[ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥

[_act_]

No need to get offended, unless we have talked before.

Someone had told me via PM that 12% sounds enticing and I told him it sounds too good to be true and be cautious (not your keys, not your coins). Do you want to see the PM to be convinced?

Bitcoin doesn't have a central bank to promise guaranteed returns (like FED does with 5% bonds). So whenever someone promises you high yield returns with BTC, you have to wonder if you're the yield.

This is more about what that has been discussed before on this thread. You can go to previous pages and read what happened, why Whirlwind was tagged and how people that have evidence that they have coins their were refunded. Including what you have justed discussed now, was discussed at the time. I can remember that I pointed to it in the past on this same thread. No need for repetition after everything has been discussed.

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[hugeblack]

Since the developer seems to have enough experience, I think it would be good to try again. I just hope they answer how they can prevent a recurrence of what happened, especially since we live in a crazy world and something could happen if the whole project was based on one developer.

The only failure here is the idea of Anonymity Mining, as according to WWM statement, they did not obtain sufficient deposits, so until there is a clear answer on how to make this thing decentralized, it is better to stop.

anyway, since no one lost their money, I will change my negative trust to neutral once they come back and give answers as to why they suddenly disappeared.

[JollyGood]

Perhaps they are in no rush to spend the Bitcoins, as they have more Bitcoins stacked somewhere? They would most likely get back to spending it once the dust has settled down.
I have seen that kind of behavior before, with scammers and hackers. They are definitely aware that the address is being closely watched.

I don't think so. They're running a mixer, they'll be very capable of hiding their trails. If they intended to pull an exit scam, they'd be very capable of doing so, and they'd make sure the servers stay online.

The manner in which the Whirlwind forum representative was posting here it seemed clear without any doubt he was knowledgable. It would be safe to conclude if they wanted an exit scam they had enough knowledge to get it down. Leaving $40,000 DAI in escrow does not sound like the work of scammers (though there is a possibility they could have thought ahead and made a loss of $40,000 as long as it brought in significantly more from mixing).

Maybe we will never know what happened therefore a wide range of theories will always be floating around but it does not seem as though it is or ever was intended to be an exit scam.

Since the developer seems to have enough experience, I think it would be good to try again. I just hope they answer how they can prevent a recurrence of what happened, especially since we live in a crazy world and something could happen if the whole project was based on one developer.

The only failure here is the idea of Anonymity Mining, as according to WWM statement, they did not obtain sufficient deposits, so until there is a clear answer on how to make this thing decentralized, it is better to stop.

anyway, since no one lost their money, I will change my negative trust to neutral once they come back and give answers as to why they suddenly disappeared.

It would be an interesting scenario if they did return and post with an explanation.

Something must have happened since then. They would have reached the forum as soon as they reached their destination. If this email conversation happened in August, then probably something bad must have happened to them.

Though opinions are subjective, that seems to be the most probable outcome as far as I can see.

[GazetaBitcoin]

It's hard to believe this was an exit scam, since they left a huge amount of money behind.

And, based on what HHampuz shared with us, they also knew that nobody could call them scammers in a legitimate way, since they left the 40.000 DAI for the case of a sudden diappearing (which actually happened). Furthermore, based on their words --

Tomorrow everything will be taken care of, just so you know the DAI are still in escrow with minerjones.
In fact if you count the minerjones escrow I am not even sure there is any 'damage'

they did not care if those funds in escrow were used for paying the campaign participants, although the initial destination of the funds was for another purpose (for the review campaign).

Having this in mind, together with the rest shared with us by Hhampuz, I believe there are 2 plausible scenarios:

(1) Something really bad happened to that person which talked to Hhampuz. He seemed so sure that everything will be solved "tomorrow". Actually, while reading these lines I felt convinced that, if I saw these words back then, I would feel convinced that the next day things would get back to normal. So the fact that the respective person simply disappeared may be caused by something bad... (I really hope I am wrong about this.)

