Topic: Binance Hackers Bombard Chipmixer to Launder at Least 4,836 BTC - page 2. (Read 6438 times)

They do, but not because of the risk of them being shut down by the government, but because there's a risk of this mixers stealing your coins. This risk is still there even with trusted mixers (although it is very low). We can believe that chipmixer will remain fair to its customers, but the decision is ultimately in the hands of its owners. Sometimes a good dog bites. Anyway, i'll say it again, it doesn't mean they will be prosecuted and/or forced to cease activity.

Really doesn't matter at this point.


Both of these links say don't use centralized mixing services.

Bestmixer actively advertised the use of their mixer to evade the law, Chipmixer does none of that.


Some recommended reading as this has been answered again and again:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy#Why_privacy
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy#Examples_and_case_studies

What's even funnier is that they insist the majority of bitcoins being mixed through ChipMixer are legally obtained. Bestmixer was shut down precisely because the majority of its coins came from illegal activity. Why would this trend apply to Bestmixer but not ChipMixer?

If these ChipMixer guys continue to believe their sig payments aren't coming from illicitly gained bitcoins its because $350 a week will do that to some people I guess. Regardless, they are in no position to be casting judgment on others at this point in time.

Why is the chipmixer services need? i don't see the relevant of their service if it can be mostly use for criminal activities, who knows this is what many hackers use so that those stolen coins will be hard to trace, funny how their signature is been paraded by top members of this forum.

first of all, let's note that clain has provided precisely zero evidence for anything---you are just eating up their blog by the spoonful. nobody has verified any of this, and there are no reports of outputs being flagged by third party services.

second of all, assumptions, assumptions, assumptions:


how could anyone demonstrate their findings are untrue when they have provided zero proof of anything? no verifiable data whatsoever? how does one poke holes in data that isn't public?

oh, but if you want more info about clain's consulting fees and their "capacities for crypto compliance", see the end of the blog for more info.

Coin mixing services should probably consider blacklisting proven stolen coins? This could however make things hard for Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency users in the future. 
Guess there should be website that quickly list addresses with stolen coins so that Bitcoin wallets providers can investigate & blacklist them, then automatically prevent new addresses from accepting such coins.


This shouldn't affect Chipmixer ...Afterall most physical/online companies and people at one point in time receive tainted currencies (like cryptocurrencies or other kind of currencies) unknowingly. 

Yes, I already quoted the segment of the article which backs this up:


OK, so what are they going to do about it? Fictional coffee barista is also a robber and going to hold you at gunpoint for BTC they think are under your control? This is a ridiculous scenario. Can you please come up with a better one where your privacy is so important to you?


"Allegations" that thus far have not been disproven. Ball's in your court to logically refute Clain's article, which makes perfect sense to everybody reading it not wearing a ChipMixer signature and defending them in this thread.

I can't remember ever shedding a tear when a scammer got scammed. It would certainly mean they value ethics over money if they returned the stolen coins, would it not?

I'd find it much more compelling if somebody not promoting ChipMixer could counter Clain's claims, then perhaps it would consist of something more substantial than just casting doubt.

Do you have anything to back up these statement ?
Or is it just 'your feeling' ?




By monitoring the address the 0.01 BTC are coming from.
With regular transactions going out to addresses which then are used to buy said coffee, it is not hard at all to combine one with the other.




Again.. allegations without anything to back them up.
So.. ChipMixer scamming their customer would make them 'good' in your eyes? That's a delusional point of view.

Hacker-owned BTC is now the vast majority of its use case volume, if it wasn't already. I'm sure a few people use it for non-criminal purposes, but they are in the minority.


As far as opsec for interacting with a fictional coffee barista is concerned, yes. Just think about it for a second: You have a bitcoin stash that you are very concerned over. Now move 0.01 BTC of it to a different, day-to-day wallet that you use to buy your coffee. How is said barista going to know the stash wallet belongs to you? Even if they did (which they don't), what are they going to do about it?


Certainly. If coins are being mixed in say, the manner of CoinJoin, certain patterns may emerge where half of the CoinJoin outputs are going. Maybe down the road the joined coins all reach the same destination, such as a common Binance deposit address or something. The thieves probably aren't that stupid, but its really not that hard to visualize a scenario where commonalities emerge between the destinations and/or movement patterns of mixed coins.

Bottom line: You are promoting a service thats overwhelming use is to help criminals launder bitcoin. No analogy to medicine or food or water changes this. ChipMixer confiscating the funds and returning them to Binance might.

In some cases that may be true, but the primary use case of mixing is retaining privacy, what others use mixers for is up to them.

---

If blockchain analytics companies are able to identify, preferably with certainty and not probabilistically, stolen bitcoins, good for them and for the victims. But usually they can't be 100% certain unless the person they're after gives them enough hints.

Ah, i see.

So anyone who wants to remain some privacy and mixes his coin is automatically laundering money.

Good to know that keeping things private is a crime in your eyes.




Remaining private 101.

Good job 

No.. honestly.. are you serious about that statement 




Follow where ?
They already reached their destination.. They are being exchanged into money or another currency (e.g. monero) at that point.. from 4 seperate accounts.
You can not follow it anymore.

