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Topic: BestMixer is gone, seized by the Financial Crime Investigation - page 2. (Read 1566 times)

jr. member
Activity: 49
Merit: 107
What really funny is actually a reaction of hero members that praised and prayed to bestmixer making of it a big example to other mixers.

This is what you basically get when you talk bullshit about other mixers.
member
Activity: 893
Merit: 43
Random coins :)
 
They don't release names, it's not the US. I bet they owners will get be investigated and will have to pay taxes on their earnings (if they aren't involved in criminal activities).
Even if it were the US of a mixers don't keep names....think about it. whose name will be there ?
Possible. It's also possible they have the domain and servers but none of the people. If you were running a mixing service I'd hope at least you set that bit up anonymously. And if they're that shit a mixing service I hope they ran their earnings through another one too.
For a mixer to be shutdown this easily, something is not adding up!
I Wonder whose buttons got pressed for this to unravel....domain provider.....unsatisfied customer???
copper member
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1901
Amazon Prime Member #7
Say I take out a loan from you, I give you an address to send the coins to. You are a very nice person and only require me to pay 95% of what I borrowed, and I repay 95% and send the remaining 5% to an address of my own. In all cases, brand new addresses are used for each transaction, and are not disclosed anywhere publicly. Looking from the outside, how would anyone know who owns any of the coins in either the address I repaid the loan to, or the change address I used to send the 5% to? Someone could tell the coins used to belong to you, but they cannot know if they belong to someone who traded with you, or if they belong to you without additional information.
Perhaps they won't, but as soon as i transfer any portion of those coins (95%) to an exchange/or use it for X Y Z, it becomes clear that i owned all of them. hence why one might want to use a mixer before doing any sort of trading.

- I mean yes, you could let them sit in that adress for ever and it you can provably deny that they're yours, but you won't ever be able to do anything with them either without your privacy getting f'd.

- Cash out a portion of the coins -/ connects you to all of the coins.
- Buy something from shop X with btc -/ connects you to all of the coins.

I guess if you don't make a connection to any real world service or application, your argument could be validated. (but still isn't very strong..)

Please see this article on address reuse and privacy:

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

Not reusing addresses absolutely increases privacy, and gives plausible deniability as to ownership of prior inputs that can be tracked back to bad/illegal activity.
hero member
Activity: 1568
Merit: 544
The title makes me think about this tweet
Mobile. CoinJoin. Let that really sink in.


I guess this is the case with the posts above if i read it correct.
Samourai-Wallet points towards this function 'Stowaway' what is based on this concept [ I taint rich! (Raw txn fun and disrupting 'taint' analysis; >51kBTC linked!)
legendary
Activity: 1946
Merit: 1427
Say I take out a loan from you, I give you an address to send the coins to. You are a very nice person and only require me to pay 95% of what I borrowed, and I repay 95% and send the remaining 5% to an address of my own. In all cases, brand new addresses are used for each transaction, and are not disclosed anywhere publicly. Looking from the outside, how would anyone know who owns any of the coins in either the address I repaid the loan to, or the change address I used to send the 5% to? Someone could tell the coins used to belong to you, but they cannot know if they belong to someone who traded with you, or if they belong to you without additional information.
Perhaps they won't, but as soon as i transfer any portion of those coins (95%) to an exchange/or use it for X Y Z, it becomes clear that i owned all of them. hence why one might want to use a mixer before doing any sort of trading.

- I mean yes, you could let them sit in that adress for ever and it you can provably deny that they're yours, but you won't ever be able to do anything with them either without your privacy getting f'd.

- Cash out a portion of the coins -/ connects you to all of the coins.
- Buy something from shop X with btc -/ connects you to all of the coins.

I guess if you don't make a connection to any real world service or application, your argument could be validated. (but still isn't very strong..)
legendary
Activity: 2758
Merit: 6830
Do you know what percentage of the market BestMixer had? I don't, but I believe it was not a major player in the mixing market.
The article says that they were among the top 3 mixers. So, pretty good volume and (probably) porcentage (75 BTC in fees/month).

Quote
Bestmixer.io is one of the three largest mixing services for cryptocurrencies and offered services for mixing the cryptocurrencies bitcoins, bitcoin cash and litecoins. The service started in May 2018 and achieved a turnover of at least $200 million (approx. 25,000 bitcoins) in a year’s time and guaranteed that the customers would remain anonymous.
Source: FIOD.nl article
member
Activity: 187
Merit: 45
I have a premonition, here there is more than someone who is literally doing himself under the shit out of fear Grin
I expect great actions soon from the authorities, obviously among those who have used this service of unnecessary anonymity to launder illegal proceeds.

I try to imagine all those scam posts, malware (fake wallets). I have no doubt that many of these idiots have used this and other sponsored mixers on this forum.
copper member
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1901
Amazon Prime Member #7
CoinJoin
It is possible to de-anonymize CoinJoin transactions if the input/output sizes are not all the same. CJ will provide privacy from someone casually looking at your transaction, but not someone with some amount of resources.

