ㅤ

[Pmalek]

If they're threatened to not be private, while that's the only principle they follow since the development of Wasabi, what do you think it's reasonable thing to do? Besides, there wasn't such pressure. Nobody forced them do nothing. This happened voluntarily, which shows that the fish stinks from the head.

Nothing happened that we are aware of. That's what they said at least. If the government or some three-letter agency is threatening them with sanctions, they should step forward and say it. Be honest about it. At least people would know why we are seeing such a twist in their belief system and the principles they used to stand for. But I agree with BlackHatCoiner here, and I don't think that's what is happening.   

If some of you ever used Wasabi wallet and then you want to send Bitcoin to Gemini exchange, you should think again about it.
I saw one user on reddit posting screenshot of email from Gemini support asking him to refrain from using Wasabi or mixers, and they are asking him for documentation evidence for source of his coins, with information about his salary, proof from his employer, link for his profile, bank statements, certificates, signed letters from lawyer, inheritance...  

I am not surprised to be honest. In that little research I did the other week with centralized exchanges and taint, Gemini was one of the platforms who replied that they don't accept coins that are connected with gambling and casinos. If they don't accept that, they sure as hell won't want to touch anything coming from a mixer. Ridiculous!

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[o_e_l_e_o]

Maybe we should start thinking about making our own list of Blacklisted Centralized Exchanges that are known for confiscating coins from their customers if they notice connection with mixers or coinjoins, and if they ask for your ''soul'' (full history of your life) if you did this ''sin''.

Is that not every centralized exchange sooner or later? Even the ones which start out with high promises of privacy and no-KYC all fold eventually.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next step from them would be sending all customer information with ''evidence'' to government and starting some dystopian legal process against people.

I am certain this is already happening. The US government aren't paying Coinbase tens of millions of dollars a year for nothing.

if you turn your back to all the things you claimed and suddenly agree to work with whoever to debunk transactions then your goals are definitely not strongly supporting privacy and offering your users a way to be more private on the Bitcoin Blockchain.

I would say it's far worse than that. If you build a wallet with no claims about privacy, such as Electrum, then you are not supporting privacy, but you are not against it either and you are honest about the situation. If you make a wallet which you claim is the pinnacle of privacy, which you claim is far better than every other privacy solution in existence, which you gather thousands of privacy seeking users to, and then you sell out all those users and start cooperating with blockchain analysis entities while continuing to make your bullshit claims that you are the best thing since sliced bread, then you are not just not supporting privacy - you are actively anti-privacy.

If the government or some three-letter agency is threatening them with sanctions, they should step forward and say it.

But admitting something like that would drive more people to actual privacy solutions, which again would affect their profits, so they won't do that even if it's true. And we can't trust them to be honest about anything, given how they are now pro-censorship.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I see this situation closely resembling Google's sudden action of changing their 'Don't Do Evil' motto.

True, but this case is even worse. Wasabi has been portrayed as the privacy enhancing tool of bitcoin years now. It wasn't just a wallet, but a wallet whose reputation was built on privacy. Infringe this little principle and your project becomes pointless. On the other hand, I don't remember Google presenting themselves as pro-privacy advocates.

Nothing happened that we are aware of. That's what they said at least. If the government or some three-letter agency is threatening them with sanctions, they should step forward and say it.

You can't face sanctions easily and as said, if you say you do, you won't be trustworthy anymore. I think the key to secure a privacy-oriented project, that relies on a central point, in this case the coordinator, is to do everything privately. If nobody knows who you are, they can't sanction you. See ChipMixer.

[buwaytress]

If some of you ever used Wasabi wallet and then you want to send Bitcoin to Gemini exchange, you should think again about it.
I saw one user on reddit posting screenshot of email from Gemini support asking him to refrain from using Wasabi or mixers, and they are asking him for documentation evidence for source of his coins, with information about his salary, proof from his employer, link for his profile, bank statements, certificates, signed letters from lawyer, inheritance...  
I think it's borderline crazy to ask your customer to send you all this crap and more... but I guess we live in a crazy world, and we shouldn't use or depend on centralized exchanges at all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gemini/comments/usvlny/just_received_a_disturbing_requestemail_from/

Also heard the same from some FI clients of someone I know working in the bank.

They've been on mild alert since the OFAC sanctions on Blender and while they haven't had to deal with it, they're already saying to the FIs to avoid using mixers.

