Mixer restrictions

[Bitcoin_Arena]

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?

Altcointalks is incomparable to Bitcointalk, though, especially in terms of activity or site visitors. Those law enforcement agencies obviously first go for the most popular platforms. Which is why they would go for the likes of Chipmixer and leave out the smaller Bitcoin Mixers

Until recently, they were in the EU, but a few months ago the site was moved to servers outside the EU to avoid possible complications with the MiCA regulation. The owner is also not from the US, strange but it is possible that there are non-US sites.

Domain seizure can happen to any platform regardless of the jurisdictions they are operating in.

[NotATether]

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?

Because mixers aren't illegal.

Money laundering is what's illegal.

If you use any service for money laundering, of course it will get seized eventually - see Samourai Wallet for more details.

[JollyGood]

I completely accept the points you raised but the narrative being pushed at the time was that allowing mixers to be promoted was akin to an impending seizure of the forum. No mention of mixers associated with money laundering or otherwise was at the forefront of the conversation, it was more direct.

On that specific basis, the Altcoinstalks forum did not take the same action. On the contrary, they began promoting/advertising more mixers than before (and still do to this day) and not only that, they were inundated with member teleporting as they were going where they can post to earn an income. Altcoinstalks was not seized even after promoting mixers therefore maybe the steps taken to ban mixers here as a precaution were excessive.

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?

Because mixers aren't illegal.

Money laundering is what's illegal.

If you use any service for money laundering, of course it will get seized eventually - see Samourai Wallet for more details.

[mikeywith]

Because mixers aren't illegal.

Money laundering is what's illegal.

Do you really think the American government gives a fuck about what's legal? All they need is a reason to attack you. If you are very important, they will frame you within the law to avoid the noise -- if you are not, they will just hunt you down and maybe even kill you (or, more likely, make you hang yourself in your cell).

The only reason they haven't attacked Theymos and the forum is because they don't view it as a threat to their control and hegemony. Once they do, they will attack regardless of the content or the services it advertises.

[sabotag3x]

Does this change anything?

As stated in the July 2025 report by the President’s Working Group on Digital
Asset Markets established by Executive Order 14178 (E.O. 14178), Strengthening
American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology, “the Trump Administration
supports the ability of lawful users of digital assets to privately transact on a public
blockchain.”10

The report also acknowledged that although illicit actors “use mixers to
obfuscate and launder funds … lawful users of digital assets may leverage mixers to
enable financial privacy when transacting through public blockchains.”11 The report
recommended that Treasury should consider next steps regarding its proposed rulemaking
concerning CVC mixing.12

FinCEN is withdrawing its finding that international CVC Mixing is a class of
transactions of primary laundering concern, and the proposed rule, published on October
23, 2023, seeking to impose special measure one regarding international CVC Mixing.

While FinCEN maintains that illicit actors continue to use mixers and other tools and
methods to hinder law enforcement investigations, this withdrawal is informed by the
concerns from commentors that the expansive definition of CVC mixing in the proposed
rule could have a chilling effect on legitimate activity and place a large reporting burden
on covered financial institutions. However, FinCEN will continue to monitor activity
involving CVC mixers for indicia of money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illicit
finance activity, and may take appropriate steps in the future to mitigate any such
activity.

[Lucius]

Does this change anything?
~snip~

Only one person can answer that question, but my opinion is that this doesn't change anything about how the forum views mixers. Mixers were never illegal in the literal sense of the word, but to be honest, most of their profits probably came and still come from bad players. Most mixers are too expensive for the average user anyway because as I wrote before the basic fee is 70 00 sats + 3-5% of the amount being mixed. It is much cheaper to do a BTC <-> XMR swap.

It is hard to expect that they will be allowed to return to this forum, especially considering that after the mid-term elections in the US, some things may change compared to the attitude that exists today.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Does this change anything?

I think that's what you're looking for:

For the mixer policy to be reversed, the legal environment would have to improve a lot. I think that one of these would have to happen:
 - Some mixers win their court cases.
 - Congress passes laws which explicitly protect mixers.
 - The administration ends up being extremely pro-privacy, better than 99% of politicians in office.

It'll take at least a year before we have a good idea of what the new administration will really be like, but my expectation is that they will only be ~10% better than the Biden administration in this area. I would be surprised if they dropped the case against the Tornado Cash devs, for example.

The Trump administration could be a lot better than I expect, but they could also be a lot worse. I think for example that the Trump administration might be even more aggressive on sanctions (especially against Iran), and they might therefore see financial privacy as a threat to their sanction power. There are also several reasons why the Trump administration may want to restrict cross-border payments generally: to allow for financial repression in response to a debt crisis, to improve the US's hugely-negative net international investment position (which is often a major issue in the minds of Trump-aligned economists), to tariff services in addition to goods, or to control the value of the dollar. Severe restrictions on cross-border payments could also put them in opposition to financial privacy.

The Biden administration clearly wanted to move as close to banning crypto as they could get away with, so it's definitely good that they're gone, but it's not as if Satoshi has just been elected president. The Trump administration has some interest in pleasing their crypto donors, but that can be achieved mainly just by getting prices to go up. They don't much care, and don't have to care, about privacy, disintermediation, decentralization, etc.

The administration has signaled some support for privacy from custodial solutions and backed off one regulatory proposal, but Congress hasn't passed anything protecting mixers. And since there is no mixer that has ever won a case, and neither is the administration "extremely pro-privacy", I think that's a "No."

[Upgrade00]

Does this change anything?

I doubt it would, this being the withdrawal of a proposal at the time, which never became a regulation or rule.

From a privacy standpoint it is good to have the search light on mixers dimmed. They are taking the more neutral stance which is the one shared by every bitcoin enthusiast and encourages more honest usage. This whole situation, including the mixer ban here only helps to discourage regular users from seeing mixing as a grey area they would want to avoid, this raises the percentage of illicit usage for it.

Even if the signatures don't come back, I hope we can have more free conversations about it here.

[Cinexa]

but Congress hasn't passed anything protecting mixers. And since there is no mixer that has ever won a case, and neither is the administration "extremely pro-privacy", I think that's a "No."

There is Developer protection bill, that is stalled last month.
That protection is the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act and it was introduced in January 2026 by Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden. According to that bill, people who write or publish crypto software that cannot control users funds should not be considered as money transmitters. That was the main charge which hit mixer developers like Tornado Cash co founder Roman Storm.

The Clarity act was passed in July 2025

However, the Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to move the bill forward. The bill probably won't move before the new congress starts in January.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Does this change anything?

Nothing changes that much. As far as I know, FinCEN just decided to withdraw a proposal that would have put in much stricter reporting requirements on transactions involving crypto mixers. The proposal was brought forward somewhere in 2023 and had not yet been passed into law, so everything remains as it was. I believe the proposal was going to bring in a much harder environment for cryptomixers than we have been seeing in the past years, so I am very certain Theymos won't reverse the ban right now.

[MarryWithBTC]

From a privacy standpoint it is good to have the search light on mixers dimmed. They are taking the more neutral stance which is the one shared by every bitcoin enthusiast and encourages more honest usage. This whole situation, including the mixer ban here only helps to discourage regular users from seeing mixing as a grey area they would want to avoid, this raises the percentage of illicit usage for it.

Even if the signatures don't come back, I hope we can have more free conversations about it here.

I didn't fully understand the bold parts of your post, I want to be sure what I understood or there was an error somewhere in the sentence.

Do you mean that the continued ban of mixer in the forum is an evidence or testament that mixers are illegal and should exist only in the gray areas?