Topic: Bitcoin mixing is NOT money laundering, per se - page 14. (Read 4155 times)

I pretty much agree with everything you've written except the last phrase: I hate how governments try to take down cryptos all the time, even making up facts or blame cryptos for every single problem there is in the world but if a mixer is mainly used to laundry bitcoins then I can understand they want to take it down. Of course if the illegal transactions are a minimum part than I have no problem with that, even cash and bank transfers are used by criminals but if a specific bank mainly deals with stolen funds then I understand why it must be shut down. Same goes with mixers, they closed Chip Mixer because of the huge amount of illegal activity behind it. The problem as usual is not the tool, it's the people.

Eh?  I didn't get your point there, but I think I agree with your argument if it's that mixing doesn't equate with money laundering necessarily.  I'm pretty sure mixers could be used to launder money or for some other illicit purpose, but I don't think they're inherently evil like the US and some other governments seem to believe.  Some people prize their privacy above all else in the world of bitcoin--like Satoshi, for instance.  And I always think of Lauda when I think of members here who've guarded their personal information intensely, and not just their bitcoin transactions.  Me?  I'm sure I could be doxxed in 2 minutes flat, but I respect people's need for as much anonymity as they're comfortable with.

Governments don't want people to have privacy; that's a fact.  It's been that way for a long time, but I think as technology has advanced privacy (and alarmingly, people's concern for it) has started swirling down the toilet bowl like a tornado twister.  I could go on and on, but I won't.  This is a good discussion to have, but I think it's a conversation some of the bigger bitcoiners need to have with regulators.

I really have not seen any tangible proof convincing to conclude that bitcoin mixing is money laundering. This is just a service like every other services out there wanting to deliver so as to remain relevant. As we all know bitcoin mixing signifies being anonymous so therefore the mixing process goes along with the sole reason why bitcoin was found. People who chooses to remain anonymous tend to use the mixers so as not to be noticed for their own comfort and privacy.

If i am not mistaken, people tend to use mixers as a result of third parties monitoring their transactions and assets movement which they do not find comfortable with so in that case, they opt for mixers so as to avoid being monitored or traced.

I think the only way to survive the onslaught by the government is to remain anonymous just like satoshi did.  If bitcoin mixers can remain anonymous, irrespective of the threats and sanctions, they can go further surviving the the heat from all corners. That was what satoshi did and bitcoin still exists till today. Any mixer can do it too.

you are not correcting me, rather you are confirming what I wrote before,
if you have the gun but no bullets you can't kill.
if you have the bullets but no gun you can't kill. simple isn't it?

as regards the advertising of mixers, everyone is free to think as they wish, the fact is that renting out one's signature form is a personal matter, which can be shared or not. I would say that the same problem would exist even if they advertised an online casino, or a bookmaker.

remember, dont trust, verify!

im sorry to correct you. even waving an unloaded gun in a bank, to a cop. or to anyone threatening to kill them. even if you know you have no bullets. they dont. and they have the laws on their side to defend themselves against you and if you are arrested you will still get into legal trouble for waving a gun around even if there was no bullets inside.

just because the NRA tells you to wave a gun around "coz freedom" if you tried doing that infront of a cop. they will shoot you or arrest you. or at the very least have them question you

so dont think that having no bullets means no consequence. dont always listen to the NRA. all they care about is selling you a gun they dont care about the consequences after their sale

fun fact. there have been cases where gun loving politicians that become gun ambassadors. if someone approached them with a gun. that politician will not kiss your ass and be your friend. they will be busy dialling 911 crying that they fear their life because a man with a gun is stalking them

...
translating it to mixers
those promoting mixers dont care for consequences to users. they just care about their own greed benefit they get from getting others to use what they advertise. and when these services/products get in trouble they wont blame themselves for their promotion they will find someone else to blame

these promoters do not know about the regulations that apply nor reasons why regulations apply they do not realise bitcoins definition/categorisation has changed over the decade. they dont realise that regulations DO apply. they just want to stroke people into a zombie status of sleep to pretend laws dont apply just to recruit people into using something that does have consequences, even if they dont want to talk about the consequences

I'm sorry if I correct you, but it's the combination of gun and bullet that kills, if you have the gun and not the bullet or vice versa you don't kill.


