ChipMixer.com has been seized.

[LeGaulois]

I haven't see someone talking about this matter, but I hope @Darkstar_ won' get any trouble with this drama :/

Perhaps the chances are small but I'm not sure if I can say there is a 0% probability, especially if he did not take certain precautions.
I always try to compare the opinions of both sides. And in this case, I think as me, just a random guy, and as the FBI and co.

- As a random guy:
I could say it doesn't matter, he has nothing to do with it. They have bigger fish to catch.


- As a law enforcement
He helped promote the site, managed about 50 people and millions of dollars were used. It wasn't a small signature campaign about a casino or whatever. If we take an average of let's say 30,000$/BTC, we're talking about somthing over 20 millions dollars.

I'm maybe paranoiac but it crossed my mind. It would be really sad if he got into trouble

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[LoyceV]

I'm maybe paranoiac but it crossed my mind. It would be really sad if he got into trouble

If that would be the case, why didn't they mention it earlier? Why wait 6 years and let the forum advertise CM all this time, if there would be a reason to stop it? It's not as if it happened in secret.

[LeGaulois]

Because the crime is not done yet. And maybe because they needed to see the signature campaign alive until they finish to investigate or they needed to see CM growing as much as possible.

Imagine yourself as a policeman IRL, you priority is
1st: to stop the crime to not get anymore damages for the victims
2nd: to arrest the person, so he goes in a justice court  to get punished
3rd: taking care about everything about it (collecting witnesses, paper,etc...)

I use the word "crime" but it's to make a comparison with the real life. But to continue with an advertising network.
Take Google Ads for exemple: As a policeman, your prefer to spend time to catch the frauder than contacting Google to shut down the advertising campaign. Simply because even if you do it, it doesn't stop the fraud. And as I argued, your priority is to stop the crime.

Again, I just look at both sides of the story, and I see a few exemples showing me that's it's  happens sometimes.

[NotATether]

The signature campaign was small fries to the police compared to the operation itself. Besides, Bitcointalk is not like other social media, it has a ranking in the 5-digits area in terms of traffic, and never really has more than a few hundred users online per day. Definitely not the kind of platform where "mass promotion" is done, and not big enough to cross their eye.

[stompix]

Again, I just look at both sides of the story, and I see a few exemples showing me that's it's  happens sometimes.

In most of those cases the "promoters" were the ones that were running the whole thing behind the scheme, it's not like they were completely unrelated to the operation, they knew all the insides of the deal and more importantly, they were the ones cashing in all that money under false pretense knowingly of the falsehood of their own claim. Here, it's nothing like that.
And even if we stick to promoters, even if we go one level up, Carlos Matos? 

Moreover, if they wanted to do something against him he would have already been in contact with law enforcement already if they have a case they would have acted already and not let him close everything and purge whatever evidence one might believe he had.

Definitely not the kind of platform where "mass promotion" is done, and not big enough to cross their eye.

Applying tinfoil, a lot of it! Why ruin a perfect honeypot?

[james3441]

Fact is:

- chipmixer lied in it's claims to delete private keys.
I don't know how can anyone defend them after it was made clear by users. I suspect it's about the signature campaign, so ukhm.. corruption or Stockholm syndrome?

Therefore it is  justified to assume that chip mixer ran from very beginning as private honeypot for the owner and gathered all kinds of information.

Based on what was stated by LE - what kind of high profile actors moved money through chipmixer, I don't think the vietnamese guy will be ever found alive.
Other people and some eastern 3 letter agencies might be looking for him to find out what the truth was. Not only law enforcement.

He not only f*** himself but also other people.

[bbc.reporter]

ChipMixer boldly promised to delete all logs, don't keep confidential information and don't store private keys of payout Chips. It lied to everyone.  

Unless you are somehow privy to information the rest of us don't have access to, it's yet to be established that ChipMixer kept logs.  We know that data was seized, but people are merely speculating on what that data might be.  If you could try fo keep any accusations you might wish to make evidenced by verified information, that would be appreciated.

I reckon all web servers keep logs, temporarily or permanently, for different types of reasons. It would not be shocking for Chipmixer to have kept 30 day logs for customer support reasons in case something went wrong with the user's transaction with the mixer or because of other technical reasons.

Also, if there was 7 terabytes of data taken by the authorities, how much of the data are logs and what other types of data do mixers keep?

@james3441. If that is true, why was chipmixer.com seized? It would have been better to let it continue.

[PrimeNumber7]

Fact is that private keys which were supposed to be deleted were seized.

I don't think that was written anywhere, and I neither think private keys should be deleted at all. You should never delete a private key.

From their FAQ:

How long do you keep logs?

Your session lasts for 7 days. After that, your session and all its data will be removed. You can also destroy your session before time is up. We keep statistical data ie. how much was donated.

The fact that they destroy the session doesn't mean they destroy private keys. I'm confident that they must have deleted the logs, as they said.

For a mixer, it would probably be better if they did periodically delete private keys. Blockchain analysis can help find most of the addresses associated with CM, but there are likely some it can't find. Deleting private keys will prevent anyone with access to the server from knowing 100% of addresses associated with CM.

With that being said, CM did not promise (to my knowledge) to delete old private keys. But also, I think it is unlikely that CM had 6 TB worth of private keys stored on their servers.

