Bitcoin mixing is NOT money laundering, per se

[pawanjain]

I agree with you guys, Mixing is not money laundering, and Mixing is not a crime by itself.

But the problem here is the people who use these mixing services, 95% of them use it because we get those coins from an illicit source, and they need a way to wash those coins, that's why they use a service like that. And that's the main problem with the mixers.

And is important to remind you that using this kind of service isn't free, so, people pay to hide the source of their coins. So, science it has a cost then is something that people will not do just for fun.

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Defend mixers is like defending guns... Guns doesn't kill, what kills is the bullet

True, it is unfair to generalize the entire gold industry as a money laundering mechanism just because there are cases of abuse and illegal behavior.  This is similar to the case with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin: just because some individuals may use them for illegal activities, it doesn't mean that all people who use cryptocurrencies are engaged in illegal activities.

That is very true. Bitcoin had been associated to drugs for a long time because of Silk road accepting bitcoin as a payment.
But things have changed now and people are using bitcoin for trading these days. Yet there are a lot of people who think it's illegal and some think its a scam/ponzi.
Its true that back in those days bitcoin mixers were being used at peak to launder the money used for illicit activities.
I guess bitcoin mixers are so good that government agencies find it really difficult to trace the coins back to the owner and hence they decided to ban mixers like Chipmixer.

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[SamReomo]

I agree that Bitcoin mixing is a way to keep your Bitcoin information private. But some people use it to hide their bad actions, like stealing or cheating. It depends on why someone is using it if it's okay or not.

It's not fair when people blame products for bad behavior when it's really the person's fault. Sometimes law enforcement only focuses on the product instead of the person using it.

[mendace]

That is very true. Bitcoin had been associated to drugs for a long time because of Silk road accepting bitcoin as a payment.
But things have changed now and people are using bitcoin for trading these days. Yet there are a lot of people who think it's illegal and some think its a scam/ponzi.
Its true that back in those days bitcoin mixers were being used at peak to launder the money used for illicit activities.
I guess bitcoin mixers are so good that government agencies find it really difficult to trace the coins back to the owner and hence they decided to ban mixers like Chipmixer.

Yes, mixers are a great tool for losing track of your utxos, but if they are not used by many at the same time, you risk not having enough utxos to mix, thus rendering the purpose for which they exist in vain.  But at the moment I prefer coinjoins to a mixer service even though they do a great job.

[OgNasty]

I agree that Bitcoin mixing is a way to keep your Bitcoin information private. But some people use it to hide their bad actions, like stealing or cheating. It depends on why someone is using it if it's okay or not.

It's not fair when people blame products for bad behavior when it's really the person's fault. Sometimes law enforcement only focuses on the product instead of the person using it.

Law enforcement has to follow the stolen funds and when they are being laundered through a mixing service it really isn’t a question of whether or not mixers enable money laundering. They do. When an individual is running a mixing service, then that person has enabled money laundering and will likely go to jail. If privacy was built into the Bitcoin protocol, then there would be no individual enabling money laundering, we would only have financial privacy.

Individuals laundering money for criminals = bad
Currency that enables financial privacy = good

Too many people are on the mixers payroll here to have a real discussion about it though.

[franky1]

to add to ognasty post

REGULATORS DO list mixers as something to watch. though sponsored forum-bro's stroke readers to sleep pretending its not happening
but its not deniable.. they DO WATCH actions done by mixers.. they have reasons to

its because fungibility is not a true-false thing. its a risk % and mixers are not a 0% risk. they actually are advertising that they clean dirty money. thus they are waving a flag of servicing criminals.

mixers dont get automatically shut down just by being a mixer. they get shut down when criminals use them. but by advertising a service fit for criminals means regulators watch what goes through a mixer

using a mixer gets you watched more so than for instance buying a giftcard (hackers prefer giftcards) so when innocent people use mixers instead of giftcards. guess what.. innocent people get on watchlists more due to using mixers.

thus defeating the whole point of mixing..
.. mixing is not about privacy becasue your on a watch list. meaning the only real purpose of mixing is to clean dirty coins by passing the dirt to innocent people and take innocent peoples clean funds..

people that want privacy should think smarter and realise that advertising that you want privacy makes other people start to wonder why and start looking at you.
(if 2 people were standing in a street. one on the main sidewalk. and the other hiding behind a bush.. the guy behind the bush looks more suspicious and becomes watched more. .. but for that person hiding to then have a billboard to tell everyone he is hiding and where he goes to hide.. that just defeats the point of hiding)


the less you speak of it the more private you become. the less you make it obvious the more private you become. in short dont use things that make it obvious

[BlackHatCoiner]

When an individual is running a mixing service, then that person has enabled money laundering and will likely go to jail. If privacy was built into the Bitcoin protocol, then there would be no individual enabling money laundering

But there would be money laundering. Isn't that what you're trying to prevent? Seriously now. Do you want to prevent money laundering or individuals having profit from money laundering? Because I'm personally in favor of the former.