The Dutch government claims to have been monitoring transactions going through their service for roughly a year. They also posted a message on the domain seizure message that says:
Quote
YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS
I don't think the purpose of this was to gather information about BestMixer's users, but was to inspire FUD for those who might use other mixing services.
It literally was the purpose, if not the end result. (See "Seized servers and transaction data captured") (You quoted it yourself? lol?)
They're investigating the data and sharing it with Interpol etc.
Do you know what percentage of the market BestMixer had? I don't, but I believe it was not a major player in the mixing market.

Quote
I believe the best way to maximize privacy is to not reuse bitcoin addresses, and encourage other people including the people you trade with to not reuse addresses. When someone uses a mixer, they will often get lazy, and when something like this happens, they will lose a lot of privacy they never really had. If you use bitcoin correct, and everyone else does so too, that is not reuse addresses, an adversary might use incomplete information and some assumptions to minimally break your privacy, but your overall privacy will be lower than it would be otherwise.
Huh
You're not making sense.
Not reusing adresses still don't break any cryptographic "chains" the link will only get broken if you use a mixer of sorts.

Anonymity is not necessarily improved when not reusing adresses....
Let me give this as an example:

Say I take out a loan from you, I give you an address to send the coins to. You are a very nice person and only require me to pay 95% of what I borrowed, and I repay 95% and send the remaining 5% to an address of my own. In all cases, brand new addresses are used for each transaction, and are not disclosed anywhere publicly. Looking from the outside, how would anyone know who owns any of the coins in either the address I repaid the loan to, or the change address I used to send the 5% to? Someone could tell the coins used to belong to you, but they cannot know if they belong to someone who traded with you, or if they belong to you without additional information.
legendary
Activity: 2758
Merit: 6830
what did bestmixer's FAQ actually say? did it literally say "use this service to launder your money"?
The quote is huge so I’ll only link the post here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.49639206

It’s funny because they explicitly said in their FAQ that they didn’t allow money coming from drugs and other illegal methods, which is exactly why they got shutdown. They were probably only trying to blind themselves from legal issues, but it didn’t work as we can see. Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1483
There is this post from another thread, I found it interesting. This is ambiguous but a mixer is truly legal up to a point. I guess if set up correctly the person behind is safe. They just have to shut up and take the money.. Could be interesting to check Bitmixer.io just out of curiousity

...So I stumbled upon this:

While cryptocurrency mixing services are legal, "The legality changes when a mixing service advertises itself as a success method to avoid various anti-money laundering policies via anonymity. This is actively offering a money laundering service," said Fokker.

So for as long as mixers don't show a faq as to why you should mix your coins (which Bestmixer had), they're perfectly legal? Or are there other factors at work here
...

what did bestmixer's FAQ actually say? did it literally say "use this service to launder your money"?

i'm not sure how the money laundering statutes work in europe. in the USA, the law (and associated conspiracy charges) requires an element of intent. from wikipedia:
Quote
Additionally, the law requires that an individual specifically intend in making the transaction to conceal the source, ownership or control of the funds.

advertising a service as a way to conceal the source of funds could be construed as conspiracy to launder money.

but if one runs a mixing service for privacy purposes only and doesn't advertise anything about money laundering, are they really in the clear? i dunno, sounds a bit too easy! Smiley

i always assumed the people running mixers would be doing so from some faraway island nation where they are safe from extradition treaties. so the worst thing they need to worry about is a domain seizure.
copper member
Activity: 2940
Merit: 4101
Top Crypto Casino
He registered the domain with Gandi and hosted the website with Worldstream . And I can tell you that you can buy a domain name without any real information and you can pay with bitcoins (at least before Bitcoin was here) the dedicated server too.

Today the Whois Record has been updated http://whois.domaintools.com/bestmixer.io but too lazy to find what changed. Probably the NS.

Look like they haven't moved yet the site to their own server, they're probably still working on few things like extracting or idk.
hero member
Activity: 697
Merit: 520
The most interesting thing is that there's no information about anyone arrested with the case.
Means the author is probably still here?

According to media reports, no arrests have been made. Maybe the owners successfully obfuscated their identities when registering the site and operating the servers. Stranger things have happened.

I'm leaning towards the honeypot angle, myself. Nobody is stupid enough to run this service from the Netherlands.

Doesn't anyone remember what the Dutch police did with Hansa? They hijacked the market and ran it themselves, altering code and social engineering sellers into leaking their location and other identifying info.

Quote
In their probe into that free-trade zone, which would come to be known as Operation Bayonet, the Dutch investigators not only identified the two alleged administrators of Hansa's black market operation in Germany, but went so far as to hijack the two arrested men's accounts to take full control of the site itself.

