need help understanding bitcoin mixing

[axel2078]

Can someone give me a bitcoin mixing for dummies lesson?  I want to understand this better.  I've read a few of the posts by newbies and some folks have recommended to them to mix their bitcoins. What does this involve and how hard is it to do?

[szmarco]

It provides privacy for your transactions by combining your transaction with other people's.
You can get some userful infos from this site.
https://sharedcoin.com/

[notlist3d]

Chances are you do not need it.  Unless you are really paranoid or doing something you don't want others to find out you will never need a mixer. 

You send coins to mixer -> it sends coins in no way connected to you to a address you pick.   Cost's a fee and make sure to use a trusted one if you do it since there is no way to pull coins back.

[ferdinant]

Mixing is when your coins is transfered through many addresses, that is how i understand it.

[bitnanigans]

It's pretty much what mixing literally means. Involves generating a lot of transactions by sending your bitcoins and other bitcoins (multiple various inputs) through various different addresses so that they're harder to trace, but not impossible. There are a bunch of coin mixer services available, but I've never used any myself.

[notlist3d]

Mixing is when your coins is transfered through many addresses, that is how i understand it.

Its not really transferred through a route that can be traced.  They will have it not linked together.  Say BTC Address A sends to mixer they recieve coins on a new address B, that is in no way connected together unless you have the sites info on how it was done.

Again you should never need one.  I personally have never had the need. 

[cashmoney]

Mixing is when your coins is transfered through many addresses, that is how i understand it.

That is as simple as it gets.

[anivia]

it basically hides where the coins come from, so cant track location based coins on the blockchain ledger.

[blitzcrank]

i personally think its pointless.

[yakuza699]

There are users Bob and Alice so this is how it goes in each scenario.
Bob scenario: A mixer site ask where to send the coins, Bob want to send bitcoins from address A(Bob's address) to address C(Bob's friend address) but Bob doesn't want his friend to know that he sent from address A. So a mixing site gives an address B and Bob sends 0.1 from address A to address B(mixers address) he than waits for the confirmation and when it's confirmed.Bob's friend receives coins from address F.
Alice scenario:A mixer site ask where to send the coins, Alice want to send bitcoins from address D(Alice address) to address E(Alice friend address) but Alice doesn't want her friend to know that she sent from address D. So a mixing site gives an address F and Alice sends 0.1 from address D to address F(mixers address) she than waits for the confirmation and when it's confirmed.Alice friend receives coins from address B.
Tl;DR: So if someone is tracking the blockchain It looks like Bob sent coins to mixing service and the coins moved to Alice friend and Alice send the coins to a mixing service and then they moved to Bob's friend. This is how the mixing services works.
Note that this is a very simplified.

[yakuza699]

Just remembered the site called bitmixer.io Here is the copy paste from their faq for more information visit their site.
 All of this may seem super complicated, so let’s get down to the meat and bone of it. BitMixer has a huge reserve of Bitcoins already in its system. A user sends us their BTC and we cap it onto the end of our reserve chain. We then pay the amount of what was purchased from the beginning of our reserve.

Legend:Blue-Your coins
          Grey-Their reserve
          Orange-Mixed coins

[PangPang]

Apart from using a bitcoin mixer, you can also use caisons to mix your bitcoin.

After mixing, people shouldn't be able to link your original bitcoin to your mixed bitcoin.

[jjacob]

From the wiki...

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service

A mixing service can be used to mix one's funds with others', with the intention of confusing the trail back to the funds' original source. In traditional financial systems, the equivalent would be moving funds through banks located in countries with strict bank-secrecy laws, such as the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Panama[1].

Mixing helps protect privacy, but can also be used for money laundering - mixing illegally obtained funds. After laundering, the funds appear legitimate[2]. Mixing large amounts of money may be illegal, being in violation of anti-structuring laws.

There has been at least one incident where a Bitcoin exchange has blacklisted "tainted" deposits descending from stolen bitcoins[3]. Manual or lightly automated mixing methods can make detection of taint more difficult unless the exchange follows the trail[4], but this approach does protect privacy like a true mixing service would.