Individuals laundering money for criminals = bad
Currency that enables financial privacy = good

Currency that enables financial privacy is actually currency that enables money laundering. You're somehow in the delusion that decentralized mixing is morally correct in comparison with centralized mixing, while the same (and even worse) criminal activity remains encouraged.

[Little Mouse]

Individuals laundering money for criminals = bad
Currency that enables financial privacy = good

Do you think privacy coins are good while mixing is bad? Not sure what's the point while both serve the same purposes.
1. Mixer allows to have financial privacy, and so do the privacy coins.
2. Mixer helps with money laundering, and so do the privacy coins.

While I would say none of them have the goal to help criminals. Both are here to ensure financial privacy. If criminal takes advantage of that, it's not their fault directly, it's not the mixer's fault, not even the fault of privacy coins. Bitcoin has been used by so many criminals and that doesn't make Bitcoin bad.

[jokers10]

...
thus defeating the whole point of mixing..
...

If you want to hide your bitcoins from government then it is probably so. If you use mixers you draw more attention to yourself. Governments have enough analytics and computing power to trace mixed transactions. When we saw news about Chopmixer closure Europol said they already know who used this mixer, so they knew everything they need before they confiscateed servers.

But if don't want some exchange office to know how many coins do you have you can probably hide that information from them. I see no purpose to hide my transactions from gov as they'll find anything if they want, but I usually prefer not everyone knew about that I have... nothing on my account.

[Supreemo]

to add to ognasty post

REGULATORS DO list mixers as something to watch. though sponsored forum-bro's stroke readers to sleep pretending its not happening
but its not deniable.. they DO WATCH actions done by mixers.. they have reasons to

its because fungibility is not a true-false thing. its a risk % and mixers are not a 0% risk. they actually are advertising that they clean dirty money. thus they are waving a flag of servicing criminals.

mixers dont get automatically shut down just by being a mixer. they get shut down when criminals use them. but by advertising a service fit for criminals means regulators watch what goes through a mixer

using a mixer gets you watched more so than for instance buying a giftcard (hackers prefer giftcards) so when innocent people use mixers instead of giftcards. guess what.. innocent people get on watchlists more due to using mixers.

thus defeating the whole point of mixing..
.. mixing is not about privacy becasue your on a watch list. meaning the only real purpose of mixing is to clean dirty coins by passing the dirt to innocent people and take innocent peoples clean funds..

people that want privacy should think smarter and realise that advertising that you want privacy makes other people start to wonder why and start looking at you.
(if 2 people were standing in a street. one on the main sidewalk. and the other hiding behind a bush.. the guy behind the bush looks more suspicious and becomes watched more. .. but for that person hiding to then have a billboard to tell everyone he is hiding and where he goes to hide.. that just defeats the point of hiding)


the less you speak of it the more private you become. the less you make it obvious the more private you become. in short dont use things that make it obvious

you nailed the whole point. this is the best explanation I have read so far. in short, you cannot achieve both privacy and reputation. as you've said if you are mixing your money, you are hiding what you wanted to hide by getting innocent people's money, in that statement alone you are already escaping something. therefore you can conclude that this person has a reputation and a bad one at that. IMO, they are not mixing their money, but they are mixing their reputation in order to escape those tails that are chasing them. for sure anyone who knows how the mixer will function will always be keeping an eye on those transactions before it goes inside that specific mixer.

[OgNasty]

Too many people are on the mixers payroll here to have a real discussion about it though.

Just highlighting this as it is like clockwork that the only people who defend these mixers are on their payroll.  They will say stupid things like having financial freedom is the same thing as allowing third parties to engage in the facilitation of money laundering or that, "the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination" of funds is not money laundering but just maintaining privacy.  On one hand they bash honest projects as scams and unleash their combined power to try and censor people's feedback in the trust network that are honest while claiming to fight scams, and on the other they want the scammers to be able to launder their funds so they can keep getting paid their cut for advertising mixers to them.  Not saying all those advertising mixers are evil.  Some of them just want an easy paycheck.  The ones who list me as untrusted for blowing the whistle about the coming government crackdown on ChipMixer BEFORE they acted are the ones who are literal pieces of shit this community would be 100 times better off without.

