Topic: ChipMixer.com has been seized. (Read 1856 times)

What we know is that these data contain all chips and vouchers, and we know this because some members of this forum have confirmed that their unspent funds are no longer in their possession. We can only speculate about everything else, and maybe the owner really was a big fan of movies in UHD format.

Panic without evidence is foolhardy.  Concern is a legitimate response, but no one should be resorting to panic when there has been no confirmation on what the 7TB consists of.  It could be copies of the blockchain, or even personal files, media or backups belonging to the owner which are totally unrelated to the mixer.  For all we know, it could be a bunch of movies they pirated.  It could be anything.

There is a chance that the mentioning of Data was a speculation from investigators and there is a good reason behind it. Think, if they say that chipmixer holds 7TB, it will cause panic in people and the society will massively say that we shouldn't trust bitcoin mixers because they hold our data. This can damage bitcoin mixing business and make it hard for mixers to gain trust and operate.
If no one gets into trouble, there is a chance that what I said is true but we don't know for sure right now.

Let's just calm down....

If you used ChipMixer to obscure your transaction history to protect your coins, then you have no reason to worry. It gave you the same pseudo anonymity that "cash" offers you. The criminals that used ChipMixer for criminal activities will have to worry, because those transactions might be in law enforcement hands now.

Yes, it is a breach in your own security, if law enforcement can now link all your transactions, but there are still things like CoinJoin and other mixers that can help you.

The Sig Managers cannot be held accountable for the service that it helped to promote, because they promoted a service that were used for "legal" activities too. Do you think the operators of Facebook are accountable for all the scams that are hosted via that platform or any other social media platform?

No, that site was not seized. The two campaigns that were seized are Chipmixer and Bestmixer.
Bitblender closed his services (Bitcointalk Topic: Bitblender shutting down?) after some of his addresses were placed on the US sanctions list after it was revealed that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus used the service to launder the proceeds of cybercrime.
you can read it here https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05/06/us-treasury-department-sanctions-crypto-mixing-service/

Bestmixer is run by @Hhampuz Topic: [CFNP] BestMixer Signature Campaign | Sr. Members - Legendary | Up to 0.01225BTC  (Read 12291 times)

I think the data is either some kind of logs or multiple copies of the bitcoin blockchain. The former would be used to trace coin associated with actual crimes and the later would be included in the complaint to scare others into potentially cooperating with law enforcement

I really can’t think of anything else that CM might be storing on their server

There would have to be around 200 billion private keys on file in order for it to take up 6TB, which is an order of magnitude larger than the number of active addresses.

I suspect that it's mostly other data, eg: Running a full node will take half a terabyte, and metadata related to the chips; I wouldn't be surprised if that was a few TB as well.



Now hey. Didn't Hhampuz manage the Bitblender campaign which was also seized abruptly?

Relax, nothing is going to happen to them.

For a mixer, it would probably be better if they did periodically delete private keys. Blockchain analysis can help find most of the addresses associated with CM, but there are likely some it can't find. Deleting private keys will prevent anyone with access to the server from knowing 100% of addresses associated with CM.

With that being said, CM did not promise (to my knowledge) to delete old private keys. But also, I think it is unlikely that CM had 6 TB worth of private keys stored on their servers.

I also hope that DS doesn't get in trouble for his role in being the campaign manager for CM. I can only speculate if he will get in any kind of trouble. My best guess is that law enforcement will look into him, but ultimately not pursue any charges against him.

If charges were filed against DS, the reason law enforcement would have waited 6 years would be to not tip off the operator that law enforcement was coming after them.

I reckon all web servers keep logs, temporarily or permanently, for different types of reasons. It would not be shocking for Chipmixer to have kept 30 day logs for customer support reasons in case something went wrong with the user's transaction with the mixer or because of other technical reasons.

Also, if there was 7 terabytes of data taken by the authorities, how much of the data are logs and what other types of data do mixers keep?

@james3441. If that is true, why was chipmixer.com seized? It would have been better to let it continue.

Fact is:

- chipmixer lied in it's claims to delete private keys.
I don't know how can anyone defend them after it was made clear by users. I suspect it's about the signature campaign, so ukhm.. corruption or Stockholm syndrome?

