The US government is targeting mixers. Are BTC mixers next?

[passwordnow]

They always crack down on a service like this that has done something terribly wrong. So, if huge amounts are being washed onto any mixer, they'll go after them.
That's quick for them to take down tornado.cash as I know, it's been used by the hackers of zb exchange. Anything that's going to be associated with hacked funds, we also saw this particularly not only in exchanges but also to actual cryptos like Monero getting delisted from exchanges.

[1714830686]

1714830686

[franky1]

What are the chances of coinjoin and chipmixer getting in their scope? No service can judge a user and their intention for using their mixer.

It's a good question for sure and am only getting this news just now.
Like, what really is the stand of the US government to have taken it up with the company. Its not like all users use the services of mixers for fraudulent intent but at most, users use them to ensure privacy and a very discrete transaction.

governments were not directly targetting mixers as it was delegated down to exchanges to blacklist and target mixers
and to put users of mixers onto watchlists and investigate and report users to the government
(standard MSB policy handbook of assigning risk to certain activities of suspicion of money laundering)

but when big deals of large illicit amounts are involved. then the government intervenes directly

[AmoreJaz]

They always crack down on a service like this that has done something terribly wrong. So, if huge amounts are being washed onto any mixer, they'll go after them.
That's quick for them to take down tornado.cash as I know, it's been used by the hackers of zb exchange. Anything that's going to be associated with hacked funds, we also saw this particularly not only in exchanges but also to actual cryptos like Monero getting delisted from exchanges.

it would be no surprise if the government will be after for these mixers, if there will be known illegal money transfers to their mixers. i believe, one thing the mixers can do is to cooperate with the government if they don't want their business shutdown. that's one thing i can see here as another route not to totally lose their business. they can't do anything when the government calls for their termination of services.

[franky1]

https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/recommendations/Updated-Guidance-VA-VASP.pdf
VA = Virtual Asset - VASP = Virtual Asset Service Provider - AEC = Anonymity-Enhanced Cryptocurrency

4
In particular, the virtual asset ecosystem has seen the rise of anonymity-enhanced
cryptocurrencies (AECs), mixers and tumblers, decentralized platforms and
exchanges, privacy wallets, and other types of products and services that enable or
allow for reduced transparency and increased obfuscation of financial flows, as well
as the emergence of other virtual asset business models or activities such as initial
coin offerings (ICOs) that present ML/TF, fraud and market manipulation risks.
Further, new illicit financing typologies continue to emerge, including the
increasing use of virtual-to-virtual layering schemes that attempt to further obfuscate transactions in a comparatively easy, cheap, and secure manner.

shhh dont tell certain people but LN is listed in the quote above, along with mixers and things like monero and liquid

AML/CFT regulations will apply to covered VA activities and VASPs, regardless of
the type of VA involved in the financial activity (e.g., a VASP that uses or offers AECs
to another person for various financial transactions), the underlying technology
(e.g., whether it uses mainnet or the use of embedded layering or other scaling
solutions), or the additional services that the platform potentially incorporates
(such as a mixer or tumbler or other potential features for obfuscation)

shh dont tell certain people but altnets like LN, liquid are also deemed as suspicious, but shh dont tell then or the will cry and get angry

174
In the context of VA and VASP activities, countries should ensure that VASPs
licensed by or operating in their jurisdiction can manage and mitigate the risks of
engaging in activities that involve the use of anonymity-enhancing technologies or
mechanisms, including but not limited to AECs, mixers, tumblers, privacy wallets
and other technologies that obfuscate the identity of the sender, recipient, holder,
or beneficial owner of a VA. If the VASP cannot manage and mitigate the risks posed
by engaging in such activities, then the VASP should not be permitted to engage in
such activities.

304.
Further information on red-flag indicators for VAs that could suggest criminal
behaviour are set out in the FATF’s Virtual Asset Red Flag Indicators of Money
Laundering and Terrorist Financing. These indicators help VASPs and other obliged
entities to detect and report suspicious transactions involving VAs. Key indicators
include:
a. Technological features that increase anonymity - such as mixers, tumblers or
AECs

[hZti]

 they can't do anything when the government calls for their termination of services.

Sinne bitcoin is decentralized and I could easily run a chipmixer for bitcoin from a tent in the Sahara dessert, I doubt that all mixers can simply be shut of by the government. It will just be the question if there is one country in the world that allows them to operate and than we will not have a single issue.

[franky1]

 they can't do anything when the government calls for their termination of services.

Sinne bitcoin is decentralized and I could easily run a chipmixer for bitcoin from a tent in the Sahara dessert, I doubt that all mixers can simply be shut of by the government. It will just be the question if there is one country in the world that allows them to operate and than we will not have a single issue.

the actual issue is by running more mixers and fooling people into using them. more coin gets 'tainted' with mixer spam. and then all the other services
"If the VASP cannot manage and mitigate the risks posed by engaging in such activities, then the VASP should not be permitted to engage in such activities."

in short and for the nth time.. using a mixer actually causes more issues than not using one, because using a mixer does raise a red flag

[BlackHatCoiner]

I've had time to read so much gathered bullshit from franky in one sentence.

