Any mixing services siezed / shut down by law enforcement?

Emoclaw

sr. member

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Quote from: MunzeDealer on July 25, 2017, 09:33:30 AM

That guy is active mainly on illegal markers subreddits, so it could be LSD talking.

I know that mixers are legal, but while they are not illegal yet, it's just a matter of time before they become illegal and in that case BitMixer.io would be the first target. That's probably the reason why the admin decided to stop it while it's safe.

Quote from: nejibens on July 25, 2017, 10:24:57 AM

The mixing sites are used mainly by people earning their coins from illegal deals, so i think with time governments will illegalize such serv ices, even if it is legalized till now in many countries.

There's no reason for mixing sites to become illegal. While probably 99% of people use them to buy things from the dark web, the services themselves do not endorse/represent any such thing, they just provide privacy.
Bitmixer.io most likely closed down because they were aware of how people were using their service, at least that's what I can infer from their post.

c789

hero member

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Bitcoin mixing is not a good choice if you want to remain private.

The bitmixer.io founder said "...Bitcoin is transparent non-anonymous system by design. Blockchain is a great open book..."
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.20331854

I believe the reason he put "by design" in bold print is that he was drawing attention to Bitcoin as a public ledger system. That's implied by his next sentence. All transactions are public, even those of mixers. A mixer highly obfuscates outputs but doesn't erase them. It can't because it's all based on a public ledger.

That obfuscation is getting easier to track as technology progresses:

https://news.bitcoin.com/law-enforcement-continues-invest-bitcoin-tracking-services/

http://time.com/3689359/bitcoins-track-anonymous/

https://www.elliptic.co/law-enforcement/

In fact, the Feds tracked Bitcoin transactions as part of their closing AlphaBay:

Quote

Federal agents obtained the warrants after tracing a number of Bitcoin transactions originating with AlphaBay to digital currency accounts, and ultimately bank accounts and other tangible assets, held by CAZES and his wife." (p. 17, lines 24-26)

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3898109/AlphaBay-Cazes-Forfeiture-Complaint.pdf

Keep in mind that not only are all transactions on a public ledger, they're permanently there. So, let's say you want to gamble your privacy by mixing and think your BTC can't be traced today. But 5 years from now, when tracing technology/blockchain analysis is much more advanced than it already is, your mixed transaction could be "unmixed" by blockchain analysis and linked to you.

I'm a fan of BTC but mixing is a really bad choice if you want to remain private.

Just remember two words: public ledger.

Wendigo

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Coin mixing is basically laundering money. How is that legal? If you try these shenanigans with fiat you will get arrested.

Everyone here has been moaning how they wanted Bitcoin to become a global currency. Well the first step towards that is to end all fucking laundering services first LOL

williamuk

member

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Merit: 10

Quote from: iluvpie60 on July 25, 2017, 10:25:46 AM

That doesn't really make sense though.
a mixer just mixes your btc and charges you a certain fee.

It allows people to hide their money (by making it anonymous) and government don't want that as it would remove their power to tax it.

Blaming terrorists or illegal activities is just an excuse.

BitHodler

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At first I thought that they may have been forced to close their doors, but after thinking, and letting the statements from Bitmixer sink in, he may actually have a point.

If you look the amount of coins that went through Bitmixer back in 2016, which is close to a million coins according to him, he may have ended up generating enough profit to close.

Add the fact that this service has been running for years, and now imagine the profits it has generated in the other years. Financially he can very well justify closing its doors without selling his service.

deisik

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English ⬄ Russian Translation Services

Quote from: OmegaStarScream on July 25, 2017, 10:30:51 AM

I believe that all mixers claim that they keep zero logs of their clients transactions. If that's actually the case, the law enforcement will be unable to actually find a proof against a specific mixer to shut it down. It's just a matter of time until we get SegWit, LN and then TumbleBit and then, the law enforcement won't be able to a track a single transaction

That's not the case, absolutely

And that can't possibly be the case since the mixers have to keep the logs at least for some time in case a dispute with a client should arise. And this is not just my words based on nothing. I remember some dude who had been running a mixer service himself made some confessions about the gory details of the business. It made an interesting read providing some insight into how matters actually stand in respect to mixing

GreenBits

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Quote from: Xavofat on July 25, 2017, 10:57:02 AM

Quote from: iluvpie60 on July 25, 2017, 10:25:46 AM

so if they close down and sieze any mixers, you just use an exchange. or, go to a btc gambling site and do low bets for awhile.