Therefore it is  justified to assume that chip mixer ran from very beginning as private honeypot for the owner and gathered all kinds of information.

Based on what was stated by LE - what kind of high profile actors moved money through chipmixer, I don't think the vietnamese guy will be ever found alive.
Other people and some eastern 3 letter agencies might be looking for him to find out what the truth was. Not only law enforcement.

He not only f*** himself but also other people.

In most of those cases the "promoters" were the ones that were running the whole thing behind the scheme, it's not like they were completely unrelated to the operation, they knew all the insides of the deal and more importantly, they were the ones cashing in all that money under false pretense knowingly of the falsehood of their own claim. Here, it's nothing like that.
And even if we stick to promoters, even if we go one level up, Carlos Matos? 

Moreover, if they wanted to do something against him he would have already been in contact with law enforcement already if they have a case they would have acted already and not let him close everything and purge whatever evidence one might believe he had.


Applying tinfoil, a lot of it! Why ruin a perfect honeypot?

The signature campaign was small fries to the police compared to the operation itself. Besides, Bitcointalk is not like other social media, it has a ranking in the 5-digits area in terms of traffic, and never really has more than a few hundred users online per day. Definitely not the kind of platform where "mass promotion" is done, and not big enough to cross their eye.

Because the crime is not done yet. And maybe because they needed to see the signature campaign alive until they finish to investigate or they needed to see CM growing as much as possible.

Imagine yourself as a policeman IRL, you priority is
1st: to stop the crime to not get anymore damages for the victims
2nd: to arrest the person, so he goes in a justice court  to get punished
3rd: taking care about everything about it (collecting witnesses, paper,etc...)

I use the word "crime" but it's to make a comparison with the real life. But to continue with an advertising network.
Take Google Ads for exemple: As a policeman, your prefer to spend time to catch the frauder than contacting Google to shut down the advertising campaign. Simply because even if you do it, it doesn't stop the fraud. And as I argued, your priority is to stop the crime.

Again, I just look at both sides of the story, and I see a few exemples showing me that's it's  happens sometimes.

If that would be the case, why didn't they mention it earlier? Why wait 6 years and let the forum advertise CM all this time, if there would be a reason to stop it? It's not as if it happened in secret.

I haven't see someone talking about this matter, but I hope @Darkstar_ won' get any trouble with this drama :/

Perhaps the chances are small but I'm not sure if I can say there is a 0% probability, especially if he did not take certain precautions.
I always try to compare the opinions of both sides. And in this case, I think as me, just a random guy, and as the FBI and co.

- As a random guy:
I could say it doesn't matter, he has nothing to do with it. They have bigger fish to catch.


- As a law enforcement
He helped promote the site, managed about 50 people and millions of dollars were used. It wasn't a small signature campaign about a casino or whatever. If we take an average of let's say 30,000$/BTC, we're talking about somthing over 20 millions dollars.

I'm maybe paranoiac but it crossed my mind. It would be really sad if he got into trouble

I justify it. They've been running the most trustworthy Bitcoin mixer since 2017, with no exit scams, no coins sweeped without the user's consent, best customer support, and by doing exactly what they've been saying in their FAQ. Why should I change my stance when I know absolutely nothing about that data, other than it included private keys (which were never supposed to be deleted in the first place)?

It might have been taken less seriously, I agree. This incident points out for once more the importance of self-custody. But, nevertheless, some businesses need to gain your trust to operate.

That's too much confidence you are having in CM.

What happened to "Don't trust, verify." ?

How do you verify CM's promises? Did they let you in and show their database? I know that don't make sense because it is impossible to verify CM's actions. It is just a promise. Could be true, could be wrong.

THIS has been going on for several years, and a picture has spread. Has he not been arrested yet? Or any additional information. It is strange that we did not hear the authorities' response to this memorandum and whether they were looking for him or not.


I am interested in the amount of 1.3 bitcoins in ChipMixer signature  campaign address, what will happen to it? Is it kept by the campaign manager, distributed, or sent to a charitable organization? Or what

https://mempool.space/address/1ChipWGhJtEWCeSq3cra4HmKhvYqe8Tvty

I don't think that was written anywhere, and I neither think private keys should be deleted at all. You should never delete a private key.