Using a Bitcoin mixer grants you privacy. Yes. It does. It makes chain analysis' job harder, which are the kind of corporations that thrive to see you treating bitcoin as non-fungible. You don't give a solution to "tainting" by going along with them, but going against them. How? You don't deal with services that disallow certain bitcoins arbitrarily. Mixing coins or not doesn't make difference to tainted coins, because they're subjectively colored that way in the first place.

But, you're never going to understand this, because you're an authoritarian, anti-privacy, anti-freedom, anti-consensus and, ultimately, anti-bitcoin piece of shit.

[passwordnow]

They always crack down on a service like this that has done something terribly wrong. So, if huge amounts are being washed onto any mixer, they'll go after them.
That's quick for them to take down tornado.cash as I know, it's been used by the hackers of zb exchange. Anything that's going to be associated with hacked funds, we also saw this particularly not only in exchanges but also to actual cryptos like Monero getting delisted from exchanges.

it would be no surprise if the government will be after for these mixers, if there will be known illegal money transfers to their mixers. i believe, one thing the mixers can do is to cooperate with the government if they don't want their business shutdown. that's one thing i can see here as another route not to totally lose their business. they can't do anything when the government calls for their termination of services.

There's nothing they can do but comply with whatever the government will ask them. Sadly, this is becoming the fact these days that mixers will be apprehended by the government and will be questioned for their actual purpose and service of theirs.
Before, it was not a big thing for the government because bitcoin and related services to it aren't on the mainstream but this time, they can't ignore it anymore as there's a huge money that's involve on this business.

[jaberwock]

It seems obvious to me that Bitcoin mixers are nothing more than money laundering.  I'm a bit surprised they've been allowed to advertise here for so long.  I would guess that is going to come to an end before too much longer.  

Why not develop this logic further? According to you, bitcoin mixers are just a tool to make dirty money cleaner, but what about money itself? Bitcoin is clearly a means of exchange, a means to transfer value across borders, and this value inevitably should include "illegal" things. If bitcoin hadn't been invented or "discovered", bitcoin laundering tools such as mixers wouldn't have existed, and everyone would have been living in a crimeless world. But it is now obvious to us all that we have lost this opportunity to live in a world of love and happiness because evil genius Satoshi Nakamoto created a criminal-friendly currency that is outside of the reach of governments. I'm surprised those governments haven't yet shut down this forum and put all its users in jail for promoting and glorification of criminal currency. I'm a bit surprised they've been allowed to glorify this thingy for so long.

Bitcoin itself is nothing good or bad, it's just money. It's not using dollars to buy cocaine that is illegal, its buying cocaine, meaning you could buy it with fiat, gold, stocks, bonds, crypto, exchange your house for it and its all illegal. It means, if you do launder money for doing bad things, you could launder it with fiat, crypto, stocks, golds or whatever and it's still illegal. Mixers are making it easier for people to launder it.

Just because you use crypto for it doesn't mean something bad, it just means that bitcoin is a currency and it depends on how you want to use it, legally or for doing illegal stuff and that means a lot to many people.

[edgycorner]

franky1 to me seems to be the stereotypical forum contrarian personality type.

Every forum has at least one famous contrarian...

Reminds me of this skit by Monty Python lol
https://www.snotr.com/video/7882/Monty_Python_-_Village_Idiots

What are the chances of coinjoin and chipmixer getting in their scope? No service can judge a user and their intention for using their mixer.

It's a good question for sure and am only getting this news just now.
Like, what really is the stand of the US government to have taken it up with the company. Its not like all users use the services of mixers for fraudulent intent but at most, users use them to ensure privacy and a very discrete transaction.

governments were not directly targetting mixers as it was delegated down to exchanges to blacklist and target mixers
and to put users of mixers onto watchlists and investigate and report users to the government
(standard MSB policy handbook of assigning risk to certain activities of suspicion of money laundering)

but when big deals of large illicit amounts are involved. then the government intervenes directly

Imagine shilling for the government. 
There are plenty of ways to launder crypto, this solves nothing.
How about targeting actual criminals and fixing domestic flaws in the system which are exploited by bad actors? 