BTC gambling sites are barely legal as it is, especially in the US.

As for exchanges, the ones that deal with fiat are already subject to KYC/AML regulations, sometimes to the extent of doing long questionnaires about the purpose of the funds that you're trading there (Bitstamp does these sometimes). Altcoin exchanges could be just one step behind - Bittrex already has a withdrawal limit of 1 BTC equivalent for unverified accounts per day.

If mixing sites closed down there would still be ways to stay private, but the careless and less knowledgeable might get caught.

I also doubt that Bitmixer was under direct threat from authorities but they could feel that they should shut down before it gets too serious.

according to current aml/kyc law, that they accept deposits from users and hold them for any amount of time, they would be subject to identifying the customer over x funds. also, mixing coins is the definition of money laundering from a legal standpoint. imagine if someone could trade dye stained bank robbery bills for fresh, clean bank notes. that is essentially what this is, just programatically. i think, given the current legal climate (Sessions is cracking down hard on the darkwebz), BitMxer is making a timely exit, before the SHTF. To b honest, pretty sure a lot of darkweb vendors and customers us that service; he might be distancing himself from the whole shebang.

Notice the timing of this, and the recent darkweb shuttering by law enforcement. its not a coincidence. but, we dont know for certain how they are related, we are just conjecturing Wink

at the very least, thank you BitMixer for a very useful service, we appreciate your contribution to the sphere. Additionally, thank you for your signature campaign, I do not know how much money you have given me over all this time Wink

its a grip, and we appreciate it. shouts out to Laura too for holding down a solid campaign, she was fair as fuck. No complaints.

Xavofat

hero member

Activity: 938

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Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

Quote from: iluvpie60 on July 25, 2017, 10:25:46 AM

so if they close down and sieze any mixers, you just use an exchange. or, go to a btc gambling site and do low bets for awhile.

BTC gambling sites are barely legal as it is, especially in the US.

As for exchanges, the ones that deal with fiat are already subject to KYC/AML regulations, sometimes to the extent of doing long questionnaires about the purpose of the funds that you're trading there (Bitstamp does these sometimes). Altcoin exchanges could be just one step behind - Bittrex already has a withdrawal limit of 1 BTC equivalent for unverified accounts per day.

If mixing sites closed down there would still be ways to stay private, but the careless and less knowledgeable might get caught.

I also doubt that Bitmixer was under direct threat from authorities but they could feel that they should shut down before it gets too serious.

richardsNY

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Quote from: izanagi narukami on July 25, 2017, 10:32:14 AM

I think it's only a personal matter so they wise enough to protect bitcoin in good way

It contributes zero to the actual "protection" of Bitcoin. People with bad intentions will just make use of a different tumbling service, and that's it. Now Bitmixer has left the crypto space, a few new services will pop up, and the existing ones will see a sharp rise in usage. I just hope it is really his personal decision, I really do.

Quote from: izanagi narukami on July 25, 2017, 10:32:14 AM

Let say if they being shut down by goverment, I'm sure for who open similiar service also do same thing

Time will tell. But in case that's the hard reality, it will happen. Not sure if it has anything to do with the recent police infiltration of dark web markets, but this comes very soon after that. Instead of saying Bitmixer will shut down its service by that and that date, it has been shut down immediately. At the end of the day, we can only speculate about what really happened. No one beside Bitmixer knows the real reason....

izanagi narukami

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I think it's only a personal matter so they wise enough to protect bitcoin in good way
Let say if they being shut down by goverment, I'm sure for who open similiar service also do same thing

OmegaStarScream

staff

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I believe that all mixers claim that they keep zero logs of their clients transactions. If that's actually the case, the law enforcement will be unable to actually find a proof against a specific mixer to shut it down. It's just a matter of time until we get SegWit, LN and then TumbleBit and then, the law enforcement won't be able to a track a single transaction.

