldn't leave more than 10bitcoin in a single wallet if I had such an amount as stated in the OP or if I were a whale and had more. It's the same way I won't keep more than 1 YFI in a single wallet.

[Kakmakr]

The idea behind Mixers is to remove the direct link between the different Bitcoin addresses on the Blockchain. So nobody will be able to trace the original tokens to it's source or original address. Some hackers (criminals) use this service to hide their stash that they acquired through illegal actions and other people use this to protect their financial wealth.

You have a right to protect your private financial data.. and Mixers provide that protection. If you get cash from say a XBox you sold and you hide that under your bed, then you are protecting your financial data... and this is what Mixers offer you too, because nobody can trace your "savings" in Bitcoin, if you push all the tokens/coins you receive...through a Mixer and then to your Cold wallet. (Long-term storage)  

[The Cryptovator]

Seems it's quite hard to convince OP about Bitcoin mixer. We know the main goal of using a mixer is to cut the chain link between addresses. Do you think why should hackers split 1400BTC to 1400 addresses since he could split it by one click? Sending BTC different addresses will not cut the chain links and that's the reason why hackers using mixers to sell their bitcoin shortly. Hackers are smarter than us and they wouldn't waste their time creating lots of addresses where even they couldn't cut the chain link. Alcohol is made to treat general peoples, but if people use it in the wrong way then it doesn't mean alcohol isn't necessary. Same as for mixer, it has been discovered to hide your identity and cut the chain link but scammers/hackers using it the wrong way. If hackers do not cut the link between address, then obviously they will face problems somehow.

[joniboini]

I think there's no need to continue the debate when there's no source quoted to support your opinion. Saying "if 90% mixer transactions" is as good as "90% of bank transactions are for money laundering in my opinion".

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Just because a feature is used negatively by the bad ones among us doesn't mean it is totally bad. Take crowdfunding, DeFi etc as a case study, these are brilliant idea but currently newn abused. Like most users have already highlighted, mixers are only there to increase your privacy. These days it seems people no longer care about their privacy which is obviously why the big firms are profiting big time from our ignorance. Imagine moving a large amount of bitcoin from an exchange that already has all your sensitive information gotten through the kyc procedure you completed before having full access to the advance feature of the exchange.

Without the help of mixers there's no way or easier way to do this without reviewing to the exchange, the new wallet the coins are moving to. Your judging is been clouded by the fact you think mixers are only there to profit just the scammers but that's not the case. Mixers are been used exchanges too.

[shoreno]

Who has time to create 1400 Addresses so as to split the 1400 bitcoins? 

thats sick but why not create 5 or 10  new addresses instead of 1400 ? but the amount your going to send is much bigger but who will think that you are a hacker when you send chunks and chunks of coins ? why can they just think that it was a whale  ? or unless they think that a whale that moves large amounts of btc are also a hacker  .

Why mixers?

and why not ? if mixers can add extra security or privacy to you . you will use it if especially if you are guilty of stealing that coins from someone else .mixers were always involved when there are online crimes but the issue were already addressed to the mixer owners that they shoud should verify their users atleast if those funds are stolen or not  .

[XCANA]

That's why you use mixers. Good mixers will completely break the chain between inputs and outputs.

Why are mixers legal? The only purpose I find on them is to money launder. They are literally useless if you don't have anything to hide.

I don't see anything called useless here, mixers are for those who want their identity secure without a trace but for money laundry this depends on individual aims. personally i used mixers for safe identity, not because am into money laundry of a thing. Bitcoin Mixers play vital role in keeping the anonymity of any Bitcoin holder who want his identity safe. 

[Debonaire217]

That's why you use mixers. Good mixers will completely break the chain between inputs and outputs.

Why are mixers legal? The only purpose I find on them is to money launder. They are literally useless if you don't have anything to hide.

If you are going to as this, you should also ask why Bitcoin is legal. That is because one of the main characteristic of Bitcoin is provide you with complete anonymity and privacy with your Bitcoins. It will be upon the realization of the person whether to use Bitcoin for good or to use it in frauds. That is the thing I like about Bitcoin, it gave me the complete privacy and freedom to transact if I want anytime, anywhere. And if happens that we read a news about this kind of hacking again, it is not Bitcoin mixers to blame but the person behind it. That is why we should keep our Bitcoin's safe and be cautious with it.