Note that exchanges AND casinos (I wouldn't have believed it if it didn't happen to me) even are now asking for separate things:
a. source of funds (the easiest, but not if you're using mixer or CoinJoin)
b. proof of source of funds (this is the nastiest, you'll need to be able to sign from source addresses if you say source of funds is your own wallet)
c. source of income (somewhat easy if you're drawing a salary with contracts, tax or do proper invoicing)

I am becoming pretty experienced in all the above now... have passed a few with great difficulty, but you're right, it is going to get a lot crazier for residents in Europe (because of the US).

[Wind_FURY]

It then makes logical sense for them. They want to provide their services to institutions who merely want a mixer/tumber, but without "the taint".

Taint only exists because institutions like Wasabi perpetuate this nonsense.

I agree, but this is the point, "they" don't and "they" can lock us out of our accounts from "their" services/confiscate our coins.

I don't know which services you are talking about, since governments and regulators don't directly run services where you deposit coins or might have an open account.

Do you believe that a user who mixed/tumbled his/her coins through a sanctioned mixer would be accepted by exchanges like Coinbase, or Bitstamp?

But if you're talking for instance about a centralized exchange; first and foremost you shouldn't be worried about your account being closed, since you shouldn't have any funds on there anyway.

Me? You're right, I wouldn't have any funds there because I'm a poor pleb. Hahaha. But that's not the point, plus you nor I, are not the only users of Bitcoin. There will be other users who might be willing to accept the trade-off of being a WasabiWallet user.

And if you're worried that some service or platform could deny your payments if they haven't been green-lighted by Chainalysis / them (whoever that may be), then consider switching platform or telling them to stop using payment providers that filter and censor certain Bitcoin payments.

It's not Chainalysis that's giving the greenlight ser, it's those services not wanting "tainted coins" according to their definition, whoever that may be, that made Chainalysis a necessity.

I personally agree that the user should consider switching to services that did not censor transactions, but that's not the point. Because another user could consider not to switch, accept the trade-off and continue with Wasabi, knowing that he won't have problems sending his coins anywhere.

[witcher_sense]

It's not Chainalysis that's giving the greenlight ser, it's those services not wanting "tainted coins" according to their definition, whoever that may be, that made Chainalysis a necessity.

Wasabi Wallet devs wouldn't have hired chainalysis company if they themselves had technical capabilities to analyze every incoming transaction and make decisions based on such analysis. Imagine you have a bunch of institutional clients who want their transactions mixed as quickly as possible. They share their inputs with you for mixing, but instead of providing the services you are being generously paid for, you waste everyone's time trying to figure out which of the inputs came from criminals. Isn't it better and more effective to find someone who already has a full database of criminals and who can share this data with you in exchange for a small fee? This surveillance firm has a final say since Wasabi Wallet has no other data to rely on except for that provided by that firm. In other words, if chainalysis say that a particular transaction is of high risk, Wasabi Wallet accepts that as undeniable truth blacklisting the transaction.

[n0nce]

Do you believe that a user who mixed/tumbled his/her coins through a sanctioned mixer would be accepted by exchanges like Coinbase, or Bitstamp?

That's exactly my point: they shouldn't be using those. I don't understand what kind of insane Stockholm's syndrome [1] they (and maybe you too) must have to get to the conclusion to just comply with the irrational exchange rules and whatnot, instead of stopping to use them.
I'm also repeating myself, again, but there are alternatives.

But if you're talking for instance about a centralized exchange; first and foremost you shouldn't be worried about your account being closed, since you shouldn't have any funds on there anyway.

Me? You're right, I wouldn't have any funds there because I'm a poor pleb. Hahaha. But that's not the point, plus you nor I, are not the only users of Bitcoin. There will be other users who might be willing to accept the trade-off of being a WasabiWallet user.

I don't really get what's the upside of this so-called 'trade-off'. There must be something in it for both sides in a 'trade-off' deal.
Sure, using a centralized exchange may be a viable trade-off if you're willing to give up privacy for features like staking, trading tons of (virtual^{[but that's not the topic right now]}) coins and being usable on mobile; compared to using Bisq.
However what's the trade-off / deal when using Wasabi? I only see upsides for the Wasabi side, no benefits to the users. As we determined earlier, you don't get privacy and you have to pay a fee, plus you'll be looked into thoroughly by Chainalysis, so why would you use that.

It's not Chainalysis that's giving the greenlight ser, it's those services not wanting "tainted coins" according to their definition, whoever that may be, that made Chainalysis a necessity.