[Mate2237]

In my opinion Bitcoin Mixing has nothing to do with money laundering, since bitcoins are fungible. Can somebody here see if there are already cases where there was an investigation opened against somebody who has run an Mixing service or somebody who used a mixer?

And even what happened to Chipmixer is totally different from what the advocates that  are saying, because of what happened to Chipmixer they took all mixers as scam or money launders and that is wrong, you can't accused an innocent Mother because of what the son did out. Everyone had their own race. And from what I read and understand Chipmixer company (the company itself) was not involved but the owner of the company was the money launderer, and the company was seized because the owner was involved in the crime.

[darkangel11]

Too many people are on the mixers payroll here to have a real discussion about it though.

Just highlighting this as it is like clockwork that the only people who defend these mixers are on their payroll.  They will say stupid things like having financial freedom is the same thing as allowing third parties to engage in the facilitation of money laundering or that, "the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination" of funds is not money laundering but just maintaining privacy.  On one hand they bash honest projects as scams and unleash their combined power to try and censor people's feedback in the trust network that are honest while claiming to fight scams, and on the other they want the scammers to be able to launder their funds so they can keep getting paid their cut for advertising mixers to them.  Not saying all those advertising mixers are evil.  Some of them just want an easy paycheck.  The ones who list me as untrusted for blowing the whistle about the coming government crackdown on ChipMixer BEFORE they acted are the ones who are literal pieces of shit this community would be 100 times better off without.

Before cryptocurrency, it was really easy to define money laundering, but then, when Bitcoin came out, we were reading various articles that tried to prove that bitcoin is not money.

"Whatever Bitcoin is, it’s not money.
We use money to buy products and services. The dollar, for instance, is like a claim check on a car, a coat or a ticket to an event—only, in the dollar’s case, it can be used to purchase or sell anything.
Money works best when it has a stable value. While there are stories of vendors being willing to accept a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies will remain curiosities until their value is stable."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2021/02/02/bitcoin-is-not-money-yet/
This is one of many examples.

We have to remember that if you receive bitcoin from someone that bitcoin is anonymous. It's the same with bitcoin mined by yourself or received from faucets, or other anonymous users on this forum.
It's like cash in the electronic form. What happens when you take $100 to a store, buy a chewing gum for $1 and pocket the rest? Is it an act of money laundering?
Concealing the transaction may, or may not be money laundering, just as my post in this matter may, or may not be influenced by my signature. I've spent years on this forum and just a week advertising this mixer. A few dollars that I got from it wouldn't be able to change my mind.

My opinion is as follows: messing with bitcoin transactions is not money laundering. Bitcoin is classified as commodity, not security and not money. It's called digital money but it doesn't tick all boxes. If I buy a gold OTC and decide to turn it into gold bullion, is it money laundering? IMO it's not.

[serjent05]

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Whatever you believe if Bitcoin mixing is used to launder money then it is.  It is not about Bitcoin but the service that uses Bitcoin to launder money.  Bitcoin mixing is not an act of money laundering itself but the purpose of using it to launder money is alarming to the authority.  I know many of us are knowledgeable enough about how money laundering happens.  So anyone that has a malicious intent of laundering fiat currency by converting it to Bitcoin and using Bitcoin mixers to wash the traces and then reconverts Bitcoin to fiat currency, then it can be considered as money laundering, yes?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Just highlighting this as it is like clockwork that the only people who defend these mixers are on their payroll.

This must be the umpteenth time you avoid the counter-arguments and keep cycling through the same bullshit. So you're going to completely ignore my arguments for once more, and blame me for being financially biased? Convenient path, but any adult who's been following the conversation can acknowledge you're ridiculous. The moment someone discredits you for being incorrect, you change the subject. At least show some dignity and admit you've been contradicting yourself throughout.

Even franky1, the individual who believes money should not have privacy, is more conscious than you; he has clarified he's against. You're somehow in favor and against privacy simultaneously, and the moment someone questions you, you ignore. Childish.