(2) After analyzing Hhampuz's reply, together with the thoughts he already had about canceling everything, that person decided to stop everything just like that, having no guilty conscience about signature campaign users, since he already informed Hhampuz that there are already enough funds to cover any financial damage (and he was right, as the funds were used for paying the campaign participants). I say this because we all know that, sometimes, each of us had the feeling of just walking away, without saying anything anymore about a particular situation. I mean that kind of situation where you already said what you had to say, you know that you could continue the discussion, but you have different opinion and, eventually, you let your opinion determine you to walk away.

Other than that I can not imagine about what could happen. There is no such thing as "a honest thief". A thief is a thief and a honest person is a honest person. There is no in-between for these two terms. After all, WW dev did not cause any financial prejudice to campaign users...

[minerjones]

It's hard to believe this was an exit scam, since they left a huge amount of money behind.

And, based on what HHampuz shared with us, they also knew that nobody could call them scammers in a legitimate way, since they left the 40.000 DAI for the case of a sudden diappearing (which actually happened). Furthermore, based on their words --

Tomorrow everything will be taken care of, just so you know the DAI are still in escrow with minerjones.
In fact if you count the minerjones escrow I am not even sure there is any 'damage'

they did not care if those funds in escrow were used for paying the campaign participants, although the initial destination of the funds was for another purpose (for the review campaign).

Having this in mind, together with the rest shared with us by Hhampuz, I believe there are 2 plausible scenarios:

(1) Something really bad happened to that person which talked to Hhampuz. He seemed so sure that everything will be solved "tomorrow". Actually, while reading these lines I felt convinced that, if I saw these words back then, I would feel convinced that the next day things would get back to normal. So the fact that the respective person simply disappeared may be caused by something bad... (I really hope I am wrong about this.)

(2) After analyzing Hhampuz's reply, together with the thoughts he already had about canceling everything, that person decided to stop everything just like that, having no guilty conscience about signature campaign users, since he already informed Hhampuz that there are already enough funds to cover any financial damage (and he was right, as the funds were used for paying the campaign participants). I say this because we all know that, sometimes, each of us had the feeling of just walking away, without saying anything anymore about a particular situation. I mean that kind of situation where you already said what you had to say, you know that you could continue the discussion, but you have different opinion and, eventually, you let your opinion determine you to walk away.

Other than that I can not imagine about what could happen. There is no such thing as "a honest thief". A thief is a thief and a honest person is a honest person. There is no in-between for these two terms. After all, WW dev did not cause any financial prejudice to campaign users...

It still seems like a cop out for them using the DAI for this purpose being that they could have gotten away with much larger sums of btc
....almost like they knew this "could/would" happen

[Synchronice]

@Synchronice,

Other mixers may be very willing to work with "bad money" and not think twice or have connection to states like NK (even if unconfirmed). So that's why and how they succeed. Judging by the number of refunds we issued with the help of minerjones it was basically only the signature participants who had funds on whirlwind.

Casinos are easier, they just need to be seen and players will eventually come. I'm not even sure that the pool of users on bitcointalk who are in need of or actively use mixers is particularly high.

No mixer partners with blockchain analyzes companies to filter incoming transactions, so, that means, mixers accept every money and there will be bad money at some point. So, we can't speak whether whirlwind had to work with bad money or not, that's the whole purpose of mixer, to protect privacy.
But now all of these makes me question, how effective are signature campaigns for mixers? We can confirm that signature campaigns worked for chipmixer damn well. Whirlwind also had ex chipmixer participants and a lot of great users. Logically, they should have succeed because there are other signature campaigns, some of them with good and some of them with not so good users, in terms of quality posts, and these campaigns still manage to run successfully for up to a year or more. If signature campaigns aren't effective, then what's the point of paying thousands of dollars every week? With such a big budget, one could buy ad space and articles on many very popular websites.

It makes perfect sense to escrow money to gain trust and once you catch a good sum, then just leave the business. I would even say that this is safer option than to run a mixer honestly for a long time.
By the way, used bitcointalk's search option and seems this is not the first case when someone does this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2165755.0
Bitmixcoin escrowed some money to gain trust, then ran signature campaign to promote their business and gain popularity, then one day they scammed everyone.

