Mixers to be banned

[cygan]

✂️
As long as the brand and name are on the flyer/banner, a raffle draw for minutes is still a form of promotion. If such a raffle draw is permitted, all mixer would organise one every week in order to remain relevant on the forum.
✂️

✂️
Purge will probably happen.
✂️

if you wanted to take it to the extreme and go for it, you could just take the one picture where the brand of the respective mixer is not shown - so there would be no direct connection to those mixers here
just like i said earlier - it's a gray area here imo

i really don't want to give the impression that i really want these free raffles (i don't organize them anyway)
it should just be made clear here for the operators/organizers

[1714660933]

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[PrivacyG]

So I can now move from the wildly criminal Mixing Service advertisement to the very healthy advertisement of MUCH better Services such as gambling or Shit Coins that end up most of the time scamming out every body.

Makes sense!  Why do we all look for Privacy when we could get drunk and spend all our life savings in the Casino so we have a few reasons to maybe contemplate hanging strings from the ceiling tomorrow.  Sounds so much safer!

Because SURELY the people who want to launder their money will never use any of the remaining methods of covering traces.  Surely not.  I need to have my right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech revoked for some bums who will only continue to use the ways described.  Surely Monero will not be a way out for them.  But I have to suffer.  We have to suffer.

How about we also ban advertisement of Services such as Peach?  How about we ban Currency Exchanges on Bitcoin Talk completely.  For all we know, the largest Network of Cryptocurrency crime could be right here.  Executing small but constant Peer to Peer trades to wash their traces away.  Or using Peach for even more Privacy.

How about Collectibles.  How many of our members legitimately purchase Collectibles?  What IF some of them use Collectibles as a way to launder their illegal Coins?  Ban every board!  Make a filter of words and any body who mentions 'Privacy' gets banned.  The Authorities make us look like we are the biggest criminals on Earth anyway.  So do we apply more Censorship or do we risk losing Bitcoin Talk?

Where is this Forum headed really?  How do we know the Casinos some members promote have not been started using criminal money or are not being used for Money Laundering?

Some body will say 'just ban Signature Campaigns completely then, or ban Monero and every such thing altogether'.  But that is even WORSE.  Either this Forum is against Censorship or it is not.  I simply can not fathom how and why these changes are happening.

We are headed to a point where Privacy means going into the dark net.  To a point where the 'criminal side of the Internet' will offer more human rights than Bitcoin Talk will.  Is this the shiny future we should be waiting for?  Guess we are supporting the 2030 Own Nothing Be Happy ideology too?

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So we are not allowed to direct any body to any Mixing Service.  But we can promote Monero and Coin Join non custodial Wallets.

But then you can not direct any body to a Service that promotes Bitcoin > Monero > Bitcoin Exchanges.  How does this make sense?

Reading this from our member called theymos is yet another arrow straight into the entire community of Privacy supporting people.  I feel harshly betrayed.  I said this only a few days ago.  Monero is becoming the underground Currency for the people who care.  Bitcoin is slowly becoming the Currency of the obedient.  What is happening here and now is another step to that world and I will HATE living in that world.

I am reading a post of theymos talking about introducing Censorship to Bitcoin Talk.  This is wild and extremely disappointing.

I thought we were supposed to be the community that stands up.  The community that reads the bad news and moves on finding a way to conquer the Evil.  Let them ban Bitcoin Talk.  Fuck it, I rather have no Bitcoin Talk than a Censored version of it.  Because what is the point then if I have to shut my mouth.

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To any body reading this.  I have one thing to say.  Listen up.  This is a precedent.

If theymos censors Mixers, this is ONLY the beginning of further Censorship.

Why did you not close Bitcoin Talk every time China or any other country of the World has banned Bitcoin?

In fact.  Theymos, I think you made a HUGE mistake by doing this.  You are showing publicly a weak spot.  By banning Mixers out of fear of a Bitcoin Talk shutdown, you are showing the Authorities there is a weak spot they can hit every time they want further restrictions on Bitcoin Talk.  If they want Monero banned next?  All they have to do is start a public crackdown on Monero in a few countries and there it goes.  More Censorship!  Hooray!

Darn it.  This day feels like a page straight out of some pre Dystopia book plot.  We are right there and I can sense it.  The world is fucked.

[stortz]

another pathetic "pre-compliance" bootlickery

[JollyGood]

Why are you engaging with a troll who was only given oxygen because a particular campaign manager has a tendency to enrol participants other campaign managers would never consider. If he was not getting paid for posting/trolling he would have given up on the account and used others to try to build them up.