From their FAQ:

The fact that they destroy the session doesn't mean they destroy private keys. I'm confident that they must have deleted the logs, as they said.

There's not much to speculate.
Fact is that private keys which were supposed to be deleted were seized. Otherwise LE would not be able to move funds.

Based on this one lie from chipmixer, which claimed to delete full session information including private keys, you should expect more lies and that they stored all logs forever.
Including information which input led to generated private keys outputs.

That's why stay anonymous. I see members post their social profile, picture, phone number, website address and many more things that can lead to identify you easily. It's not just the government you need to do it for your own personal safety.

When you will be known to have Bitcoin in your procession, people will think you are reach no matter if you have even lass than 1 mBTC. If they identify you in real life then bad people will try to take advantage from it. Thing can end very bad.

Unless you are somehow privy to information the rest of us don't have access to, it's yet to be established that ChipMixer kept logs.  We know that data was seized, but people are merely speculating on what that data might be.  If you could try fo keep any accusations you might wish to make evidenced by verified information, that would be appreciated.

After a few controversies last year, when ChipMixer was abused by Hackers, it seemed already fishy to point at ChipMixer, a service which is now proven to be deeply involved in washing hacked, extorted and stolen coins and also Darknet markets.

Does nobody care how ChipMixer grossly violated written agreements? Agreements of it's foundation (Mixing reinventent for your Privacy?). ChipMixer boldly promised to delete all logs, don't keep confidential information and don't store private keys of payout Chips. It lied to everyone.  
But I just can read "dUh GovErnMenT baD" here, just because government stopped watching criminals obfuscating crime coins in ChipMixer, which is very harmful and resulting in scammers getting away. Luckily, it will lead to many criminals being caught now.
Even when your point of view is selfish and you don't care about criminals depositing coins in ShitMixer, you don't question how ShitMixer lied to everyone?
Basically, ShitMixer violated all good practices of privacy by storing logs, keys and more because it's a centralized shit service, which lied directly in our face because it could.
But very few criticism here against ShitMixer's lies.

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/minh-quoc-nguyen

I do not know why he would live in a country where authorities would get him anytime.

Agreed that we have different views and the government is more powerful. However, based on the argument, I am not implying to everyone that no one will get arrested. I am only saying that if someone developed a tool to use for privacy and it was used for criminality, it is not creator of the tool who should be liable. This very much similar to the arrest they did to developer of Tornado Cash.

Also, if the government tells you to stop using bitcoin because it is illegal according to their view, would sell all the bitcoins you have because of their power or will you fight for your right?

I don't think that the users have any threat from this unless someone has been using the service for mixing the Bitcoins they got from some illegal activity and even in that case, I don't really think it's possible for them to track anyone down, or can they? I'm not entirely sure about that. But as long as you haven't done anything wrong, you should be okay.

It's really unfortunate, to be honest. I've been seeing chip mixer for years on this forum, and though I never used their services it is still sad to read this news and to see their website being seized.

Well, views differ. Apparently, your view isn't shared by the government. It is unfortunate, however, that the government is the one that is more powerful than you. If you think that they don't have the right to do this and that, but they don't agree, they will prevail.

So whether you think the government does not have the right to arrest somebody who is just writing an open source code, Alexey Pertsev is in fact still in jail right now. Whether we believe that starting a marketplace is not a crime, Ross Ulbricht is actually rotting in jail until today. So while we all agree that providing the people the means to protect their privacy isn't a crime, this Nguyen could indeed end up in jail as well.

I saw his selfies and I truly wonder why was he shooting such a dumb selfies

iPhone has good selfie camera, that's the reason and this person is a selfie addict
Btw there is nothing wrong with it, he is a human and you know, no one can hide that much from this world. You have to go outside, sometimes you have to see friends, have some fun, maybe see a doctor, go to the gym, etc. I don't get the idea of life if you earn a lot of money and hide from everyone and everything.