I don't know if I am too hard with whirlwind but you know, negativity comes first in this world where everyone lies.

[LoyceV]

(2) After analyzing Hhampuz's reply, together with the thoughts he already had about canceling everything, that person decided to stop everything just like that, having no guilty conscience about signature campaign users, since he already informed Hhampuz that there are already enough funds to cover any financial damage (and he was right, as the funds were used for paying the campaign participants).

Leaving $14k behind in escrow doesn't make sense, and that's after the escrow paid all claims.

[mikeywith]

(2) After analyzing Hhampuz's reply, together with the thoughts he already had about canceling everything, that person decided to stop everything just like that, having no guilty conscience about signature campaign users, since he already informed Hhampuz that there are already enough funds to cover any financial damage (and he was right, as the funds were used for paying the campaign participants).

Leaving $14k behind in escrow doesn't make sense, and that's after the escrow paid all claims.

Leaving funds in escrow would still make sense even if we were to assume that this was an exit scam -- if the potential income from BTC transactions was higher, then the scammer would leave that money in escrow to keep the trust status while keeping the BTC deposits, it still stands correct now if this was a successful scam operation of 13 BTC why would they risk exposing themselves requesting a tiny bit of money compared to what they already have?

However, this still doesn't add up as a scam to me, not because of the DAI they left but because of what I said back then.

Let's think as a scammer, your main goal is to scam the most money, so now regular users of the forum are aware of your scam and they will no longer use your service, but everyone else who isn't active here and isn't lucky enough to read all the updates doesn't know, so in order to scam even more people you would want to

1-Fix the clearnet
2-Make some withdrawals from the multisig (to addresses you own) to make things seem normal
3-Change the color of the main banner on your website

Basically, anything that would make anyone attempting to use your service more comfortable so you can scam more and more money, if you don't do that, then it's one of four.

1- Stupid (obviously not the case here we know WW person here was pretty smart)
2- You feel bad and don't want to scam more people (would bet my first born that no scammer would do that) p.s you would just shut down the whole service if this was the case.
3-You are not a scammer and something bad actually happened to you.
4-You are indeed a scammer BUT something bad actually happened to you.

They did not fix the clearnet, they did not bother with writing a single comment here to assure everyone that everything was working great so that they could scam more people, they did nothing of what you would expect a scammer will do.

The most plausible scenario I can think of is that WW was run by a single person who had a history of running another mixer and stayed off the radar for a good while until they decided to launch WW, the person made a mistake somewhere along the line and got exposed by the authorities, he probably had to leave to somewhere "safe" where he actually had no access to the mixer's backend and was communicating with Hhampuz using a mobile phone or something, and then he got arrested.

Another very similar speculation:

Now if we track back to when all of this took place it was around 15 Aug 2023.


On Aug 17 Western District of Texas: U.S. District Court published case  1:23-cv-00312-RP document Document 94, a case between OFAC and Tornado Cash.

On Aug 23 Roman Storm (one of Tornado Cash co-founders) was arrested in the state of Washington


Hugeblack did mention the similarity between WW and Tornado Cash, adding that everything that happened around that period gives more "credit" to this theory, it looks like Roman Storm was forced to abandon the project, probably because his lawyers knew about the case and the arrest coming and asked him to stay away from everything crypto, which is what anyone would do knowing that you are about to be arrested and taken to court for a similar project you worked on in the past.

Furthermore, the person behind WW is indeed an intelligent person who knows a lot about blockchain + coding and also speaks very good English (probably someone who lives in an English-speaking country), and has a lot of funds to run and advertise such a project, Roman is a good fit for all of these categories (I am just speculating)

When adding everything together, I just can't believe that this was an average exit scam, it's just a project gone wrong as far as I can tell.(again, I am just speculating)

[JollyGood]

The most plausible scenario I can think of is that WW was run by a single person who had a history of running another mixer and stayed off the radar for a good while until they decided to launch WW, the person made a mistake somewhere along the line and got exposed by the authorities, he probably had to leave to somewhere "safe" where he actually had no access to the mixer's backend and was communicating with Hhampuz using a mobile phone or something, and then he got arrested.