As for him attacking theymos, well that exposes his mentality even further. You explained perfectly well how theymos is based in the US and has to comply with the law but trolls and spammers will not understand anything about contributing to the forum, they are interested in attention-seeking and getting paid by a campaign manager that keep making mistake upon mistake in his management.

if you are banning a Bitcoin service, then YOU are the ENEMY of Bitcoin. simple as that.

You can criticize theymos as much as you want, but you should at least be fair.

The forum does not exist in a vacuum, it sits on a computer probably physically located in the U.S, owned by a U.S based company, the same thing goes for the domain, it's not truly owned by anyone as long as the government can seize it, it only takes a two-line letter for law enforcement and then you will be a welcomed with

This forum has been seized as part of coordinated law-enforment ... and you know the rest

So what do you expect? do you want him to risk the whole forum along with his freedom for BTC mixers advertisement? ya that would make him a hero but a stupid one, because the government would want any excuse they can use against the forum to take it down.

He probably gave them a bit more than they would have wanted "banning everything mixers" but he managed to run the forum for all these years, he probably knows some things that you and I don't, it's not easy to be his place, it's a place I sure wouldn't want to be at.

I understand the ambition and "fuck the police" kind of stuff, but this is the real world, you need to live -- to fight another day. When and if enough time has passed, and we as BTC community start engaging in real legislation, we would write the new laws accordingly, as it stands right now, the legislators are just old farts controlled by banks and large corporations, and we are just a minority that the majority of the world view as "Crazy group of nerds wasting their precious dollars on some imaginary internet coins", it's way too early to flex against governments, this is the sad reality that we need to live with.

[philipma1957]

Several people seem to be concerned that the current policy will be too disruptive/constraining. How about I make this modification to loosen it a bit: you can direct people to mixers by name (even in something like a "top 10 mixers" topic), as long as:
 - You don't directly post their URLs.
 - It's not a paid ad, and you're not representing a mixer.

Would this be sufficient to address the concerns?

It can hardly look not strange anyway. Different government agencies of different countries say that mixing bitcoins is not illegal per se and they have problems with some exact mixers, we suppose that it is not anything bad per se. So it looks like we are saying that it is okay to use mixers, it is not illegal, but it is forbidden to talk about it on the forum and you will be banned for something not illegal and not bad. I don't know how to make it look not strange.

And partial restrictions look even stranger. Because to find that boundaries we should see what is exactly wrong. Because if all vegetables discussion is banned on the forum it is still strange, but at least consistent. And when it is okay to say that vegetables are healthy food, but I can not say you how to get some for you because it could lead to a ban, it looks much stranger.

We know that banks and investment funds go bankrupt and have problems with authorities on a regular base. Ponzi schemes of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, Chara bank and in Toronto-Dominion Bank, money laundering in JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon, etc. So staying consistent should we ban discussion about banks and investment funds keeping in mind that they can face with problems with authorities in the future? Banking and investment in not illegal per se, but all that can be used by criminals. And I named some organisations which had some problems with authorities (I didn't link any of their sites, but I could). So how to find correct boundaries?

This is a good post. I avoided having a signature for years. Why ? I know my Country USA is going into a very weird mindset.
Finally I decided I would take a signature because I knew things were out of hand.
My country has 21 soon to be 22 failed budgets in a row.
It practices inconsistent polices state to state and county to county.
When I read George Orwell's 1984 50 years ago I was appalled.
But it is obvious that it is happening.

I will keep signature until Dec 31. After that I am not sure what I will do. For a new signature.

[Bitcoin SV]

Wow, how many pedophiles are here? Feds, please attach all 12 pages of this topic to the materials of the case against the mixers

Mixers - invented by pedophiles and terrorists for money laundering

Stop supporting mixers!

So I can now move from the wildly criminal Mixing Service advertisement to the...

Archived for the feds

[suchmoon]

How about we also ban advertisement of Services such as Peach?  How about we ban Currency Exchanges on Bitcoin Talk completely.  For all we know, the largest Network of Cryptocurrency crime could be right here.  Executing small but constant Peer to Peer trades to wash their traces away.  Or using Peach for even more Privacy.

