Mixer restrictions

[JollyGood]

I have no intention of defending Chipmixer (and anyway I have already stated I cannot recall the full story relating to them being shutdown by governmental agencies) but I do dispute your narrative that Chipmixer was created for the specific intention of stealing coins from customers.

If coins went missing (or were confiscated by authorities) because of negligent conduct by the owner/operator, then how can that be cited as the Chipmixer owner scamming customers?

Were there ever any cases of selective scamming or embezzlement made against Chipmixer in the years it was operating? If there were, how remained unresolved? As I have already stated, I am not defending Chipmixer but I am disputing your claim against it.

You are wrong, Chipmixer specifically intended to steal coins from those that used their services.

[Justbillywitt]

You really think? 

Can you really vision bitcointalk seized because a few mixers were running signature campaigns here? Really?

Up to this day I still think theymos did something that wasn't really necessary. No one was going to shutdown bitcointalk because NinjaMixer was running an ANN here, talking about their maintenance.

We wouldn’t be so sure that nothing would have happened to the forum. For me it was the right decision that was taken by Theymos. I understand that are no decisions taken anywhere that sits well with everyone that such decisions will affect in one way or the another. But when you are a leader, there are tough decisions you have to take at times without seeking for public opinions, provided it is for the general good for all. The most important thing is that we still have the forum today. But the honest truth is that we don’t know what would have happened without that decision.

[JayJuanGee]

You really think? 

Can you really vision bitcointalk seized because a few mixers were running signature campaigns here? Really?

Up to this day I still think theymos did something that wasn't really necessary. No one was going to shutdown bitcointalk because NinjaMixer was running an ANN here, talking about their maintenance.

We wouldn’t be so sure that nothing would have happened to the forum. For me it was the right decision that was taken by Theymos. I understand that are no decisions taken anywhere that sits well with everyone that such decisions will affect in one way or the another. But when you are a leader, there are tough decisions you have to take at times without seeking for public opinions, provided it is for the general good for all. The most important thing is that we still have the forum today. But the honest truth is that we don’t know what would have happened without that decision.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing theymos and/or his decision, yet for sure, he had some of his own personal consequences that could happen, beyond merely the status of the forum and whether the forum might have had become either a legal target and/or had to go through some extra scrutiny - and so in the end, you @Justbillywitt, seem to be suggesting that it is difficult to prove a negative in terms of what would have happened or what could have had happened if theymos had taken a different approach from the one that he had chosen to take, and of course, there seems to have had been selective prosecution and even a lot of injustices in the world (that are ongoing), whether we are referring to Samuari or other entities (individuals) who had been targeted for their having had been involved in bitcoin and/or even having had been involved in the promotion of bitcoin freedoms/privacy.

[PrivacyG]

Can you really vision bitcointalk seized because a few mixers were running signature campaigns here? Really?

Did you forget how Mixers were portrayed at the time theymos took this decision?  I can remember this decision was in the heat of the moment when arrows were flying all around to any thing Privacy related, from Coin Joins to Mixers, Monero, Lightning and what ever else.  Hell.  I can not remember if it was the same year or the next but I remember authorities of one European country even made a Bitcoin Talk account to publicly announce that they seized what ever domain that was.

I actually do believe things would have looked different if some people or companies did not have legal consequences at the time, if theymos never banned Mixers, if Wasabi never bent the knee and accepted the new 'anti crime' rules et cetera.  That was a very dubious period of time where a lot of things changed really fast and I believe things would have been very different if every body stood like steel on their position and tried to fight back.  Although I am more pessimist about things and I believe we have only been given a 'time out' until arrows eventually start flying once again.

-----

What do you think could happen next?
The now popular no KYC instant exchanges getting banned because a few have been sanctioned and seized here and there just because some "hackers from North Korean and Iran" used them to launder some money?

Honestly a part of me feels this might happen in the future if we are to go by the same standards as what happened to the Bitcoin mixers but I hope we don't come to that.

While I am totally against Mixer bans and no Know Your Customer platform bans, we are currently living in the kind of World where that would not surprise me at all.  In fact.  It is kind of predictable already that this is the rather near future.  All these years I kept saying over and over again that we are heading to a World where what we can do now, the Freedom we like to have now will only be possible in the under grounds of the Internet.  I can imagine Bitcoin being used with 'ID linked Addresses' mainly by people who 'have no thing to hide' and Monero becoming the 'underground Bitcoin' mainly used by people like you and me.