This certainly is a possibility, he communicated with Hhampuz yet did not access his server to make any changes to correct the anonymity mining payout issues.

Another very similar speculation:

Now if we track back to when all of this took place it was around 15 Aug 2023.


On Aug 17 Western District of Texas: U.S. District Court published case  1:23-cv-00312-RP document Document 94, a case between OFAC and Tornado Cash.

On Aug 23 Roman Storm (one of Tornado Cash co-founders) was arrested in the state of Washington


Hugeblack did mention the similarity between WW and Tornado Cash, adding that everything that happened around that period gives more "credit" to this theory, it looks like Roman Storm was forced to abandon the project, probably because his lawyers knew about the case and the arrest coming and asked him to stay away from everything crypto, which is what anyone would do knowing that you are about to be arrested and taken to court for a similar project you worked on in the past.

On the surface, this seems to be more than a coincidence. There is a possibility there was a connection between the mixers and that was the reason Whirlwind was no longer functioning as intended but we are all speculating because of the lack of information from the team.

Furthermore, the person behind WW is indeed an intelligent person who knows a lot about blockchain + coding and also speaks very good English (probably someone who lives in an English-speaking country), and has a lot of funds to run and advertise such a project, Roman is a good fit for all of these categories (I am just speculating)

When adding everything together, I just can't believe that this was an average exit scam, it's just a project gone wrong as far as I can tell.(again, I am just speculating)

It is difficult to argue against that point. It does seem as though something went wrong with the project entirely rather than this be considered an exit scam. This could be a smokescreen to cover for future withdrawal from the address but it seems highly unlikely.

[dkbit98]

I appreciate Hhampuz releasing this conversation with WW team in public.
Nobody likes the way how they decided to stop operating, but I guess they didn't achieve desired results with their campaign so they decided to pull the plug.
Coming back in forum and explaining everything would be a good thing, but I guess they decided not to waste time on explanations.
This case just proves once again how important is to have escrow funds for campaigns, as additional security.

[bct_ail]

Another very similar speculation:

Now if we track back to when all of this took place it was around 15 Aug 2023.

On Aug 17 Western District of Texas: U.S. District Court published case  1:23-cv-00312-RP document Document 94, a case between OFAC and Tornado Cash.

On Aug 23 Roman Storm (one of Tornado Cash co-founders) was arrested in the state of Washington

Hugeblack did mention the similarity between WW and Tornado Cash, adding that everything that happened around that period gives more "credit" to this theory,

That is definitely something that would be comprehensible in the temporal context. Also the similarity between WW and Tornado Cash. As soon as a court hearing takes place, there will certainly be more details on this assumption. But I do not know where one can get such information about negotiations?

This case just proves once again how important is to have escrow funds for campaigns, as additional security.

Indeed.
I had mentioned it here before (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5446575.msg62713168#msg62713168) and asked which possibilities we have as a community to ensure that this does not happen again. Escrow funds for campaigns was one of them. But also the direct payout to personal self-hosted wallets.
Unfortunately there was no discussion. But perhaps such discussion is more off topic and should be discussed in another thread.

[NotATether]

If the forum is not considered a mandatory channel of communication, a banner on the website would be suitable.

That's why I think something bad must have happened. It would be trivial, accurate and subtle to let us know.

Perhaps the owner was immediately arrested upon reaching his destination? That would be the only plausible scenario unless he did not have cellular coverage so had to arrange that for a few hours or a day and then got arrested.

[JollyGood]

That was one of the things that came to my mind but there is also a possibility he never made it to his destination. It is frustrating that we do not know anything about the reasons the website (along with $40,000 DAI) was abandoned. Though it cannot be ascertained beyond reasonable doubt as to what actually happened to the Whirlwind forum representative, at the moment it does not look like anything close to an exit scam.