You might be on to something here. I think the safest thing to do would be to ban any mention of Bitcoin on this forum. Then we can all safely post vapid chatbot-generated texts on the Bitcoin Discussion board, peddle some shitcoins here and there, and maybe run a few scams in the marketplace (but obviously take only PayPal payments).

[LoyceV]

Many mixer URLs will be wordfiltered-out

Will you include the feedback system for filtering words? I just tested it, and (assuming I had the correct URL), it showed up. I'm asking because I've left some users neutral feedback confirming their real site (to help others avoid phishing sites).

This is called "freedom of speech" in America. Under these rules, you can add anything to the “black list”. How convenient, isn't it?

You have the freedom to express your opinion when you're in the US. That doesn't mean you get it on every privately owned server. Just like you won't get it inside anyone's house.

[NotATether]

On bright hide, i hope mixer will make new innovation where they offer non-custodial privacy-enchanting service. Or maybe they should switch business where they fork Wasabi Wallet and run their own WabiSabi coordinator without any blacklist.

Spot on! Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

Why stop at Wasabi though? A Whirlpool coordinator would also be cool, assuming such a thing can be extensible.

[Porfirii]

I just want to do my bit in this topic, and I congratulate the management got the decision made, which shouldn't have been easy. Recent developments advised to be cautious and maintaining this historic agora is a responsibility that deserves to be given good attention. And there is a lot to lose because of greed or simple laissez faire approach when it has been proven than criminals are taking advantage of the situation.

So recently I was quite afraid to log in one day and find that the forum has been shut down, but after this decision I'm more confident in the future of our beloved bitcointalk.

[EarnOnVictor]

Does using or acting as an escrow count as mixing?

Why?/Why not?


I have observed some exchanges use (what I'm loosely referring to as) a two step wallet where you link a wallet AND the exchange's wallet. You can then shift coins backwards and forwards between the two. Essentially you can mix coins(deposit to one wallet then withdraw from the other).

Will these exchanges be banned too?


Will discussing methods of how coins could be mixed a banable offence?

No one is banning exchanges and I don't see this question and the reason on point at all. There are some businesses specifically designed for that purpose or similar purposes, but are exchanges specifically designed for that too?

After all, if there is any illegality, exchanges are well-known, they can be made accountable for everything, and having it on record makes it easy for any law enforcers, and can assist them in their investigation. Anyone following that procedure you just explained to hide their money is even only wasting their time as such is never hidden from the radar.

So why ban exchanges here too?

[libert19]

I have only read comments which have been merited, so pardon if someone has already asked this question, what about participating in price prediction contests that gets hosted by mixers in games and rounds?

Allowance to create such threads won't be available in first place I think, but I still seek clarification.

This question is similar what cyagan asked [1].


Personally I dislike the idea and this statement from PrivacyG sums it up pretty well.

"If theymos censors Mixers, this is ONLY the beginning of further Censorship."


[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476162.msg63256011#msg63256011

[mrust_mobile]

Unemployment rate on bitcointalk suddenly rises by 999999%. Shieeet.

Whatarethoseunemployedpeoplegonnado now?

If theymos censors Mixers, this is ONLY the beginning of further Censorship.

Why did you not close Bitcoin Talk every time China or any other country of the World has banned Bitcoin?

In fact.  Theymos, I think you made a HUGE mistake by doing this.  You are showing publicly a weak spot.

Theymos ain't gonna go to jail for this forum. It ain't worth it. You would do the same. Don't talk crazy.

[PrivacyG]

You might be on to something here. I think the safest thing to do would be to ban any mention of Bitcoin on this forum. Then we can all safely post vapid chatbot-generated texts on the Bitcoin Discussion board, peddle some shitcoins here and there, and maybe run a few scams in the marketplace (but obviously take only PayPal payments).

I have a better suggestion.  We should edit Bitcoin Discussion board into Anti Bitcoin Discussion board and ban any positive discussion about Bitcoin.  Then the next time the Feds will enter Bitcoin Talk they will say 'Phew!', wipe the sweat off their forehead and leave the Forum alone.

We should start requiring all members to upload identification documents to continue posting too.  But make them publicly accessible so all those fuckers who are even THINKING of doing crime will feel the fear up their bum and never come back again.  Easy, quick clean up!

Then I have an AMAZING strategy to help theymos keep the Forum up and running.  I have not seen YouTube and Twitter seized by any Local Authority so this has to be perfectly legal.  Add on the Forum a big GIVEAWAY sign no body can miss.  Once you click, you are sent to the Satoshi giveaway of 100,000 Bitcoin.  Put a QR of the personal Wallet of theymos, but tell them Satoshi will double any amount they send to it.  Quick money the perfectly legal way!  Entrepreneurs HATE this secret!