Chainalysis do determine the 'taint' by - well - analyzing the blockchain and telling the exchange which coins are 'good' and which aren't.
In reality, coins are not better for them because they have no ties to criminal activity, but they're good if they are easily traceable and provide useful user data that can be sold at high prices. That's why they hate mixing so much; mixed coins are worthless in terms of data collection - this shows mixing is working.
So governments / agencies / Chainalysis approached (or maybe co-developed from the start (??)) the mixing service provided by Wasabi to lure in people who look for mixers and deanonymize and track them / collect their data.

I personally agree that the user should consider switching to services that did not censor transactions, but that's not the point. Because another user could consider not to switch, accept the trade-off and continue with Wasabi, knowing that he won't have problems sending his coins anywhere.

Again, what's the tradeoff? What's the benefit to the user? They can send their coins to any sane^{(i.e. ignoring the 'taint' BS and not buying into this - the same way they don't check for cocaine traces on dollar bills)} human being, that's the whole point of Bitcoin. Nobody forces them to send coins to an abusive service that is just out to profit from them in (in my opinion) dishonest ways, i.e. not being happy with simply the trading fees (in the context of an exchange), but also trying to potentially sell them fake BTC that don't exist^{[again, other topic, sorry]}, and get as much user data and information to sell, too. Or merchants who aren't happy with the profit from an item's sale but also want to deanonymize the other party and sell their data. I don't want to have anything to do with someone like this and not interested in doing business with them. Would you want to do business with a bully?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

[pooya87]

Wasabi Wallet devs wouldn't have hired chainalysis company if they themselves had technical capabilities to analyze every incoming transaction and make decisions based on such analysis. Imagine you have a bunch of institutional clients who want their transactions mixed as quickly as possible. They share their inputs with you for mixing, but instead of providing the services you are being generously paid for, you waste everyone's time trying to figure out which of the inputs came from criminals. Isn't it better and more effective to find someone who already has a full database of criminals and who can share this data with you in exchange for a small fee? This surveillance firm has a final say since Wasabi Wallet has no other data to rely on except for that provided by that firm. In other words, if chainalysis say that a particular transaction is of high risk, Wasabi Wallet accepts that as undeniable truth blacklisting the transaction.

What's next? Should bitcoin core also start getting help from centralized companies that tell us what coins are clean and what coins are not? What are you going to do when they flag your coins as "tainted" and mark you as a "criminal" because you were in their arbitrary database?
Do you know how many exchange accounts of regular people were closed or restricted because this fake concept called "taint"?

[PrivacyG]

Do you know how many exchange accounts of regular people were closed or restricted because this fake concept called "taint"?

Mine did.  And it definitely sucks.  And I am not a criminal.  And the money is even today, years later, sitting in their accounts because I did not want to disclose my ID, source of funds and other personal documents.  What I call this is Theft.  It is anything but fair.

I wish everyone stopped seeing authorities and institutions or corporations as Saints.  They are definitely not.  See what happened to many Russians since the war started?  They have been a clear, big target of attacks.  And let us admit the truth, there are at least a few Russians in the world who have been a target of attack without a real reason and without deserving it just because they were part of that nation.

Now just think about it.  Let us put it the following way.  Your country starts a war.  You flee the country in disagreement.  All other countries turn against your nation and Chainalysis provides Wasabi a list of transactions and UTXO's suspected of coming from or being part of your nation.  Now Wasabi accepts the list as an undeniable truth and you are all of a sudden a targeted attack, a labeled suspect or criminal, a blacklisted entity even if you have never truly been part of this entire thing and never wanted to be.

As investigative journalists and politicians it becomes even easier to become a target.  Think how many journalists some important people would love to be taken down.  Chainalysis saying someone is a criminal does not make it clear and undeniable evidence they are.  Bitcoin is supposed to set you free without discrimination.  Without making differences.  By starting to make differences we are moving a thousand miles away from its fundamentals!

Whether we like it or not.  Censorship is censorship, no one can tell me censoring transactions is not censorship.  We can not have complete freedom unless we accept that there is a thing to compromise.  Either we accept any and all valid transactions or we shrink or take away the freedom itself.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[o_e_l_e_o]

-snip-

I'm going to quote myself from another thread here because it alludes perfectly to what you've just said:

When it comes to governments censoring certain citizens or certain viewpoints, many people think either "Well, it would never happen in my country" or "Well, it would never happen to me". Here's the thing though. It almost certainly already is happening in your country, but it's just people you don't agree with being censored so you don't notice or care. Are you certain that your government will always treat your fairly? What about all future governments? You really can't imagine any circumstance in which your government might not like something you have to say? As we've seen throughout history, by the time they've silenced all the outspoken critics and start coming for the average citizens, then it is far too late to do anything.