Perhaps the owner was immediately arrested upon reaching his destination? That would be the only plausible scenario unless he did not have cellular coverage so had to arrange that for a few hours or a day and then got arrested.

[fillippone]

I saw movements on the address bc1qf8h5k6sash8007vpesymxkw2xsg5d0r3j4l5vmcrwpz2pqu66fjstzgd3r that is now empty.
Do you know what is going on?
I had even forgotten about that, and I had to check with which address I was monitoring.

[hugeblack]

I saw movements on the address bc1qf8h5k6sash8007vpesymxkw2xsg5d0r3j4l5vmcrwpz2pqu66fjstzgd3r that is now empty.
Do you know what is going on?

It seems that coins is starting to move, and if they do not return to give a statement in the coming hours, WWM is officially considered to have stopped, and anyone who sent to the service without communicating here has been scammed. I don't think received addresses were a multi-signature address, so they withdrew.

[LoyceV]

I saw movements on the address bc1qf8h5k6sash8007vpesymxkw2xsg5d0r3j4l5vmcrwpz2pqu66fjstzgd3r that is now empty.

I double checked: this was indeed WWM's multisig address.

Do you know what is going on?

I wish! This means the "hit by a bus scenario" didn't happen. The funds were moved in 8 transactions, to 11 different addresses. One of those sent the funds to a different address again.
I noticed all 8 transactions used round fees. That's interesting, that means someone manually entered the fee. Before WWM disappeared, the last automated transactions had fees based sats/vbyte instead of round numbers. Now they used 15,000 to 75,000 sats transaction fee.

Escrow funds are still intact.

[fillippone]

Some more activity on the above address.
I don’t know if I incorrectly stated this morning the address was empty, because now there are several unconfirmed transactions a dx the total address balance is zero.
Still, round mining fees.

[JollyGood]

I saw movements on the address bc1qf8h5k6sash8007vpesymxkw2xsg5d0r3j4l5vmcrwpz2pqu66fjstzgd3r that is now empty.
Do you know what is going on?

It seems that coins is starting to move, and if they do not return to give a statement in the coming hours, WWM is officially considered to have stopped, and anyone who sent to the service without communicating here has been scammed. I don't think received addresses were a multi-signature address, so they withdrew.

This is an interesting situation to be in after the funds have been on the move. How many member would have thought anything like this would happen so close to the period after the mixer owners stopped communicating within the forum (or with Hhampuz). If anything, I would have expected the funds to just sit there untouched forever.

The Whirlwind onion and clearnet websites are not working therefore they might not return to make any statements or comments.

Escrow funds are still intact.

They are still under the control of minerjones right?

[minerjones]

I saw movements on the address bc1qf8h5k6sash8007vpesymxkw2xsg5d0r3j4l5vmcrwpz2pqu66fjstzgd3r that is now empty.
Do you know what is going on?

It seems that coins is starting to move, and if they do not return to give a statement in the coming hours, WWM is officially considered to have stopped, and anyone who sent to the service without communicating here has been scammed. I don't think received addresses were a multi-signature address, so they withdrew.

This is an interesting situation to be in after the funds have been on the move. How many member would have thought anything like this would happen so close to the period after the mixer owners stopped communicating within the forum (or with Hhampuz). If anything, I would have expected the funds to just sit there untouched forever.

The Whirlwind onion and clearnet websites are not working therefore they might not return to make any statements or comments.

Escrow funds are still intact.

They are still under the control of minerjones right?

Yes, I still have the 14444.94 DAI under my control.

[hosseinimr93]

Some more activity on the above address.
I don’t know if I incorrectly stated this morning the address was empty, because now there are several unconfirmed transactions a dx the total address balance is zero.

All those transactions were broadcasted to the network before your previous post and you were right. There was no more activity.
8 transactions were made from their multi-signature address today. 5 of them have been confirmed and 3 of them are still unconfirmed.