I haven't see someone talking about this matter, but I hope @Darkstar_ won' get any trouble with this drama :/

I'm maybe paranoiac but it crossed my mind. It would be really sad if he got into trouble

If that would be the case, why didn't they mention it earlier? Why wait 6 years and let the forum advertise CM all this time, if there would be a reason to stop it? It's not as if it happened in secret.

I also hope that DS doesn't get in trouble for his role in being the campaign manager for CM. I can only speculate if he will get in any kind of trouble. My best guess is that law enforcement will look into him, but ultimately not pursue any charges against him.

If charges were filed against DS, the reason law enforcement would have waited 6 years would be to not tip off the operator that law enforcement was coming after them.

[NotATether]

With that being said, CM did not promise (to my knowledge) to delete old private keys. But also, I think it is unlikely that CM had 6 TB worth of private keys stored on their servers.

There would have to be around 200 billion private keys on file in order for it to take up 6TB, which is an order of magnitude larger than the number of active addresses.

I suspect that it's mostly other data, eg: Running a full node will take half a terabyte, and metadata related to the chips; I wouldn't be surprised if that was a few TB as well.

If charges were filed against DS, the reason law enforcement would have waited 6 years would be to not tip off the operator that law enforcement was coming after them.

Now hey. Didn't Hhampuz manage the Bitblender campaign which was also seized abruptly?

Relax, nothing is going to happen to them.

[PrimeNumber7]

With that being said, CM did not promise (to my knowledge) to delete old private keys. But also, I think it is unlikely that CM had 6 TB worth of private keys stored on their servers.

There would have to be around 200 billion private keys on file in order for it to take up 6TB, which is an order of magnitude larger than the number of active addresses.

I suspect that it's mostly other data, eg: Running a full node will take half a terabyte, and metadata related to the chips; I wouldn't be surprised if that was a few TB as well.

I think the data is either some kind of logs or multiple copies of the bitcoin blockchain. The former would be used to trace coin associated with actual crimes and the later would be included in the complaint to scare others into potentially cooperating with law enforcement

I really can’t think of anything else that CM might be storing on their server

[Husires]

Now hey. Didn't Hhampuz manage the Bitblender campaign which was also seized abruptly?

Relax, nothing is going to happen to them.

No, that site was not seized. The two campaigns that were seized are Chipmixer and Bestmixer.
Bitblender closed his services (Bitcointalk Topic: Bitblender shutting down?) after some of his addresses were placed on the US sanctions list after it was revealed that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus used the service to launder the proceeds of cybercrime.
you can read it here https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05/06/us-treasury-department-sanctions-crypto-mixing-service/

Bestmixer is run by @Hhampuz Topic: [CFNP] BestMixer Signature Campaign | Sr. Members - Legendary | Up to 0.01225BTC  (Read 12291 times)

[Kakmakr]

Let's just calm down....

If you used ChipMixer to obscure your transaction history to protect your coins, then you have no reason to worry. It gave you the same pseudo anonymity that "cash" offers you. The criminals that used ChipMixer for criminal activities will have to worry, because those transactions might be in law enforcement hands now.

Yes, it is a breach in your own security, if law enforcement can now link all your transactions, but there are still things like CoinJoin and other mixers that can help you.

The Sig Managers cannot be held accountable for the service that it helped to promote, because they promoted a service that were used for "legal" activities too. Do you think the operators of Facebook are accountable for all the scams that are hosted via that platform or any other social media platform?

[Synchronice]

With that being said, CM did not promise (to my knowledge) to delete old private keys. But also, I think it is unlikely that CM had 6 TB worth of private keys stored on their servers.

There would have to be around 200 billion private keys on file in order for it to take up 6TB, which is an order of magnitude larger than the number of active addresses.

I suspect that it's mostly other data, eg: Running a full node will take half a terabyte, and metadata related to the chips; I wouldn't be surprised if that was a few TB as well.

There is a chance that the mentioning of Data was a speculation from investigators and there is a good reason behind it. Think, if they say that chipmixer holds 7TB, it will cause panic in people and the society will massively say that we shouldn't trust bitcoin mixers because they hold our data. This can damage bitcoin mixing business and make it hard for mixers to gain trust and operate.
If no one gets into trouble, there is a chance that what I said is true but we don't know for sure right now.

[DooMAD]

Think, if they say that chipmixer holds 7TB, it will cause panic in people and the society will massively say that we shouldn't trust bitcoin mixers because they hold our data. This can damage bitcoin mixing business and make it hard for mixers to gain trust and operate.

Panic without evidence is foolhardy.  Concern is a legitimate response, but no one should be resorting to panic when there has been no confirmation on what the 7TB consists of.  It could be copies of the blockchain, or even personal files, media or backups belonging to the owner which are totally unrelated to the mixer.  For all we know, it could be a bunch of movies they pirated.  It could be anything.

[Lucius]

For all we know, it could be a bunch of movies they pirated.  It could be anything.

What we know is that these data contain all chips and vouchers, and we know this because some members of this forum have confirmed that their unspent funds are no longer in their possession. We can only speculate about everything else, and maybe the owner really was a big fan of movies in UHD format.