I collected his quotes from press-release document and put all together:


His words definitely makes sense and makes someone very optimistic about people who are here to do something good for public. So, because of that, what amazes me is that he was holding 7 terabytes of data. Chipmixer logs alone would never take that much data, they wouldn't even take 1/1000 of it.
I'm afraid his only interest was money and was faking it by those beautiful words. While no one knows what's that 7 terabyte, I bet, he actually wasn't giving a f to users' privacy.

It is not a good security practice to transmit actual private keys between servers.

Notwithstanding the above, if someone can cause CM to belive that they have a chip, they effectively have access to the coin. So if someone were to trick CM into believing that coin was deposited, when in fact it was not, and they were able to do so in a way that CM could not differentiate from legitimate deposits, CM would need to either not honor all legitimate deposits, or ultimately honor the illegitimate deposits.
Over 7 TB of data was taken from CM. I would want to know what the other 99% of this data was.

Keeping funds offline would have been possible: once in a while, when they run out of chips, users could only get a voucher until new chips were created. In the same way funded keys could have been kept offline.
I think the backup-scenario sounds logical: 7 GB of data including several snapshots which includes some of the used private keys. I'm now curious if there's anyone left with (older) chips that haven't been emptied. I checked the changes here yesterday, I'll do the same to day to see if more keys got swept. If that happened, I assume it's their owner emptying them now.

Update:
1 mBTC chips: March 16: 373824 - March 17: 374196 - Difference: 372 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 0.372 BTC.
2 mBTC chips: March 16: 79035 - March 17: 79117 - Difference: 82 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 0.164 BTC.
4 mBTC chips: March 16: 30463 - March 17: 30546 - Difference: 83 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 0.332 BTC.
8 mBTC chips: March 16: 13950 - March 17: 13958 - Difference: 8 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 0.064 BTC.
17 mBTC chips: March 16: 5053 - March 17: 5051 - Difference: -2 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -0.034 BTC.
32 mBTC chips: March 16: 3452 - March 17: 3430 - Difference: -22 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -0.704 BTC.
64 mBTC chips: March 16: 1359 - March 17: 1343 - Difference: -16 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -1,024 BTC.
128 mBTC chips: March 16: 830 - March 17: 820 - Difference: -10 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -1,280 BTC.
256 mBTC chips: March 16: 392 - March 17: 371 - Difference: -21 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -5,376 BTC.
500 mBTC chips: March 16: 57411 - March 17: 57443 - Difference: 32 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 16 BTC.
512 mBTC chips: March 16: 277 - March 17: 276 - Difference: -1 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -0.512 BTC.
1000 mBTC chips: March 16: 96525 - March 17: 96558 - Difference: 33 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 33 BTC.
1024 mBTC chips: March 16: 267 - March 17: 256 - Difference: -11 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -11,264 BTC.
2000 mBTC chips: March 16: 19792 - March 17: 19801 - Difference: 9 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 180 BTC.
2048 mBTC chips: March 16: 57 - March 17: 55 - Difference: -2 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -4,096 BTC.
4000 mBTC chips: March 16: 4496 - March 17: 4486 - Difference: -10 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -40 BTC.
4096 mBTC chips: March 16: 114 - March 17: 114 - Difference: 0 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 0 BTC.
8000 mBTC chips: March 16: 1284 - March 17: 1282 - Difference: -2 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: -16 BTC.
8192 mBTC chips: March 16: 15 - March 17: 15 - Difference: 0 funded addresses. Total balance sweeped: 0 BTC.

Based on this, I can't really tell if any more chips have been swept.

I don't think it is really possible for a mixer to not store all their coin in their hot wallet. If CM used cold wallets, moving coin to/from the cold wallet really couldn't be done on-chain, otherwise, it would be clear which groups of addresses belong to CM. Also, CM's operational model effectively put all their coin on a hot wallet, regardless of the location of it's private keys due to the fact that CM had such a low threshold for someone to get a "chip", which is effectively an IOU from CM to their customers -- all that is needed is a browser session.

Binance is doing the same thing too. All we know about Binance is CZ. It is like CZ is behind everything.   He is accepting deposits, he is approving withdrawals, he is processing KYC's, he is dealing with the FBI/CIA, he is dealing with the twitter folks, he is a one man army.