[tjtonmoy]

From my understanding, what I know that while Bitcoin mixing itself may not be illegal or used for money laundering, it can be used for those purposes. However, privacy is the most important thing in financial transactions, and anyone should have the rights to use something like Bitcoin mixer if it is protecting their personal information.
And as OP explained, it is not the same concept as money laundering. So there's no point of mixing them both together. Things are bad only when we chose to look at it from a perspective which makes it bad.

[darkangel11]

snipped

Whatever you believe if Bitcoin mixing is used to launder money then it is. 

So, if someone uses a car to ram and murder people, cars should be treated like murder weapons. In 2017 in Charlottesville some guy run his car into a crowd killing 1 person and injuring over 30 people, but cars weren't banned because of it.
Bitcoin itself, without mixers, combined with a no KYC exchange, can also be used to launder money. Should we ban bitcoin, or p2p exchanges?
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[BlackHatCoiner]

<franky stuff>

It's funny how it's you who plays with semantics now. Yes, in that post you mention that money had never had privacy (which is completely false, but let's ignore that for the sake of the topic); you're clearly not in favor of privacy, your intentions reveal so.

Look, there isn't much point talking with you. Any forum reader with minimum intelligence who's been reading your posts can acknowledge not only that you're against privacy, but you don't even understand it to begin with. You think that "waving a flag" that you used a mixer makes you traceable. Doesn't even pass the laugh test.

[majeed]

Some clarification is needed to this board due to the recent incident with ChipMixer.

To all advocates of anti-anonymous Bitcoin and Internet tools: Bitcoin mixing is NOT money laundering, per se.

Definition of money laundering:

Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions with varying definitions. It is usually a key operation of organized crime.

Definition of Bitcoin mixing:

A cryptocurrency tumbler or cryptocurrency mixing service[1] is a service that mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others, so as to obscure the trail back to the fund's original source.

Unless you think that every potentially identifiable coin is obtained illegally (which would be false), Bitcoin mixing does not equate with Bitcoin laundering. While it is possible to launder, hereby conceal the origins of money from an illegal activity, it is not a money laundering service, in the same manner that while it is possible to terrorize with the assistance of end-to-end encryption and peer-to-peer protocols, such a messenger is not a terrorism service.

When you mix coins, not only do you just not want from the rest to know your business; you want them to know you want to conceal it. It can be a completely conscious decision from any person; criminal or not. If you don't respect this dignify-respecting technique which strengthens individuals' privacy, say it, but say it right; "I don't want that much privacy". Prepare to receive an infinite amount of deprecation from privacy advocates afterwards, but clear it up.

P.S.: You can't have privacy without money laundering due to the nature of humans-- by the way, the opposite does not necessarily hold true.

First off, let me express my gratitude for your clarification on the dissimilarity between Bitcoin mixing and money laundering. It's imperative to comprehend that blending of coins doesn't equate to engaging in illegitimate activities. However, my skepticism towards Bitcoin's anonymity remains intact, and its traceability to the source is a matter of concern. In my view, it's essential to safeguard one's privacy, but simultaneously, one must adhere to the cryptocurrency-related laws and regulations.

I truly believe that people have the right to keep their personal stuff private and should be able to prevent anyone from snooping around where they don't belong. But you know what? With all the hackers and cybercriminals running amok, we gotta find a way to balance privacy and security. It's not gonna be easy, but we gotta do what we gotta do to keep everyone safe.

[Desmong]

If Bitcoin Mixing is not any of what you have mentioned, so can you give us a clue of what mixing actually tells us? What is the need for mixing if the fund we are holding is not going to put us in problem. Although I don't really cares what those mixers are for but I think mixing coin is unnecessary for me. Those that are using them enjoy using the service and they don't complain.

[jokers10]

If Bitcoin Mixing is not any of what you have mentioned, so can you give us a clue of what mixing actually tells us? What is the need for mixing if the fund we are holding is not going to put us in problem. Although I don't really cares what those mixers are for but I think mixing coin is unnecessary for me. Those that are using them enjoy using the service and they don't complain.

I would argue that if you don't see the point in mixing your bitcoins, it's highly likely that you don't need to mix your bitcoins. There are not too many cases where someone needs to increase the level of privacy when using bitcoins. At least if you are a bona fide owner.

Some criminals think that they can hide their bitcoins from government using mixers. I'd say it is a popular misconception: transparency of bitcoins blockchain makes it nearly impossible even if to use most modern mixers. Government will find out what it needs anyway. But until criminals caught they think they do everything better than others who are already caught. Well, I'm not so sure about that.