'We thought maybe we could really damage the trust in this whole system.' -Marinus Boekelo, NHTCU

The NHTCU officers explained how, in the undercover work that followed, they surveilled Hansa's buyers and sellers, discreetly altered the site's code to grab more identifying information of those users, and even tricked dozens of Hansa's anonymous sellers into opening a beacon file on their computers that revealed their locations.

These Dutch police are ruthless and sneaky. I wouldn't put it past them to spin up the site themselves. Now they have a treasure chest of data on darknet smugglers. I'm sure many arrests will come from this. Probably none to do with operation of the mixer though.
copper member
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1901
Amazon Prime Member #7
The most interesting thing is that there's no information about anyone arrested with the case.
Means the author is probably still here?

Maybe they're much more interested in the people who used the service than the people hosting it. It looks like they might have many of the details of the transactions that took place there. Stopping the service and draining it of info will have more of an impact but it is interesting how there's no mention of charges anywhere, or any names.

They don't release names, it's not the US. I bet they owners will get be investigated and will have to pay taxes on their earnings (if they aren't involved in criminal activities).
I am not aware of any jurisdiction in which the government can seize a business if it is not alleged there is criminal activity.

The owners were most likely charged under seat last years, or their identities are unknown.
jr. member
Activity: 57
Merit: 25
The most interesting thing is that there's no information about anyone arrested with the case.
Means the author is probably still here?

Maybe they're much more interested in the people who used the service than the people hosting it. It looks like they might have many of the details of the transactions that took place there. Stopping the service and draining it of info will have more of an impact but it is interesting how there's no mention of charges anywhere, or any names.

They don't release names, it's not the US. I bet they owners will get be investigated and will have to pay taxes on their earnings (if they aren't involved in criminal activities).

I'm not talking about releasing names. I know that they dont.

Usually, however, there's information when there was anyone arrested - with no names. Just read interpol announcements.
legendary
Activity: 2590
Merit: 3015
Welt Am Draht
They don't release names, it's not the US. I bet they owners will get be investigated and will have to pay taxes on their earnings (if they aren't involved in criminal activities).

Possible. It's also possible they have the domain and servers but none of the people. If you were running a mixing service I'd hope at least you set that bit up anonymously. And if they're that shit a mixing service I hope they ran their earnings through another one too.
legendary
Activity: 2198
Merit: 1989
฿uy ฿itcoin
The most interesting thing is that there's no information about anyone arrested with the case.
Means the author is probably still here?

Maybe they're much more interested in the people who used the service than the people hosting it. It looks like they might have many of the details of the transactions that took place there. Stopping the service and draining it of info will have more of an impact but it is interesting how there's no mention of charges anywhere, or any names.

They don't release names, it's not the US. I bet they owners will get be investigated and will have to pay taxes on their earnings (if they aren't involved in criminal activities).
legendary
Activity: 2590
Merit: 3015
Welt Am Draht
The most interesting thing is that there's no information about anyone arrested with the case.
Means the author is probably still here?

Maybe they're much more interested in the people who used the service than the people hosting it. It looks like they might have many of the details of the transactions that took place there. Stopping the service and draining it of info will have more of an impact but it is interesting how there's no mention of charges anywhere, or any names.
jr. member
Activity: 57
Merit: 25
The most interesting thing is that there's no information about anyone arrested with the case.
Means the author is probably still here?
legendary
Activity: 1638
Merit: 1046
OH my!!! I am so late to see this precious news. The bad thing there I think they save all transactions from bad coins to clean coins. Unlike chipmixer that they delete the history after a week that is why it's still good to use chipmixer than other mixers.

And I think this is the reason why theymos post in beginners help section I was recently thinking what is the reason but right now I know.
legendary
Activity: 1946
Merit: 1427
CoinJoin
It is possible to de-anonymize CoinJoin transactions if the input/output sizes are not all the same. CJ will provide privacy from someone casually looking at your transaction, but not someone with some amount of resources.

The Dutch government claims to have been monitoring transactions going through their service for roughly a year. They also posted a message on the domain seizure message that says:
Quote
YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS
I don't think the purpose of this was to gather information about BestMixer's users, but was to inspire FUD for those who might use other mixing services.
It literally was the purpose, if not the end result. (See "Seized servers and transaction data captured") (You quoted it yourself? lol?)
They're investigating the data and sharing it with Interpol etc.

Quote
I believe the best way to maximize privacy is to not reuse bitcoin addresses, and encourage other people including the people you trade with to not reuse addresses. When someone uses a mixer, they will often get lazy, and when something like this happens, they will lose a lot of privacy they never really had. If you use bitcoin correct, and everyone else does so too, that is not reuse addresses, an adversary might use incomplete information and some assumptions to minimally break your privacy, but your overall privacy will be lower than it would be otherwise.
Huh
You're not making sense.
Not reusing adresses still don't break any cryptographic "chains" the link will only get broken if you use a mixer of sorts.

Anonymity is not necessarily improved when not reusing adresses....
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