We are already more than half way there any way.  People are stressing out about where their Bitcoin comes from, wondering if they will have to explain why, where from and how.  They are already using Bitcoin in such a way that their transactions can be linked to their ID, considering they are giving mug shots to platforms only so they can deposit or withdraw their Bitcoin.  I see people avoiding Mixers and Coin Joins because 'the Output will probably have a high Anti Money Laundering score'.  I would say it is already happening, we are only used to it already..

I actually do believe this is the future, although I would be unimaginably happy if I end up being proved wrong.

How long do you realistically believe no Know Your Customer platforms will be allowed?  Some of them say no jurisdiction applies to them because they are legally 'nowhere'.  This part of the industry is going to become more and more gray, particularly with all the new regulations that nowadays ALWAYS seem to come together with a new set of 'Anti Money Laundering' and 'Know Your Customer' updates.

You have platforms that do not 'bend the knee' but also do not pay any taxes, do not report any thing to any body, not even multi Million Dollar transactions.  Do you think this will go on for ever?

------

Nobody should bend the knee to these people. This is the whole point of having a free speech forum.

It is true.  The hard truth is however that almost every body will bend the knee to these people and pretty much no body would care if tomorrow we do not have a free speech Forum any more.  And in times such as right now, free speech is limited to what ever the boundaries of free speech of today should be.

[examplens]

Can you really vision bitcointalk seized because a few mixers were running signature campaigns here? Really?

Did you forget how Mixers were portrayed at the time theymos took this decision?  I can remember this decision was in the heat of the moment when arrows were flying all around to any thing Privacy related, from Coin Joins to Mixers, Monero, Lightning and what ever else.  Hell.  I can not remember if it was the same year or the next but I remember authorities of one European country even made a Bitcoin Talk account to publicly announce that they seized what ever domain that was.

If I remember correctly, the Sinbad mixer was confiscated in November/December.
Since January, the mixer ban has been activated here. Soon after that, over the next 4-5 months the persecution of related services began, and I think the most radical was the closing of Samurai wallet and the arrest of the developer. A process against the Tornadocash developer followed this and everything caused a wave of withdrawals of the coinjoin function. Wasabi Wallet, Trezor suite, btcpay...
At that moment, theymos's decision to ban mixers seemed very wise.

[NotATether]

How long do you realistically believe no Know Your Customer platforms will be allowed?

That is where I draw the line. I won't sleepwalk into 1984.

[bitmover]

Did you forget how Mixers were portrayed at the time theymos took this decision?  I can remember this decision was in the heat of the moment when arrows were flying all around to any thing Privacy related, from Coin Joins to Mixers, Monero, Lightning and what ever else.  Hell.  I can not remember if it was the same year or the next but I remember authorities of one European country even made a Bitcoin Talk account to publicly announce that they seized what ever domain that was.

If I remember correctly, the Sinbad mixer was confiscated in November/December.
Since January, the mixer ban has been activated here. Soon after that, over the next 4-5 months the persecution of related services began, and I think the most radical was the closing of Samurai wallet and the arrest of the developer. A process against the Tornadocash developer followed this and everything caused a wave of withdrawals of the coinjoin function. Wasabi Wallet, Trezor suite, btcpay...
At that moment, theymos's decision to ban mixers seemed very wise.

I dont think bitcointalk was going to be seized.
And I dont think this is the point .

Bitcointalk could investigated, fined , sued whatever which i think is not worth the headache.

Bitcointalk has a very strong historical value, and its reputation is also associated to bitcoin iitself.

Most mixers when banned went to darknet forums. We can see a lot of them seized or exit scams since 2023.

Maybe admin don't want to associate Bitcointalk to such services.

[dkbit98]

His claim that he "stole everyone's coins" isn't true. CM didn't take stole a single satoshi from me.

kruw is a liar and he twisted facts many times, so I simply ignore him.

Can you really vision bitcointalk seized because a few mixers were running signature campaigns here? Really?

Up to this day I still think theymos did something that wasn't really necessary. No one was going to shutdown bitcointalk because NinjaMixer was running an ANN here, talking about their maintenance.

I could agree with most of the things you said, but we don't know what was happening behind the scenes.
Theymos surely played it safe and wanted to avoid any confrontation and dealing with authorities because of some XYZ mixer.

[Kruw]

I doubt you can grasp something so simple, but if you read it several times, perhaps one day you will understand.

Why didn't you click on the link and read the quote from ChipMixer?...

@ChipMixer: What do you do if someone claims you have stolen Bitcoin from private key you have given. If it is a small amount, it may not have much impact because of the trust you have. But, what happens if it is a large amount? I hope you have already thought about it and have come up with a solution or is working on one! Good luck! By the way, I have sent you a PM! Please reply! Thanks!