CZ!

CZ!!!

CZ!!!!

Without CZ, Binance wouldn't exist. God bless him.


What about CM storing keys though? If true, that's going to cause some serious trouble on its users and they openly said, they don't do it. People used CM to stay anonymous, if CM stored their users IP's, addresses etc... Wouldn't be that lying? Would it be better if they stayed in the business and kept logging their users? Grow the jackpot even bigger for the FEDs?

It seems to me, you just can't trust anybody or any service these theys. You just don't know who is a fucking badge.

However, the argument remains the same. The government does not have the right to arrest the creator of the knife if his creation was used to murder someone. The government should arrest the murderer. I am shaking my head why there are some people who argue that the arrest and detention is acceptable because it is not.

I thought about it too. I think it's quite common practice when business hire some random dude to be their public person. His name is used for things like hosting, bank payments, communication and etc, while real work is done by other people who remain behind the curtains.

I don't understand why Chipmixer gets a pass for storing our private keys and whatever other data they have despite constantly assuring us that keys are deleted and no data is logged. He literally committed the cardinal sin of privacy. What if that data is released during the court proceedings? Sure it sucks for drug dealers and hackers, whatever, but what pisses me off is all the people who used Chipmixer to protect their privacy for (what they believe are) morally good reasons. People in countries where Bitcoin is illegal, and the people who used Chipmixer to donate to organizations or causes that go against what their government supports.  

What comes to mind right now is what's going on in Ukraine (and set aside your views on that for a moment, this is just the example that comes to mind). Imagine a Russian citizen who donated funds to support Ukraine's defense and hid that transaction from the Russian government with Chipmixer. On the other hand, imagine a Ukrainian citizen who donated Bitcoin to practically any Russian company in the past year and hid that with Chipmixer. If this data leaks, both of those people are facing prison or death.

 Just look at this.



Chipmixer really scammed us. I was rooting for him at first when I learned he wasn't yet caught (see my post here https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61918045). But now that I've given it more thought and see how terribly he screwed his users over, I think he is far from a hero.

The problem here is that governments stopped going after the real scammers a long (decades) time ago, because they can't do that with the technical and social infrastructure they've got, but it's certainly possible. So they have resorted to criminalizing any service that is used by scammers, including legitimate ones, and destroying them, except for the services who retain a large enough legal team to wear down the government's in court - see FTX and Sam for an example of that.

Chipmix.io, a known scam clone, is still up by the way - and it's even on the first page of google, under a bunch of "governments shut down Chipmixer" news articles.

And you mention drug dealers - well let me ask you a question then. Do you think Ross Ulbricht deserves his double life sentence?

Miners are also aware that some of the transactions they mine come from scammers, and thus take a commission from illicit activity. Does that make them scammers? No.

The fact that you think a mixer is a scam, just because it uses scammers' funds, means you've misunderstood the definition of a "scam". Let me quote it:

ChipMixer, and every other similarly working mixer, is the complete opposite of scam. Ensuring privacy for everyone, and therefore for guilty people as well, is what a mixer all about.

To awear, or not to awear, that is the question

If a drug dealer is seized for pushing drugs and also at same time it was discovered that some Scammers give funds to him to run his business, what should happen to the scammers if found and could you say that the drug dealer was awear or not awear that the funds he is getting to run his business is from scammers?

So, what do we have?
A 49 year old Vietnamese who used gmail, protonmail, and so on, who had a lot of bitcoin, but was slowly exchanging it by offering to sell it to you $100 at a time if you send money to his paypal account?
I feel like this guy was the front man with the real coders working behind much thicker walls. They needed someone to be in contact with clients on bitcointalk and reddit, someone who'd pay the campaign manager, but I don't believe the same person did everything from answering questions on the forum, through managing all those domains to fixing bugs and trading bitcoin.

It looks like he was arrested in Germany but charged in Philadelphia? So a person who isn't a US citizen, who probably never went to the US, who lived in Europe, isn't going to be prosecuted and sentenced in Europe? It's funny that no matter where you are the USA is running the show and all governments bow down to the greatest bully.