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So I can now move from the wildly criminal Mixing Service advertisement to the...

Archived for the feds

I forgot to say that I am the biggest Terrorist of the World.  I in fact have some bombs laying on my back as I am writing this post.  Please!  Fed!  Investigate me!  Fuck all those Rich people who launder trillions!  Also do not forget to look into poorer sections of the Forum such as Local Indian board or Nigerian board.  You may find some wild criminal activity there.  Could you imagine some body may have withdrawn five Dollars to feed their family and never paid Taxes for it?  FIVE DOLLARS!  Time to strike and sanction all them active criminals!

Please Feds, you can NOT forgive me for being such an avid supporter of the ULTRA MEGA EXTRA EXCEEDINGLY WILDLY SUPER CRIMINAL Mixers!

EXTREMELY RADICALLY REVOLUTIONARILY INCREDIBLY PARTICULARLY VERY Criminal Mixers in fact.  There you go.  Now the Feds must be sweating and shaking, desperately trying to find me.  TRY THAT, FEDS!  In case you got carried away by the caps locked words do not forget to be careful about those bombs on my back though.

[mrust_mobile]

On bright hide, i hope mixer will make new innovation where they offer non-custodial privacy-enchanting service. Or maybe they should switch business where they fork Wasabi Wallet and run their own WabiSabi coordinator without any blacklist.

Spot on! Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

Why stop at Wasabi though? A Whirlpool coordinator would also be cool, assuming such a thing can be extensible.

If mixers will find a way to survive this and gain their popularity back, then the gov will come back to kill everything (the whole crypto business) next time. If that's what you want...

[Igebotz]

Many mixer URLs will be wordfiltered-out

Will you include the feedback system for filtering words? I just tested it, and (assuming I had the correct URL), it showed up. I'm asking because I've left some users neutral feedback confirming their real site (to help others avoid phishing sites).

This is called "freedom of speech" in America. Under these rules, you can add anything to the “black list”. How convenient, isn't it?

You have the freedom to express your opinion when you're in the US. That doesn't mean you get it on every privately owned server. Just like you won't get it inside anyone's house.

Until we know that there is Freedom of speech but Freedom after speech is not guaranteed we would stop believing in free speech.

So why ban exchanges here too?

FXT was an Exchange too and still pull one of the biggest crypto scam, sent many to the grave ... They ain't pure heaven.

[pooya87]

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Democracy in the United States of America is slowly dying.
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Democracy died many years ago in US, but if that weren't enough the last nail in the coffin was during the events leading to January 2021 when hooligans raided the Capitol because of the orders given by their hooligan leader who was never prosecuted for his crimes...

out of fear of a Bitcoin Talk shutdown

If it comes to that I don't think they'd stop at shutting down the forum. There'd be arrests too... It wouldn't be the first time they do something like that either!

[mrust_mobile]

As long as you pay taxes, there is no way out. The gov give orders, you obey.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I just want to do my bit in this topic, and I congratulate the management got the decision made, which shouldn't have been easy. Recent developments advised to be cautious and maintaining this historic agora is a responsibility that deserves to be given good attention. And there is a lot to lose because of greed or simple laissez faire approach when it has been proven than criminals are taking advantage of the situation.

So recently I was quite afraid to log in one day and find that the forum has been shut down, but after this decision I'm more confident in the future of our beloved bitcointalk.

I agree with this. The decision, of course, has been controversial, and there are many people who do not agree, but I believe, like you, that it is better to avoid greater evils. Besides, criticising from a distance is always easy. We would have to see what each of us would have done if we had found ourselves in the same situation as theymos.

[NeuroticFish]

"If theymos censors Mixers, this is ONLY the beginning of further Censorship."

Sadly this doesn't come to me as a shock. And this quote indeed sums it up nicely.

Somehow I tend to believe that theymos may be trying to protect either the users from potential unpleasant questions, either the very existence of bitcointalk. And that's why it is this unclear, somehow contradictory and open to this level of questioning, especially as this forum used to proudly consider itself one for free speech and, more interesting not moderating scams.

Still, I think that theymos could try to express better - if possible (!) - the background of this... mess...



But never forget, everybody, we are only guests here. Wake up calls like this will always remind us about this reality...