Good question. Funds from cannot be stolen, unless you know private key. ChipMixer knows the key, you as a customer knows it and nobody else. Let's assume there was a hacker who somehow got the private key too.

How he got it?

Method 1. Eavesdropping

Customer visited http website? No, it redirects to https and you cannot start mixing with http.
Customer visited https and it was eavesdropped? No, https is encrypted, so private key will also be encrypted.
Customer visited .onion website? It is encrypted, so private key is also encrypted.
Customer visited MITM or forged copycat of ChipMixer? Attacker serves his address and does not give you any chips. Why risk that you will sweep them immediately?

Method 2. Hacking the server

Destroying the session deletes chip private key. In this case attacker would sweep hot wallet and active sessions. If for some reason you do not want to sweep everything instantly, there is no reason to sweep single private key of active session. This would only hurt ChipMixer reputation and that decreases your change for large loot.

This shows that single private key cannot be evesdropped, and hacking the server would result with much bigger mess.

Another group - ChipMixer. Stealing single chip hurts reputation. It is not worth to be little dishonest, when you pay much more for ads and sig campaigns.

Last group - Customer. Let's say you sweeped 1.024 BTC chip. You can write a post that somebody else sweeped it and you demand a refund. If you don't get a refund, you've lost nothing. If you get a refund, you've earned 1.024 BTC and nothing stops you from posting more complaints. Which is why ChipMixer will not refund.

[JollyGood]

While the conversation is taking place about whether the forum could have possibly been seized after Sinbad was seized, there is a valid question that remains unanswered: If the fear was that advertising mixers or allowing them to operate signature campaigns could lead to the forum being seized, why was the Altoinstalks forum not seized even though promoted mixers throughout?

It should also be noted that I created that thread (After Chipmixer, Is Sinbad.io Next To Be Shutdown?) around six months before the actual incident occurred. If the campaign manager had taken the appropriate steps after reading my thread and had he decided to stop promoting Sinbad because it was funded with millions of USD$ to create it, then maybe mixers would not be banned in the forum today.

The fact remains, we simply do not know what might have happened but we do know that the Sinbad mixer was the final straw for theymos.

[Lucius]

While the conversation is taking place about whether the forum could have possibly been seized after Sinbad was seized, there is a valid question that remains unanswered: If the fear was that advertising mixers or allowing them to operate signature campaigns could lead to the forum being seized, why was the Altoinstalks forum not seized even though promoted mixers throughout?
~snip~

We can only speculate what would have happened if there had been no ban on mixers on this forum, but it is impossible to give a definitive answer to that question. The only ones who could provide an answer are the various government agencies that deal with such matters - and the question would be "have you ever had the intention of seizing bitcointalk due to the presence of mixers on the forum?"

The other forum you mention is far less well known and probably somewhere off the radar of those looking for valuable targets. As far as I know, their admin is not publicly known, and their servers are probably located somewhere outside the US.

[AB de Royse777]

The mixer signature is visible on AdolfinWolf's account

@Theymos

[LoyceV]

The mixer signature is visible on AdolfinWolf's account

Try it, that URL is not a mixer.

[uchegod-21]

The mixer signature is visible on AdolfinWolf's account

Try it, that URL is not a mixer.

It leads to a website seized by the Federal Bureau of investigation 

[AB de Royse777]

It leads to a website seized by the Federal Bureau of investigation  

Federal Bureau of investigation is advertising a mixer? :-D

I saw Vod to create a scam accusation a few days ago against FED .
What's going on in the USA LOL

[PrivacyG]

If the fear was that advertising mixers or allowing them to operate signature campaigns could lead to the forum being seized, why was the Altoinstalks forum not seized even though promoted mixers throughout?

If any United States agency wanted to strike Bitcoin right in its skull, one of the most tempting targets would be where Bitcoin started.  In this case, it is Bitcoin Talk where every thing started from.  The other Altcoins Forum is uncomparable to this one for too many reasons.

Anyway.  It does not necessarily have to be Bitcoin Talk being seized.  I would argue the impact would have been possibly even higher if it was some thing as bad as striking theymos instead for 'allowing large scale Money Laundering'.  We already had the Ulbricht case, we really do not need a theymos one.

If I was theymos, I would really like to think I would have continued to do what was right, as in letting Mixers be.  But realistically, I believe the chance is very high that most of us would rather protect our selves in such situations.  Self preservation is a human instinct.