Having said that, I share your thoughts with both of you, mixers per se are not promoters of illegal activity, the problem is who uses them and with what funds

True, it is unfair to generalize the entire gold industry as a money laundering mechanism just because there are cases of abuse and illegal behavior.  This is similar to the case with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin: just because some individuals may use them for illegal activities, it doesn't mean that all people who use cryptocurrencies are engaged in illegal activities.

goldsmiths know the loopholes. thats how they get away with it. they dont advertise mixers when they steal nazi gold and african blood gold and smelt it together and then churn out new bars with new stamps. realise how they do it to realise how you lot should do it


but mixers are not trade service. its not a retailer, a smelter. a mine, a shipping company, a exchange. the pure function of a mixer is to tumble and mix funds. which means it has a higher % of people wanting to hide things they dont want governments seeing. because thats its sole/promoted purpose

and so unlike other services that solve other purposes with a unspoken side function of swapping different deposits to different withdrawals. mixing services sole purpose is to swap different deposits to different withdrawals with no real OTHER service in the center to explain any real legit valid reason for usage in the middle

MONEY has never been private. money for longer then all readers have been alive has never been private. money/currency has always had a central control.

bitcoin 2009 was not considered money by the laws. it was considered private property.
it was not until ~2013 where bitcoin became considered convertibly described as currency by law. which changed it from being private property(consequence of being declared currency). meaning bitcoin is not protected by private property laws in regards to privacy, instead its now in the jurisdiction of currency, meaning banking, tax and auditing laws now apply

i personally prefered the days before 2014. but some people dont even take the time to realise the reality of laws/jurisdictions and declarations that changed how bitcoin was treated in the last 14 years. nor do they care to realise what it means to use a service that advertises itself as something that is red flagged by regulators.

be smarter create services that are not so on-the-nose of being promoted as something regulators want to watch, if you dont want to be watched

Duh.

We can apply it to a lot of things. I might say, for example, despite recent investigations and exposes in the news, gold trading is NOT money laundering. Used for decades and a known tool for money laundering, terrorism, WMD, etc. But we aren't going after people who trade gold specifically, are we? So just because there are powerful networks that clean dirty money through gold trading -- gold sourced from bloody mines in Africa, routed to Middle East, or to refineries in the US, where it can be freshly sold to the rest of the world, doesn't make gold trading money laundering.

Just because bad guy A used mixers to try and clean his ill-gotten gains doesn't make all mixer users bad guys.

payment codes are not mascarading bitcoin addresses

its just where bob and alice PRE AGREE a 'secret'(privkey seed) so they can both create or know about each others next X number of addresses they both own so they dont have to send funds to the same address to know it gets to the same wallet of many addresses.. because emphasis they both pre arranged to agree on a secret for them to formulate the addresses they will use

its the same as emailing some one your seed. or emailing a pre created list of 100 addresses

the added feature thing is to inform using an op return that your using their wallet key number XX so that their wallet can then scan the blockchain and update its utxo of incoming funds

because usually when someone uses a seed the wallet wont move to the next number unless prompted by wallet user to generate an address. so the prompt is put in a opreturn by the sender to make the receiver then move to next number to scan for receipt

its not about any special tumbling or mixing its just so that people who have relationships can send a second payment to a pre arranged second address without having to ask each time, nor having to send to same address each time

its not complex or anonymity fixing.. and it requires people to enter into a shared key relationship before using

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mixers are actually black listed or suspect listed by regulated services because mixers are a non 0% risk factor for laundering.
and as wind fury says the the most opportune method for criminals to clean funds so regulators dont ignore it.
money has never been fungible. thats just the dream/pretend offering but it never has been.