[franky1]

funny part is

idiots want to remain stupid.
i dont work for the government nor advocate for them..
quite the opposite actually

the thing is unlike stupid people who dont research or learn and instead the idiots rely on fear fantasy and scripts wrote up by like minded idiots or their 'hand-more-down' influencer.. i actually bother to do my research


here is what idiots do not learn

when they use a service. like an exchange. their details are just put on a exchange database that stays on the exchange server for 5 years and then destroyed.
as long as no red flags are triggered, governments do not see that data
why?.. well logic, common sense and research is this:
a business with 80million customers dont have enough employees to physically look at every customer. and governments dont have millions of employees watching hundreds of millions of peoples activity every day..
this is not defending a business or government. this is understanding the reality of life via fact and research

its the same as china. their government do not have billions of people to watch over billions of their citizens 24/7
so stop watching fox news tell you that china are all prisoners . they are not
its like how dumbnews.. oops i mean fox news says 'china is the enemy that no one wants to work with.. yet if you look at all trade. millions of companies work with china and make profit.


knowing the facts of life is not defending a government, its about understanding how things actually work instead of making things up to scare people

so by knowing how things work. i can fly under the radar and not get my exchange account record put into a SAR(suspicious activity report) that goes to government, simply by avoiding the things that services classify as a red flag.

so what is the main red flag.. yep using a mixer
so logic, common sense = what do you do to avoid having your info reach the government. yep not use a mixer

no where on a bitcoin blockchain will you find a note inside a tx that tells everyone what product you bought that day.
so pretending that using a mixer protects your privacy from being seen by a government is like saying

(a bank note does not have written on it how much pepsi you bought that day),
(casinos report customers handling large amounts of bank notes)
 but idiots want you to believe that bank notes do tell governments this so people need to use a casino to mix their bank notes.. yet by using a casino the government are then learning that you are suspicious and put your name on a watch list. thus the very fact of using a casino didnt hide you from the government. it actually got you put on a government watch list

so when idiots pretend 'casinos hide you from the government' .. they have it all wrong and are just telling people the wrong information

[hZti]

in short and for the nth time.. using a mixer actually causes more issues than not using one, because using a mixer does raise a red flag

In my opinion as many people as possible should mix their coins. Then we will not have the issue that there are good and bad coins. If you begin to judge coins it will end that you will have different prices for clean and dirty bitcoins. If we have that we loose what is the core of every currency since forever.

[qwertyup23]

Given that Mixers make your transactions more anonymous by mixing funds with other transactions, no wonder that governments are against it and they are consistently tracking them down. I remember, there was a mixer being advertised here in this forum and it was subsequently closed due to regulations and implementation issues.

Expect more mixers to be targeted consistently by the government due to their nature being highly risky and potentially dangerous to the public. Though I am against it, if the government decides to pursue something, they will be relentless and unforgiving at the same time.

[TheGreatPython]

 they can't do anything when the government calls for their termination of services.

Sinne bitcoin is decentralized and I could easily run a chipmixer for bitcoin from a tent in the Sahara dessert, I doubt that all mixers can simply be shut of by the government. It will just be the question if there is one country in the world that allows them to operate and than we will not have a single issue.

Will you though? That's the problem, that's what they are aiming at. I mean if you are in the USA and you are doing it, then they will make it illegal, if you want to go to Sahara desert then you could do that but I guarantee you that most people will not do that. Make it harder to do, that's all laws could apply for, if you could make it harder then it's hard.

You could literally go to Mexico, which is one border away from the USA and then you will be able to do your mixing there as well, you do not need to go to Africa for it, just one border away. But if you make it illegal, then you will stop many people from doing it right away and that's what they aim at.

[OgNasty]

The Tornado Cash developer was just arrested. This feels like the beginning of the fight against mixers to me. I know if I was one of the chipmixer devs I’d be a bit concerned at the moment. Event those advertising for the obviously illegal money laundering service might be wise to take a step back before they get caught up in this. I wonder how long this fight against anonymous coins will continue and what the next attack vector will be.

[m2017]

The Tornado Cash developer was just arrested. This feels like the beginning of the fight against mixers to me. I know if I was one of the chipmixer devs I’d be a bit concerned at the moment. Event those advertising for the obviously illegal money laundering service might be wise to take a step back before they get caught up in this. I wonder how long this fight against anonymous coins will continue and what the next attack vector will be.

Fight against mixers was inevitable and the more bitcoin gains distribution, adoption, influence, the more active and fierce the fight will be. Mixer developers had to think ahead and organize their services in such a way that the owners could not be identified and found, could not affect the performance of their services. I believe that the fight against mixers and anonymous coins will continue indefinitely (no government will like it): by eliminating one mixers/anonymous coins, another mixers/anonymous coins will appear - better and more confidential. The sharper the sword is sharpened, the thicker the armor will become.