I often mentally draw a parallel between this forum and bitcoin itself. There are a minority of users on this forum who express opinions which are provably wrong and/or abhorrent. Despite this, I have never and would never try to have their posts deleted or ban them from posting here just because of the nature of their opinions. There are a minority of users of bitcoin who use bitcoin for acts I would deem immoral. I have never and would never try to have them excluded from using bitcoin. Bitcoin is either censorship resistant, or it isn't. You cannot pick and choose who it is censorship resistant for.

Again: Bitcoin is either censorship resistant, or it isn't. You cannot pick and choose who it is censorship resistant for. If you, like Wasabi, start censoring some users, then you open the door to censoring anybody and everybody, and that includes you. Saying that you accept censorship of some users is saying that you intend to live a life so meek and unassuming that you will forever comply with literally anything your government (or some other country's government, or some faceless organization like Chainalysis) decides and never once even so much as think about stepping out of line or holding a slightly controversial view, and therefore never risk being censored yourself. It's saying that you are willing to open up your entire life to total scrutiny by unknown third parties to ensure that you behaving like the good little citizen they want you to be.

Being pro-censorship is being anti-privacy, anti-bitcoin, and anti-freedom. The sooner we all abandon pro-censorship services the better.

[Wind_FURY]

I believe the debate is going nowhere sers. I personally agree with some of your points, but in trying to understand the standpoint of WasabiWallet, I also believe that what they are doing is a necessary trade-off for a segment of users in Bitcoin Land. Let's leave the users/community to decide if they actually think Wasabi is good for their own usage of Bitcoin.

nopara73, where can we get the data for Wasabi's usage before, and after the update?

[n0nce]

I believe the debate is going nowhere sers. I personally agree with some of your points, but in trying to understand the standpoint of WasabiWallet, I also believe that what they are doing is a necessary trade-off for a segment of users in Bitcoin Land. Let's leave the users/community to decide if they actually think Wasabi is good for their own usage of Bitcoin.

In my last post in this topic, I quoted your multiple mentions of 'tradeoffs' and ask how you come to the conclusions that those are actually viable tradeoffs. You mentioned it again, so I would really like to know 'what's in it for the user' (since otherwise it's not what you say it is).
Sure, of course everyone has to decide for themselves which services to use or not to use, but it's great to have this discussion since interesting points come up that someone might not have considered yet.

Honestly, by now I'm convinced that Wasabi's decision was purely financially motivated and has no signs of 'tradeoff for a segment of users' or anything like that. There's basically nothing in it for the users. They are deluded by numerous privacy claims, influencer marketing and ads to pay money which is then used to deanonymize and discriminate against them. Pretty predatory type of business.

@dkbit, I also have some BTC on an exchange that asked for KYC to withdraw and just forgot about it. Now you reminded me of it again. It was just a small test amount. Even back then I fortunately already followed the rule to try everything with small amounts first before doing larger deposits. Some exchanges circumvent this by only requiring ID for amounts above a threshold and letting anything below through without KYC, so it's not a guaranteed winning strategy.

[BlackHatCoiner]

but in trying to understand the standpoint of WasabiWallet, I also believe that what they are doing is a necessary trade-off for a segment of users in Bitcoin Land.

Which are the users who, thereupon, make this trade-off necessary? Shouldn't all the people have the right to keep their bitcoin activity private? Yes they should, and as said, zkSNACKs is proud of following this principle. So, what's the problem? Apparently, profit. They choose to introduce "a little" censorship in exchange for a sweet profit.

This is the actual trade-off. The trade-off from the devs' perspective is money for censorship. From a user's standpoint, there's no trade-off. Only loss.

Let's leave the users/community to decide if they actually think Wasabi is good for their own usage of Bitcoin.

Sure, but this is like blaming users for "not being educated enough". Of course and there's individual responsibility, but who's going to educate newcomers of what's what? We, the community. Wasabi is part of it. It's listed in the available wallets of bitcoin dot org, the place that I suppose is greatly visited by them.

And Chainalysis knows about this. I can't imagine how did this change influence their work. I presume a lot. It was down to the Wasabi developers' dignity to accept their offer. And they made their choice, putting asides this little principle - which is was, by the way, their project's focus - for profit.

[pooya87]

I also believe that what they are doing is a necessary trade-off for a segment of users in Bitcoin Land. Let's leave the users/community to decide if they actually think Wasabi is good for their own usage of Bitcoin.