 . the key is actually thinking outside the "privacy" box to offer a service that is outside the "financial service" box that does a different offering, and not be advertised as a anonymity /financial service. to not be defined as a anonymity service thus not be flagged as such. which although does not have such a promotion. the service as a side effect could offer people different withdrawals to their deposits

remember: services offering/advertising privacy/anonymity end up doing the exact opposite because offering such promoted stuff gets them highlighted due to offering it. being highlighted and watched is the opposite of hiding, obviously.

why do you think tax avoiders dont use laundering services advertised as laundering services and instead put property into a countries "freeports" to avoid tax. because a freeport does not advertise itself as a laundering service/mixing service/tax avoidance service. it just advertises itself as a border port with corporate private property law protections which as a side effect means no reporting or auditing

No it's not, and mixing/tumbling is actually good to preserve Bitcoin's fungibility. But because there are entities who want to "launder dirty Bitcoins" that went through the Dark Markets for example, then mixing is the only way to "make it clean". Naturally, law enforcement would go after mixers because they know that it's close to 100% that all mixers are being used to launder Bitcoin.

I believe it's time for the community to start researching about applications that we can use from the protocol-level. Applications like BIP-47 Reusable Payment Codes.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0047

Yeah. Bitcoin mixing service is not money laundering even Financial Crimes Enforcement Network identifies it as a process "designed to prevent others from tracing the transmission back to its source". Besides, FinCen also claims that mixing "An anonymizing services provider is a money transmitter under FinCEN
regulations." However, when the source of the Bitcoin mixed is acquired through criminal or unlawful it automatically turns to money laundering.

That's a risk you're taking. Exchanges can freeze funds if they're traced to coinjoins so why don't you contact your exchange to ask?

I agree, this is a problem if you want fiat conversion via CEX.

What if someone owns an online shop that takes btc. It goes without saying that, he can possibly take some mixed (coinjoined) coins. But later, he has to pay the host billings etc, so he has to convert the coins to fiat by deposit to exchanges.
The problem is that: some exchange can freeze the funds for it contains coinjoined btc. That eventually results in funds loss.

Your advises please.

To all users: franky1 is not allowed to make further replies in this thread. I've already cleared it out in here, but he completely ignored me for once more. The reason isn't because I disagree with what he says, but due to him being multiple times debunked already. I don't endorse to have this nowhere-going conversation with franky again. It's pointless, and I don't want to watch others trying to put him some sense.

You really don't know that the blockchain is a public ledger?

Last time I checked, we don't count legality in percentage. And no, it's not illegal, unless you're in some country that says so.

I'm not a lawyer. I don't know if the US is hostile to services that are outside its borders, but for one thing I'm sure is they're not hostile with any activity which would make US citizens avoid taxes.

sometimes i often think of the government law as nonsense. they can just declare anything illegal if they cannot impose power on it. i'm not saying laundering is legal and mixing is illegal, but how come they assumed someone is committing illegal actions when they just want to hide their identity? does that mean because they couldn't impose taxes to those who are mixing? are they also considered tax evaders? non of this makes sense when someone is trying to enact law just because it is convenient for them. the only thing that made sense to me is that when you follow the regulations of the government it is impossible to hide your privacy. one more thing for me is that they wanted monopoly in which they want to monitor all your transactions whenever they want that makes decentralization only an imagination.

Franky if Bitcoin is anonymity enhanced the problem will be nearly impossible to solve, if the government can be this frank with Bitcoin mixers then they can do the same with privacy Bitcoin, they will easily ban it and blame it on money laundering and other crimes, I think it is better than Bitcoin ain't a privacy digital currency..

What happens if you are a US citizen running a money transmitting service in another country (like Arthur Hayes)?


Well you and I are using Bitcoin which is somewhat "anonymity enhanced" according to people who don't understand how e-mail works, so all of us here are being watched closesy.

That's my impression as well.
Especially in late 2022, many big hackers were sending funds to ChipMixer to launder these funds and ChipMixer suffered from this. We had some content about it in our forum and that had been a sign already, that ChipMixer was targed heavily by criminals.
Maybe new mixers can implement some community based (like DT) blocking mechanism, that funds coming from clearly criminal origins will be blocked. It could work similar as DT but it's difficult to implement, especiall because criminals could just do a few hoops to different addresses and circumvent it.
I still believe most mixers are not abused according to our Chainalysis data.

Hopefully, when security standards will increase and people become more educated, hackers will have less success to steal coins and launder them.