Europol Sezied 1909 BTC from "Chipmixer"

[LDL]

"ChipMixer" one of the most popular signature campaign on the Bitcoin forum has been seized by an agency today.
15 March, Europol (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) Sezied total assets 1909.4 BTC which current market value $46M from Chipmixer.
The agency has already shut down the Chipmixer website, the agency also alleged that the Chipmixer website has laundered a total of 152000 BTC ($3.8B) at different times since 2017.



Germany and U.S. Seize Over $46M Crypto Tied to ChipMixer Investigation: Europol

[Charles-Tim]

ChipMixer.com has been seized

[coupable]

Sad News especially for bitcointalk community.
I have been following the news in various articles, and I have noticed conflicting reports regarding the fact that the authorities were able to identify those in charge of the project.  This prompted me to think about the possibility of using forum data to verify identities. Or maybe identify the advertising campaigns that chipmixer launched since 2017.

[Faisal2202]

I must say if something bad happens then we should not promote it. If Chipmixers were used for Money laundering then they should be shut down. I agreed with this. WHY? because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it, almost replied most of the OPs asking about the legalization of BTC, Blockchain, when will BTC dominate Banks, When will people use it as a normal currency, When do people stop afraid of P2P transactions. Questions to these questions also lie in their good and bad use cases.

No doubt everything in the world is used with its good and bad impact, the one which has more fruits in it dominate over the other, than why, feel sad for these project (ahh if I am not wrong as I am not accusing anyone just a thought) does the team know about it? maybe not if not then really it's a sad reality but nothing we can do now, all we can do is promote good use cases of blockchain and BTC, not the bad use cases which harm the beauty of BTC.

[NotATether]

Sad News especially for bitcointalk community.
I have been following the news in various articles, and I have noticed conflicting reports regarding the fact that the authorities were able to identify those in charge of the project.  This prompted me to think about the possibility of using forum data to verify identities. Or maybe identify the advertising campaigns that chipmixer launched since 2017.

They apparently got that information from his devices. Theymos wasn't bungled for IP address data (I hope).

I must say if something bad happens then we should not promote it. If Chipmixers were used for Money laundering then they should be shut down. I agreed with this. WHY? because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it, almost replied most of the OPs asking about the legalization of BTC, Blockchain, when will BTC dominate Banks, When will people use it as a normal currency, When do people stop afraid of P2P transactions. Questions to these questions also lie in their good and bad use cases.

Well look at it this way. They shut down Chipmixer, right? (And I'm still wearing this stupid signature until next week probably)

Did they simultaneously clean out all of the bitcoin doubling scams, Bitcoin exchange scams, Bitcoin services which just take the users' money and don't return it, scam casinos like 1xbit, the KYC scams, and the bitcoin address stealing malware?

No, of course not. Why? Because they don't care about any of that stuff.

Governments that are hostile to crypto are two-faced just like Harvey Dent - on one side you have them fight "money laundering" (including bogus assertions of laundering that are actually just a user protecting their privacy), and on the other hand, they don't give a rat's ass if their population loses all their Bitcoins to scammers vacationing in Malibu.

Just some food for thought. Everything they do is heads - as in "good".

[DooMAD]

If Chipmixers were used for Money laundering then they should be shut down. I agreed with this. WHY? because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it

Pretty sure those same authorities would describe all mixers as money launderers, including the one you're advertising in your sig.  Governments perceive privacy as immoral because they want to know everything about you.  Mixers make that difficult for them.

[pooya87]

I can't help but ponder the timing of this take down.

We have a US bank going under, which they say is the biggest collapse since 2008 financial crisis (that led to creation of bitcoin) and we also have bitcoin price starting to rise as the US banking system is feared to fail catastrophically in the near future.
All of a sudden Justice Department decides to shut down a very old business while releasing a statement listing all the negative/illegal things they claim has been done using this service (which they are actually saying is done using bitcoin).

I don't believe in coincidences

[avikz]

That's really sad! But such risk was always there when Bestmixer was shut down by the same enforcement authority. It's quite unfortunate that a huge amount of fund was seized and apparantly there's no way to receive it back now if someone is not involved in criminal activities.

More and more mixing services are being targeted by the enforcement agencies since 2022 and multiple mixing services were shut down completely since then.