Catmony

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Quote from: nejibens on July 25, 2017, 10:24:57 AM

The mixing sites are used mainly by people earning their coins from illegal deals, so i think with time governments will illegalize such serv ices, even if it is legalized till now in many countries.

I don't think the one who are involved with darknet marketplaces only uses tumbling services, for example coinbase users can't gamble with their bitcoins so they might use this mixing services to add anonymity to their transactions and enjoy gambling without any restrictions. There are also many other reasons like someone love to remain anonymous completely when sending/receiving bitcoin but don't think the inherent privacy bitcoin have is enough to protect his personal details might also use this services.

iluvpie60

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Quote from: MunzeDealer on July 25, 2017, 09:33:30 AM

Quote from: Emoclaw on July 25, 2017, 09:24:27 AM

The reason for bitmixer.io's closure has been outlined by themselves here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-lagest-bitcoin-mixer-is-about-to-stop-working-2042470
As far as I'm aware, Bitcoin tumblers are legal and no such service has been seized (or at least the public is not aware of it). I could be wrong, but logic dictates that that guy is.

That guy is active mainly on illegal markers subreddits, so it could be LSD talking.

I know that mixers are legal, but while they are not illegal yet, it's just a matter of time before they become illegal and in that case BitMixer.io would be the first target. That's probably the reason why the admin decided to stop it while it's safe.

That doesn't really make sense though.

a mixer just mixes your btc and charges you a certain fee.

Or you could send to an exchange(most don't make you verify your identity). then once at the exchange those coins get mixed in with the exchange addresses coins. you can convert your btc into any coin. make a new wallet address and send to it, send to another exchange and convert that back to btc.

there are exchanges in so many different countries it would be impossible to get the data from each exchange, not to mention many countries don't require any business license to operate.

so if they close down and sieze any mixers, you just use an exchange. or, go to a btc gambling site and do low bets for awhile.

say you want to bet through 1 btc, bet 100 times at .001 each time with a 50% chance of winning. you might lose a lil bit, but that is likely faster than doing an exchange.

many ways around it.

especially sites that let you directly convert from one to another, what is it called, shapeshift lets you do it? Changely also?

many services.

nejibens

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The mixing sites are used mainly by people earning their coins from illegal deals, so i think with time governments will illegalize such serv ices, even if it is legalized till now in many countries.

MunzeDealer

newbie

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Quote from: Emoclaw on July 25, 2017, 09:24:27 AM

The reason for bitmixer.io's closure has been outlined by themselves here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-lagest-bitcoin-mixer-is-about-to-stop-working-2042470
As far as I'm aware, Bitcoin tumblers are legal and no such service has been seized (or at least the public is not aware of it). I could be wrong, but logic dictates that that guy is.

That guy is active mainly on illegal markers subreddits, so it could be LSD talking.

I know that mixers are legal, but while they are not illegal yet, it's just a matter of time before they become illegal and in that case BitMixer.io would be the first target. That's probably the reason why the admin decided to stop it while it's safe.

Emoclaw

sr. member

Activity: 420

Merit: 251

The reason for bitmixer.io's closure has been outlined by themselves here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-lagest-bitcoin-mixer-is-about-to-stop-working-2042470
As far as I'm aware, Bitcoin tumblers are legal and no such service has been seized (or at least the public is not aware of it). I could be wrong, but logic dictates that that guy is.

MunzeDealer

newbie

Activity: 9

Merit: 0

I have found this post on reddit.

About recent BitMixer.io closure, user comments that "The Feds have several tumblers seized".

Did it ever actually happened? Was there any mixer/tumbler that was shut down by law enforcement?

Topic: Any mixing services siezed / shut down by law enforcement? (Read 727 times)