The problem is that majority of users aren't regularly searching the internet to update themselves on all news. Wasabi is also not transparent about the fact that they are no longer a privacy improving tool. So we need to try to give them correct information that there is no trade-off for the users since they lose their privacy. The trade-off is for the company to try and make some more money.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Wasabi is also not transparent about the fact that they are no longer a privacy improving tool.

They still believe they're the best privacy-oriented wallet. Their home page hasn't changed, it still has that "reclaim your privacy" sign. They haven't updated their FAQ. They should warn for possible input denial warnings. But, they don't. And it's obviously justified. Nobody would bother to install a mixing tool knowing their inputs can be rejected.

The only thing they did is a small announcement in their blog and a tweet.

[n0nce]

The only thing they did is a small announcement in their blog and a tweet.

I clicked on the Twitter announcement that you linked and found this gem. Not a bad point.

What's the point of a washing machine that only washes clean laundry?

It actually seems nobody sides with Wasabi under that post, wow. I'm a little bit impressed.

Y'all are fucking stupid

Maybe there is no reason for Wasabi to exist if it can't offer indiscriminative protection?

What's its purpose, then?

2. Total download? GitHub make such data public through their API, but you can check those easier at https://tooomm.github.io/github-release-stats/?username=zkSNACKs&repository=WalletWasabi.

Wow, since the announcement on 16th of March, they only got 300ish downloads per release. The lowest they had in the past were 500, but typically it was thousands of downloads. Even with releases just a week apart they were able to get multiple thousand downloads.
For example, there were only 3 days between v1.1.12.7 and v1.1.12.8 and the former was still downloaded 1,136 times as of now.
Another data point, v1.1.12.6, was updated after just 9 days and in that time got 4,872 downloads.

Since the announcement (end of March) they got a grand total of just around 800 downloads. In over 2 months. Just 800 downloads. They may really have shot themselves in the foot.

[PrivacyG]

They may really have shot themselves in the foot.

I mean, what did you (or they) expect?  I for one support non invasive procedures and law against crime but I find this complete nonsense.  It makes no sense to continue using Wasabi, unless you really like the UI and do not care about Coin Join.  I suppose most of its users were Bitcoin Talk members like me and you and most of us backed off now, so there is that.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[o_e_l_e_o]

I clicked on the Twitter announcement that you linked and found this gem.

I can't find it now, but one of my favorite Twitter comments about this was when someone in Wasabi announced they would be hosting a stall at some bitcoin conference and asking people to come visit them, and the reply said something like "Do you have a blacklist of who isn't allowed in?"

They may really have shot themselves in the foot.

They don't care. They are focused entirely on catering to institutional investors now.

It makes no sense to continue using Wasabi, unless you really like the UI and do not care about Coin Join.

It makes no sense to continue using Wasabi, unless you do not care about your privacy at all. Your privacy with Wasabi is now akin to the privacy you get with a centralized exchange - complete surveillance.

[n0nce]

They may really have shot themselves in the foot.

I mean, what did you (or they) expect?
~snip~

Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I thought more people would drink their kool-aid. Especially on Twitter, where I see less technical competence than here; many people there use centralized exchanges and often don't run nodes, so I wasn't expecting them all to understand the issue with Chainalysis and blacklisting. So I'm pleasantly surprised. Really good to see.

I suppose most of its users were Bitcoin Talk members like me and you and most of us backed off now, so there is that.

I don't use Twitter much, but it seems many users over there also used Wasabi and abandoned it after that announcement.

I clicked on the Twitter announcement that you linked and found this gem.

I can't find it now, but one of my favorite Twitter comments about this was when someone in Wasabi announced they would be hosting a stall at some bitcoin conference and asking people to come visit them, and the reply said something like "Do you have a blacklist of who isn't allowed in?"

That's hilarious! Some fun stuff over there sometimes.

They may really have shot themselves in the foot.

They don't care. They are focused entirely on catering to institutional investors now.

Can they stay in business with just institutional users? Like, if they have no userbase, no amount of investor money should be able to keep them afloat, since there won't be any 'returns' for these investments. Not to speak that as soon as the anonymity pool shrinks, traceability increases and the quality of the product plummets.

[pooya87]

Can they stay in business with just institutional users? Like, if they have no userbase, no amount of investor money should be able to keep them afloat, since there won't be any 'returns' for these investments. Not to speak that as soon as the anonymity pool shrinks, traceability increases and the quality of the product plummets.

Isn't that kind of absurd?
It is always individual or regular users who want to improve their privacy otherwise an institutional investor needs to have transparency and not mix their coins in first place to hide anything from the public (since they are not hiding anything from anyone else).