[shinosuke]

I think theymos did the right thing in retrospect. Sure, we all here love privacy, but most people do not understand Bitcoin, and do not understand that not using a mixer before paying someone puts you in actual physical danger, as they could see how much money you hold if you have accumulated a substantial amount in a single address, example, you accepted donations in a public address as an early adopter for a long time, and that address received many small amounts back then that 15 years late became a relevant amount, or you participated in a signature campaign in the early days where you could get paid bigger amounts of BTC as back then BTC was worth way less, and so that address could be found and tied to your account which may lead to your identity (some people here used their real identities or had some recognizable nicknames elsewhere), etc etc. Many instances were you would want to mix, shuffle, tumble, join, whatever you want to call it, in resume, to hide the fact that you own a substantial amount, because it would be dangerous for obvious reasons, and so before paying someone, you would benefit from mixers. But at some point they started this war on privacy, and now paying with BTC is troublesome, since if you want privacy, you have to use such services, which may or may not be legal in your country.

In many jurisdictions, last time I checked, using a mixer is legal. And I was wondering, what happens with earnings from signature campaigns? Could you sell those in a CEX and pay taxes normally? Or would those be problematic? At the end of the day, it was a regular and legal activity: advertising a service, which was legal, specially back then when there where no regulations put in place. So I wonder what is one supposed to do with that money. You did nothing wrong to earn it, but you don't know if you could sell it, yet they want to pay taxes on it if you sell it, so I don't get it.

As far as spending it directly, not sure how or where, and you may also face problems if the coins show up as "tainted" in some database.

Most people would just prefer to sell some at some point. When BTC goes to $1,000,000 and your signature earnings can buy your dream home, you will not be able to cash out, so you'll be stuck with those coins which you would like to sell some of, pay taxes, and move on with your life, but they wouldn't let you, at least not without potentially ending up in trouble. Many people in this situation all over the globe, they are scared, so they do nothing with them.

If you ask around tax experts, they give conflicting advise. Some say, it's nothing to worry about, just pay your taxes, they don't care.

Other's say, don't do it, the moment the coins hit the exchange, your account will be frozen, and you may also face problems with the bank if you are able to unfreeze the coins from the exchange, and then you may also face problems with the taxman trying to explain the funds' origins.

I guess this depends on the jurisdiction, but all over the world, more or less this is the situation for many people that got coins legally, but do not have a track record that comes from your usual purchase on your average CEX.

It's really unfair, but I have not seen any advice I could give other than, do nothing with those coins, unless they pass a law that says "all coins earned before 2020 are exempt from xyz because there was no proper regulation put in place and you can just sell and pay taxes normally". Otherwise you are sort of gambling with the outcome. And if you use them to pay with various services, you are just complicating your track record even more in case you ever decide to do a proper cash out in the future, as all movements erase age of the UTXOs which is also something working in your favor (coins that have not moved for ages help you when explaining how you got them) plus all those create newer taxable events. So after having talked to people, I cannot really conclude anything else, but do nothing, and keep waiting for some opportunity.

If anyone else has any advice or experience in this field, it would be interesting to hear.

[MarryWithBTC]

If the fear was that advertising mixers or allowing them to operate signature campaigns could lead to the forum being seized, why was the Altoinstalks forum not seized even though promoted mixers throughout?

If any United States agency wanted to strike Bitcoin right in its skull, one of the most tempting targets would be where Bitcoin started.  In this case, it is Bitcoin Talk where every thing started from.  The other Altcoins Forum is uncomparable to this one for too many reasons.

Does altcoinstalk have their server in US? If yes, it's a miracle nothing happened to them till now.

Who knows, nothing also would have happened to bitcointalk, but prevention they said is better than cure.

[DPHOR]

If the fear was that advertising mixers or allowing them to operate signature campaigns could lead to the forum being seized, why was the Altoinstalks forum not seized even though promoted mixers throughout?

If any United States agency wanted to strike Bitcoin right in its skull, one of the most tempting targets would be where Bitcoin started.  In this case, it is Bitcoin Talk where every thing started from.  The other Altcoins Forum is uncomparable to this one for too many reasons.

Does altcoinstalk have their server in US? If yes, it's a miracle nothing happened to them till now.

Who knows, nothing also would have happened to bitcointalk, but prevention they said is better than cure.

I don't think you have to compare both sites because altcointalks is a baby site, while bitcointalk is Parent site with higher traffic.
Do you know the numbers of people who visit bitcointalk on a regular basis?
To be honest, I sincerely love the decision of Theymos to let that slide away, as we know mixer shouldn't be the reason for ceasing this forum.