....I no longer think Wikipedia is a reliable source for cryptocurrency topics.
This is crazy, because the Elongated Xmorons all say that Wikipedia is untrustworthy for anything. But I have a different reason for why this is true for any cryptocurrency topics on Wikipedia.
A few hours ago, I made four edits to this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_tumbler Each edit added new information to each section. In particular, one of the edits added a paragraph about Sinbad's seizing, and another provided information about law enforcement seizing stolen coins from the Atomic Wallet hack on exchanges.
Within
minutes, all of these edits were reverted. Reason? "Unsourced or unreliable sources".
You can't make this up. This is what it looked like before my edits:
Tumblers take a percentage transaction fee of the total coins mixed to turn a profit, typically 1–3%.[3] Mixing helps protect privacy and can also be used for money laundering by mixing illegally obtained funds. Mixing large amounts of money may be illegal, being in violation of anti-structuring laws. Financial crimes author Jeffrey Robinson has suggested tumblers should be criminalized due to their potential use in illegal activities, specifically funding terrorism;[3] however, a report from the CTC suggests such use in terrorism-related activities is "relatively limited".[4] There has been at least one incident where an exchange has blacklisted "tainted" deposits descending from stolen bitcoins.[citation needed]
...
Another alternative to mixing services are "privacy wallets", allowing users to exchange bitcoin in an untraceable manner using so-called CoinJoin Bitcoin Mixer transactions. Since no central server is involved, this eliminates the problem of a mixing server stealing money or acting as a law enforcement honeypot. In recent years, criminals have increasingly moved from mixing services to privacy wallets.[citation needed]
Here is after my edits:
It is illegal to use mixers to hide money that comes from criminal activities, such as ransomware, controlled substances, and darknet marketplaces, as frequently these transactions are both large and in violation of anti-money laundering laws. Financial crimes author Jeffrey Robinson has suggested tumblers should be criminalized due to their potential use in illegal activities, specifically funding terrorism;[3] however, a report from the CTC suggests such use in terrorism-related activities is "relatively limited".[4] There has been at least one incident where an exchange has blacklisted "tainted" deposits descending from stolen bitcoins.[5]
The existence of tumblers has made the anonymous use of darknet markets easier and the job of law enforcement harder.[6] In response to this, blockchain analysis firms have used techniques to trace the transaction activity of many tumbler users.[7]
...
Privacy wallets that use CoinJoin technology are generally accepted to provide stronger anonymity than a crypto currency tumbler<ref>{{Cite web |title=Coin Mixing and CoinJoins Explained |url=https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/coin-mixing-and-coinjoins-explained |url-status=live |access-date=2023-12-26 |website=Binance Academy}}</ref>, especially if the wallet is open-source. Whereas it is often doubtful whether a tumbler keeps logs, despite many often claiming not to keep any, users are able to verify whether the wallet is sending personal information anywhere either by inspecting the codebase, or capturing [[Wireshark]] packets.
== Money laundering ==
Despite tumblers often providing legitimate services for users, they are frequently abused by cyber-criminals to launder cryptocurrencies, usually stolen bitcoin from exchanges. In response, many governments have taken action to seize tumblers suspected of helping, or attempting to help, facilitate money laundering.
...
In November 2023, the tumbler Sinbad.io was seized by [[Fiscal Information and Investigation Service|FIOD]], and its addresses were subsequently sanctioned by the Department of the Treasury. It was claimed that over 40% of its transactions were illegitimate and the service was used by [[North Korea]] to evade sanctions.<ref>{{Cite web |title=FIOD takes large crypto currency mixer off the air |url=https://www.fiod.nl/fiod-takes-large-crypto-currency-mixer-off-the-air/}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Treasury Sanctions Mixer Used by the DPRK to Launder Stolen Virtual Currency |url=https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1933}}</ref>
Why do people want to keep clearly wrong information like "mixing large amounts of money may be illegal, being in violation of anti-structuring laws" and "In recent years, criminals have increasingly moved from mixing services to privacy wallets" on a public wiki? Not only that, but the article clearly looks like it was written 10 years ago with no updating of important subject material.
This is why:
1) having alternate wikis is important
2) discussion about
any kind of cryptocurrency topic, including ones you may not like, should not be censored.
Well, it's going to be a hot take. Personally, I don't use Wikipedia at all, mainly because I accidentally included false information in my uni paper a couple of years ago, and it's still a trauma for me haha. Seriously though, I don't really believe in community-monitored sources of information. Nobody pays people to find and edit false information on Wikipedia, so what's really the incentive?