[franky1]

in short and for the nth time.. using a mixer actually causes more issues than not using one, because using a mixer does raise a red flag

In my opinion as many people as possible should mix their coins. Then we will not have the issue that there are good and bad coins. If you begin to judge coins it will end that you will have different prices for clean and dirty bitcoins. If we have that we loose what is the core of every currency since forever.

its not about good or bad coins.
its not even about what silly people think that bitcoin tags on the products they bought that now need to be hidden(silly because bitcoin does not do this)

what it is about is this:
when idiots try to scare people and say that everyone should fear their bitcoin use, people shouldnt just use bitcoin for daily stuff. everyone should fear being on a watchlist just for buying groceries and office equipment/using bitcoin. where idiots then say everyone should use a mixer to hide what your doing to not be on a watchlist... yet the service they promote (mixer) is the trigger that gets people put on a watch list. no matter what they used bitcoin for

getting everyone to use a mixer WILL NOT make regulators just switch off and walk away..
it will just make bitcoin less used.
and yep thats what the silly idiots want. bitcoin to be less used.
their premise of the certain group of the same dozen idiots.. is to try to tarnish bitcoins natural utility of just transacting daily and normally.. to try to BS the community into fearing using bitcoin normally. scaring people into thinking bitcoin is not fit for purpose. and then advertising to scared people that they would be better off using another middleman service or altnet instead.. even when its the very same service or altnet which they advertise  is the cause where normal people would get red flagged

[edgycorner]

The Tornado Cash developer was just arrested. This feels like the beginning of the fight against mixers to me. I know if I was one of the chipmixer devs I’d be a bit concerned at the moment. Event those advertising for the obviously illegal money laundering service might be wise to take a step back before they get caught up in this. I wonder how long this fight against anonymous coins will continue and what the next attack vector will be.

Imagine being arrested for developing an open source code  
I am 100% certain that they will make exchanges drop Monero from supported coins pretty soon. But where will they stop? Will they ban bridge swaps too?

it will just make bitcoin less used.
and yep thats what the silly idiots want. bitcoin to be less used.
their premise of the certain group of the same dozen idiots.. is to try to tarnish bitcoins natural utility of just transacting daily and normally.. to try to BS the community into fearing using bitcoin normally. scaring people into thinking bitcoin is not fit for purpose. and then advertising to scared people that they would be better off using another middleman service or altnet instead.. even when its the very same service or altnet which they advertise  is the cause where normal people would get red flagged

Are you targeting LN? You certainly are the village idiot lol

no where on a bitcoin blockchain will you find a note inside a tx that tells everyone what product you bought that day.

Are you living in 2010? Ever heard of chain analysis and address labelling? You are delusional bro.

but idiots want you to believe that bank notes do tell governments this so people need to use a casino to mix their bank notes..

Now I am convinced, that you are definitely a troll lol
You are talking about money laundering in a condescending manner when you don't know jack about it.

[Woodie]

The US and its bully antiques, well for starters mixers aren't some kind of licensed or legal service being provided out there and unfortunately this will continue to exist as crypto users try to keep their financial footprints to themselves or anonymous and by the way what's the US government interest in all this.... Do they feel this is a parallel economy supporting the Russians after their moves to squeeze them hasn't worked out as planned???

[franky1]

Now I am convinced, that you are definitely a troll lol
You are talking about money laundering in a condescending manner when you don't know jack about it.

the reason i am condescending is because
there are people that are saying they dont understand why things are happening or wondering whats going to happen or dont know what things are considered a reg flag whereby i  literally point them to the regulations guidelines. i even quoted the regulation guidelines
yep i saved people from having to read loads of pages to get to the summary of the bits they needed to know

where then i see a certain know few people posting that for years have had malicious intent of trying to use other people for their personal groups agenda.. thus yes. i get extra condescending about those group of people

and instead of then LEARNING. they went on some social drama personal attack campaign trying desperately to not wake up and try to stay in the fantasy where they can convince themselves that the regulation guidelines dont exist so they can pretend they can think that mixers are safe

these regulations took me 20 second to find and anyone could have done it. so instead of crying and causing personal drama.. just for once.. actually read the point

yes anything that is classed as anonymity enhancing tools is a red flag

and yes that includes sidechains and altnets and mixers and tumblers

so go back and read the post again
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5409206.msg60729993#msg60729993

it lists
"whether it uses mainnet or the use of embedded layering or other scaling
solutions), or the additional services that the platform potentially incorporates
(such as a mixer or tumbler or other potential features for obfuscation)"

so thats not only moero, liquid, but LN and mixers, and tumblers. and other things too

yep they are already primed to have exchanges treat networks that use things like musig and mimblewimble and other confidential things as suspicious red flags, just by using them, no matter the reason you have used them

by me actually bothering to use google. and finding out.. doesnt make me an 'agent' or a troll.
i understand it makes people upset when someone tells you something you dont want to hear.

but how about understand whats being said rather than attack it pretending you can change their rules or dream the rules away by playing ignorant or destroy a law with insults on a forum
i insult certain people because for years now. they have a agenda to mess with the bitcoin community while they kiss ass and pretend to be everyones best friend.. and it seems a few people fall for their kiss assery