[Z-tight]

because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it, almost replied most of the OPs asking about the legalization of BTC, Blockchain, when will BTC dominate Banks, When will people use it as a normal currency, When do people stop afraid of P2P transactions. Questions to these questions also lie in their good and bad use cases.

It does not matter what BTC is used for, many countries would never make it a legal tender because of it is a decentralized currency. But you should understand that there is a difference between legal tender and legal. BTC is legal in most countries around the world, only in a few places is it illegal; and in the places it is legal people spend it like a normal currency through merchants that openly accept payment in BTC.

all we can do is promote good use cases of blockchain and BTC, not the bad use cases which harm the beauty of BTC.

Fiat is used for all kind of bad purposes, but nobody preaches to people how they should use it, Fiat is even easier to use for bad purposes than BTC because it is harder to trace the criminals. I do not want people to use BTC to do bad things, but the beauty of BTC is in its freedom, and we can't dictate to anyone what to do with their coins.

[Wiwo]

"ChipMixer" one of the most popular signature campaigns on the Bitcoin forum has been seized by an agency today.

It's very important to clarify one fact and dust off a wrong assumption and narration of the situation from the paragraph above.

-Chipmixer signature campaign is different from chip mixer itself even though they promote the company it is 100% normal for anyone in this forum to have the right to promote whatever services their wish unless it is a proven scam then the community will not support it.

-for certification's sake, it is the company that was seized and not the signature campaign, and as far as I know, the campaign is still ongoing until otherwise from the manager.

[kryptqnick]

How did they do it? How do you seize assets of a company that literally specializes in ensuring that assets are mixed well enough to not be traced? I mean, I understand how you block a website, but seizing assets and closing a business down is a whole different thing which required either Chipmixer's cooperation or very impressive investigative work of the authorities. I've never used mixers because I've never felt the need to do that, but I do believe that some people can use mixers for privacy reasons rather than money laundering. Then again, it's not like a company can check which reason its service is being used for, and mixers are very convenient for financial crimes, so I'm not surprised that the authorities cracked down on it.

[Falconer]

Of course this is the most shocking news I heard today. Some of the other mixing services still advertised on the forums still seem safe, but they are on the government list. I don't know how these kind of things can affect bitcoin, but I don't think anyone should blame bitcoin even though it is used in many illegal activities by some people.

I don't expect the government and its authorities to blame bitcoin in this case, but I do expect the government to blame those who misuse bitcoin for their illegal actions.

[stompix]

I must say if something bad happens then we should not promote it.

Mixer avatar? Checked!
Mixer signature? Checked!
Doesn't that make sense? Checked!

Well look at it this way. They shut down Chipmixer, right? (And I'm still wearing this stupid signature until next week probably)

Speaking of, has anyone come up with some smart quote to replace the now not working links?
I tried to play with it to add a in memoriam or #privacy forever but it went so bad I just kept the old one.

[panganib999]

Sad stuff for the bitcointalk community, as their campaign's revered as one of the biggest campaigns here. In any case, I don't really have much of a say in this other than I fear that they may go after other mixers in the market, because as of now what I get from this coordinated pincher attack against chipmixer is that the government sees cryptomixers as "bitcoin mix, bitcoin can't be traced anymore, mixer bad, mixer money laundering" awooga bullshit.
Which begs the question of why in the hell are they specifically attacking mixers when the problem is still at large? Scammers, thieves, all of those entities still roam free and are still availably tricking people out of their hard-earned money! Stopping mixers from operating isn't gonna solve the problem, and for me this is just a lame attempt just to say "hey, we're doing something please praise us".

I can't help but ponder the timing of this take down.

We have a US bank going under, which they say is the biggest collapse since 2008 financial crisis (that led to creation of bitcoin) and we also have bitcoin price starting to rise as the US banking system is feared to fail catastrophically in the near future.
All of a sudden Justice Department decides to shut down a very old business while releasing a statement listing all the negative/illegal things they claim has been done using this service (which they are actually saying is done using bitcoin).

I don't believe in coincidences

This too, now that you pointed it out, I'm beginning to formulate some conspiracy theory in my brain that leads me to think that they are attacking mixers and will continue to attack the industry to tip the balance of power in their favor once again, since all of their banks are falling down under whilst bitcoin isn't showing signs of stopping.