If a drug dealer is seized does it mean he was a scammer?

Why is the website sized? If it's not a Scam then keep ur hope alive it comes back.

Why was it a scam?

oh.. ohh... oh wow, so finally ChipMixer is down, it was  a scam all along and some members who participated in it know but never talked about it, but lot of them were against 1Xbet and tagged people who wear the signature. at this point you guys also need to be tagged.

This is also the impression I got from reading more through the court document, he's probably just the fall guy. There appears to be a "leap" in connection between the suspect and the servers than ran CM. At most he appears to be connected to stolen accounts, or had his identity stolen himself, or had dealings with stolen accounts. His other connection is with the "V3 Subscriber":


If I had to guess, the "V3 Subscriber" is based in Central/Eastern Europe not Southeast Asia. My favourite quote so far from this, relating to the V3 Subscriber:


So basically, it's a hunch then. Generally, the more I read into this case, the more holes there seem to be. That's just my interpretation/speculation anyway.

Time will give us more accurate answers, but if these coins were seized, they would not be moved soon and would be sold in a public auction, what really surprised me how one person could buy 1900 Bitcoin, the report did not add about any additional details.

What scares me is the data that was collected, it is 7 terabytes, if their claim is correct, then many of the previous *scams* will be exposed easily and this will lead us, why did CM lie all this time about deleting logs after two weeks.

Thanks for this, I was talking to my wife about this case and it was just surprising that a one man band from Vietnam had this operations running for the last 6 years. Either someone from behind used his name, or he is really that "intelligent" to hide everything until that fatal mistakes he did that's why the authorities was able to track him down and his name.

I was curious how many chips got emptied, so I compared the number of funded addresses with "chip-sized-balances" this morning to yesterday morning's balances. Note that this isn't meant to be accurate, it also includes non-chips with the same balance (and it could even include addresses that received additional funds so they're no longer counted as "chips"). Despite these shortcomings, I'm pretty sure most of them are chips.

1 mBTC chips: March 15: 377619 - March 16: 373824 - Difference: -3795 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -3.795 BTC.
2 mBTC chips: March 15: 81644 - March 16: 79035 - Difference: -2609 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -5.218 BTC.
4 mBTC chips: March 15: 32943 - March 16: 30463 - Difference: -2480 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -9.92 BTC.
8 mBTC chips: March 15: 16179 - March 16: 13950 - Difference: -2229 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -17.832 BTC.
16 mBTC chips: March 15: 8823 - March 16: 6701 - Difference: -2122 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -33.952 BTC.
32 mBTC chips: March 15: 4737 - March 16: 3452 - Difference: -1285 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -41.12 BTC.
64 mBTC chips: March 15: 2410 - March 16: 1359 - Difference: -1051 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -67.264 BTC.
128 mBTC chips: March 15: 1638 - March 16: 830 - Difference: -808 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -103.424 BTC.
256 mBTC chips: March 15: 1702 - March 16: 392 - Difference: -1310 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -335.36 BTC.
500 mBTC chips: March 15: 57401 - March 16: 57411 - Difference: 10 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 5 BTC.
512 mBTC chips: March 15: 973 - March 16: 277 - Difference: -696 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -356.352 BTC.
1000 mBTC chips: March 15: 96484 - March 16: 96525 - Difference: 41 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 41 BTC.
1024 mBTC chips: March 15: 1582 - March 16: 267 - Difference: -1315 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -1.346.56 BTC.
2000 mBTC chips: March 15: 19824 - March 16: 19792 - Difference: -32 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -64 BTC.
2048 mBTC chips: March 15: 229 - March 16: 57 - Difference: -172 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -352.256 BTC.
4000 mBTC chips: March 15: 4493 - March 16: 4496 - Difference: 3 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 12 BTC.
4096 mBTC chips: March 15: 238 - March 16: 114 - Difference: -124 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -507.904 BTC.
8000 mBTC chips: March 15: 1293 - March 16: 1284 - Difference: -9 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -72 BTC.
8192 mBTC chips: March 15: 81 - March 16: 15 - Difference: -66 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -540.672 BTC.