Please elaborate how you keep following them 

You're playing a game of semantics. "Mixing" is just a pleasant substitute for "laundering."


An alternative is moving your coffee purchasing funds from your bigger wallet into a smaller one. Simple. The barista isn't going to know the bigger wallet is in your control. Neither is anybody. Does anybody use BTC to buy coffee, anyway?


Of course there's something you can do, and that is follow all 4 outputs.


They're only going to publish what they can without giving away their secrets. Of course you are going to fight against them, but just because you don't understand how it works doesn't mean it isn't happening.


From the article:


They've been in operation since 2017:

https://betalist.com/startups/clain

Not one word from anybody (except ChipMixer sig wearers) claiming - much less demonstrating - that their findings are untrue.


You're downplaying the complexity of their endeavor. Like I said, this is a company that is in the business of knowing things. They don't publish guesswork, and whenever something is uncertain, they state so.

did you actually read the findings? only "183 BTC were identified as hacker funds" out of a pool of bitcoins 30x as large. what the hell are you talking about?


how would you know---independent verification? of course not. this company clain didn't even exist a few months ago! you have no idea who they are and no one has verified their claims.

by the very nature of blockchain analysis, their reports are almost entirely guesswork, based on a massive number of assumptions.


could you elaborate? when all 4 outputs have been moved through many distinct wallets/addresses and become distinctly different outputs, what happens then?

Agree, whatever happens its bad for them.
Its hard to protect also from hackers to use such service because its impossible to monitor all hacked coins from all exchanges out there. So its just matter of time until any service that offer mixing getting in such situation.

I don't think that the IRS will be satisfied if Binance conducts KYC for the American customers. Back in 2017, record number of people were renouncing their US citizenship and the authorities just hiked the exit tax and renouncement charges by manytimes. Also, a lot of paperwork was added to make the process more tedious and cumbersome.

If the exchanges make KYC mandatory for just the users from the United States, then it will give unfair advantage to individuals from the other countries. I don't think that the American authorities will be happy with such a scenario, although they are not losing any tax revenue in the short term. I expect the regulations to become more intrusive as well as more extensive, as the popularity of Bitcoin increases.

No, it is not.

It is a mixing service to increase privacy. Nothing more.
Just because some people might abuse it to launder money, it doesn't make it a money laundering service..




What would be an alternative to that ?
With BTC, you don't have any other alternative than using a mixer. Without proper coin control and much effort, you will always be traceable. Using a mixer is quite easy and handy for that.

Nothing wrong with that IMO.




Yes.. and you see all 4 outputs going to an exchange, 4 different accounts. And now ?
There is nothing you can do.

If there is not much more data than just this one (or maybe a few more) transactions, there is simply nothing you can do.
Of course.. mistakes made by people decreases the privacy. But without any mistakes, there is simply no way.

And saying 'bla bla there are companies which can do that' without providing any evidence or explaining how exactly they would achieve that, just makes it sound ridiculous.

Yep. But crypto* itself can very well be anonymous. It's just that Bitcoin isn't designed to be that way from the very beginning.

If you look at other cryptocurrencies, such as Monero. - https://getmonero.org/ this coin for example is completely untraceable by design, and can't be "Broken".

Vou, that is what I was wondering. This means that crypto can not be anonymous, everything can be relatively easily tracked . And according to link you provided, trackers do not even need to have servers in their hands. Someone who has knowledge of the workings, can easily brake the " code" .

Regardless of whether or not ChipMixer is at "fault" of this or that, I certainly wouldn't use them for a long time to come, as pretty much every amount of BTC that goes into a "chip" for an extended period is going to be from a hacking.


It sounds like you just skimmed over the article and hastily came to a conclusion that aligns with your own economic interests. Clain are very thorough and wouldn't publish things that aren't true, because that's not the nature of their business -- their business is knowing things with certainty and being able to prove them.

It was actually quite entertaining reading all the ChipMixer sig sporting posts in this thread. I mean, you guys occupy nearly 50% of every thread in this section anyway, but it was funny to see you all come to the defense of ChipMixer. If I were you I wouldn't say peep about this issue. But that's just me.

One thing that hasn't changed is the fact that ChipMixer IS a money laundering service. Period. Yes, there are negative connotations associated with that term, but it remains a fact.

The arguments I saw for legal use of it were a bit ridiculous. You don't want a barista to see how much BTC is in your wallet so you use a coin mixer?? Same thing with privacy concerns: you want to hide the origins of your coins for "privacy", yet you don't mind mixing them with some coins from known hacker addresses? Really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Sure, there may be some legal use case scenarios but as of right now the overwhelming majority of use is to obfuscate the origins of stolen funds.


Serious blockchain analytics companies hoping to provide actionable information to clients like Binance don't need to think of coins in terms of "clean" or "dirty." They are going to follow all 4 outputs and see where they go. The process is much more complicated than just deciding "clean" and "dirty." It involves making observations and identifying patterns based on larger amounts of data than simply a single transaction.