[romero121]

Only time can give the right answer. Based on the seizure it looks like the authorities have got solid evidence against the mixer service. If not it isn't possible to seize and shut down the service all of the sudden. One of the reputed service provider accused and shut is completely unexpected. Most of the participants of the promotion were much experienced users, they could've never thought of being into a campaign that had promoted an illegal service support system.

[pooya87]

This is also a good wakeup call for all the other centralized services and altcoins (eg. Tether, Ethereum, Ripple, BCash, ...). The governments could shut them down all the same and make the same exact claims they made here (used for illegal activities) and arrest the centralized authority of them (like arresting Butterin and seizing his tens of millions of premined ether).

[suzanne5223]

Oh my Gosh!
This is sad news for all privacy enthusiasts that have developed an enthusiasm for the Chipmixer Bitcoin tumbler site. I could remember some years ago (probably 2-3 years from now) it was BestMixer that was seized by the authority and also read when Theymos advised the use of 2 or more privacy services when anonymity is the top priority.
This brought up a question, apart from anonymous and no KYC exchange like Crypton Exchange is it possible to have a Bitcoin tumbler site that cant be seized by the authority?

[Faisal2202]

snip

Maybe! But nobody knows, as last time i checked the report on which they were saying one of the mixers (that still promotes here) has been used for money laundering by NK and i can see it is still running (no hate or offense just sharing the fact). But as you well said everyone has their own agendas and these agendas are in favor of the economy. I just want to say we can bear this loss, maybe not the ones who have worked but things will sort out, i feel also sad but that the way of the globe.

snip

You are totally right, As i mentioned everything has its own Bad and good uses but i do not want to blame of offend anyone or do not want to make any statement that i regret after so, let's bear this.

snip

hehe, is it used for money laundering? If yes, then I will be happy too if the same happens. I think i should add few more words as i re-read my post and it looks like giving the vibe of hyyyy wow this is banned and business will run. but that was not my impression i was trying to say, bad things have a bad end. if the mentioned one has the same then i am ok with bad end.


note* i am not an expert or high-rank member of this community i shared my thoughts according to my mentality and knowledge and idea about technology no doubt Mixers has a hell lot of good uses but that uses if being used for the wrong purposes then its a shame and in that usage, a platform end is also sad. If any of my words upset or are no right then i seek forgiveness because my intentions were not to offense someone but just to share my thoughts.

[jossiel]

This brought up a question, apart from anonymous and no KYC exchange like Crypton Exchange is it possible to have a Bitcoin tumbler site that cant be seized by the authority?

If Chipmixer is a known mixing service that has been seized by Europol then let's have that thought that everything can be seized and turned off by the authorities, Europol or Interpol.

The amount that they've taken from the service was really a lot of money.

I could remember some years ago (probably 2-3 years from now) it was BestMixer that was seized by the authority

Was it them or it was bitmixer? I'm not sure if it was also blender.io? I can't remember the exact one but yes, it was another mixing service.

[franky1]

things some people will never learn

mixers ARE flagged as money laundering services and a higher risk of facilitating illegal activities ..

mixers are not a privacy tool. regulated exchanges actually watch users that have mixed coins far more then they watch regular users
you are not hiding by using mixers, your actually ending up being spotted and seen more by using them

you need to realise that laws are real.. and that using privacy coins and anonymity services does not absolve you of a law nor make laws dissolve.
laws dont disappear. they still remain

it just means it takes longer for people doing illicit things to be found. where by the only safety is if you play with such small amounts you just get lost in the noise and become not worthy of chasing

money is not 100% fungible
when you get an income from an employer, its treated differently by the tax office to money you got from a loan, lottery win, relative, investment account. or street hustler/drug dealer

yes swapping and mixing does produce more varied % of fungibility the more its mixed to create more noise and limit the % of risk of relating to criminal funding.

but at the same time using a popular advertised service known to be used by the dark markets actually cuts throw the noise and gets funds flagged more.. and by using a service with a higher majority of darkmarket users.. innocent users end up with a higher % of that dark money being passed to them

i do laugh when people want privacy but then advertise/promote where they throw their funds publicly
these comedians like to shot themselves in the foot