On a more serious note though, have you considered that passing your coins through a centralized "mixer" service isn't a real privacy enhancement?
I give you one example.
I have a computer laying around unused since probably 2005 or older. It has hardware decent enough to run a simplistic Free Linux distro. It runs only over Ethernet and I will never use that port. I install the Linux Operating System offline and a verified version of Electrum. I create a Wallet over there.
You send me 0.005 Bitcoin to my offline Wallet. I mix 0.001 and send it to another Bitcoin Talk user, let us call him Joe, also from my offline computer by broadcasting it through an amnesic session of Tails on a secure computer.
Tell me how you are going to trace and link the 0.001 I sent Joe to the 0.005 you sent me.
I take it that it's pretty unlikely for a known service address such as from a mixer or from an exchange to be of the same ownership as a third party sending coins to it. So chain analysis is pretty real and has been quite handy for many uses, one of which has been catching criminals.
Chain Analysis is real as in the idea of it is real. But the accuracy of the analysis shows how B S it truly is.
Why do many users mistakenly get flagged for sending 'Tainted Bitcoin' when they claim they never even used Mixers or Privacy Enhancing stuff. Or, why is there always an argument for why Mixers need to be removed but Authorities never show real numbers and proof of how many of the Mixer Transactions involve illegal activity.
The Blockchain is fully Transparent. But this also means the history of the Bitcoin you receive is, while fully Transparent, also very misleading in a Blockchain Analysis. My Bitcoin has probably seen THOUSANDS of Addresses before it arrived into mine. I have a habit of jumping my Coins from Address to Address at different times and random interval of days. How do you differentiate my last 5 jumps to the last 5 historical moves of a random UTXO?
Mixers are risky, trust based and to a large extent negate the whole point of bitcoin's existence.
How in the World did you think of this. While Bitcoin is here to be Trustless, it still involves Trust to a particular extent.
For example. When I sell something for Bitcoin on the Forum, the first party will still rely on the Trust that the other party will send what was negotiated. You can arrange a Middleman. But you will have to trust that they will do the job correctly and accordingly. When you buy something from a Shop, you will still have to trust that the Shop will not scam you. Both cases are still risky and there have been enough negative events such as Scams before, even if the victim used only Bitcoin and no Mixer.
You can simply not move in this world if you trust NOBODY. There is still a need for Trust to some extent.
Even the very loyal and careless customer of a Centralized Exchange will have to Trust the Exchange for not scamming them out. Say you deposit a thousand Dollars to Binance and you do have a Know Your Customer enabled account with all forms and every single Privacy invasive form filled and sent. Who guarantees Binance will not seize your Coins? For all you know, your Coins may have been part of the largest drug deal in the world in the very recent history before your ownership.
Thinking it may not happen? FreeWallet guarantees every thing will work AMAZINGLY if you have a 'Wallet' on their App. And if there is any suspicion about your Coins, all you have is send them proof of Ownership and they will solve the problem for you. Great!
Spoiler. They will NEVER return the Coins back to you because no matter how much information you send, they will continue to ask for more. What can you do about it?
Of course. Mixers are not perfect. But it is a big headache to me to think that people run away so fast from a Mixer while happily sending Mug Shot style pictures to Centralized Exchanges to verify their Accounts and give them all their personally identifiable information AND pictures of personal documents. Yet many of these Exchanges do not even have a public physical address and are often not even secure at all.
Hell. We should start calling them Mixers 'Exchanges' too. Maybe there would be less people running away from them.
Passing bitcoins through a so called mixing service introduces risks and likely doesn't even solve the issue of traceability that well. Because the reasons someone might want to use a mixer is disassociation coins from certain activities. Even through many false positives though, coins through mixers might even be easier to detect as "suspicious" to those looking.
I wonder if you would have the same opinion if you would be the victim of a false positive.
Also. I am using Cash only. Should I be thoroughly checked for 'certain activities' by the Authorities? Because the reasons someone might want to use Cash is disassociating from certain activities!