For comparison, this is what the data would have looked like on a "normal" day (2 days earlier):
1 mBTC chips: March 13: 377071 - March 14: 376999 - Difference: -72 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -0.072 BTC.
2 mBTC chips: March 13: 81456 - March 14: 81506 - Difference: 50 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 0.1 BTC.
4 mBTC chips: March 13: 32672 - March 14: 32742 - Difference: 70 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 0.28 BTC.
8 mBTC chips: March 13: 15963 - March 14: 16019 - Difference: 56 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 0.448 BTC.
16 mBTC chips: March 13: 8664 - March 14: 8708 - Difference: 44 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 0.704 BTC.
32 mBTC chips: March 13: 4717 - March 14: 4736 - Difference: 19 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 0.608 BTC.
64 mBTC chips: March 13: 2394 - March 14: 2416 - Difference: 22 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 1.408 BTC.
128 mBTC chips: March 13: 1628 - March 14: 1639 - Difference: 11 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 1.408 BTC.
256 mBTC chips: March 13: 1629 - March 14: 1673 - Difference: 44 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 11.264 BTC.
500 mBTC chips: March 13: 57411 - March 14: 57449 - Difference: 38 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 19 BTC.
512 mBTC chips: March 13: 915 - March 14: 960 - Difference: 45 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 23 BTC.
1000 mBTC chips: March 13: 96436 - March 14: 96480 - Difference: 44 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 44 BTC.
1024 mBTC chips: March 13: 1575 - March 14: 1596 - Difference: 21 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 21.504 BTC.
2000 mBTC chips: March 13: 19810 - March 14: 19806 - Difference: -4 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -8 BTC.
2048 mBTC chips: March 13: 205 - March 14: 231 - Difference: 26 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 53.248 BTC.
4000 mBTC chips: March 13: 4482 - March 14: 4481 - Difference: -1 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -4 BTC.
4096 mBTC chips: March 13: 231 - March 14: 242 - Difference: 11 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 45.056 BTC.
8000 mBTC chips: March 13: 1290 - March 14: 1288 - Difference: -2 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -16 BTC.
8192 mBTC chips: March 13: 78 - March 14: 83 - Difference: 5 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 40.96 BTC.
(note: when the total balance "swept" is positive, more addresses with that balance were created, not swept).

A quick count shows that more than 1900 Bitcoin was swept, which makes me believe that not all private keys were compromised and some users swept it on their own.

Raw data source: List of all Bitcoin addresses with a balance

---

---

Update

Segwit (addresses starting with bc) only:
1 mBTC chips: March 15: 129252 - March 16: 127143 - Difference: -2109 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -2,109 BTC.
2 mBTC chips: March 15: 22471 - March 16: 20861 - Difference: -1610 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -3,22 BTC.
4 mBTC chips: March 15: 8205 - March 16: 6591 - Difference: -1614 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -6,456 BTC.
8 mBTC chips: March 15: 4893 - March 16: 3313 - Difference: -1580 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -12,64 BTC.
16 mBTC chips: March 15: 3534 - March 16: 1840 - Difference: -1694 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -27,104 BTC.
32 mBTC chips: March 15: 1810 - March 16: 873 - Difference: -937 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -29,984 BTC.
64 mBTC chips: March 15: 1012 - March 16: 334 - Difference: -678 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -43,392 BTC.
128 mBTC chips: March 15: 876 - March 16: 169 - Difference: -707 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -90,496 BTC.
256 mBTC chips: March 15: 1296 - March 16: 77 - Difference: -1219 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -312,064 BTC.
500 mBTC chips: March 15: 29868 - March 16: 29891 - Difference: 23 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 11,5 BTC.
512 mBTC chips: March 15: 657 - March 16: 37 - Difference: -620 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -317,44 BTC.
1000 mBTC chips: March 15: 31921 - March 16: 31964 - Difference: 43 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 43 BTC.
1024 mBTC chips: March 15: 1333 - March 16: 54 - Difference: -1279 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -1,309,696 BTC.
2000 mBTC chips: March 15: 7746 - March 16: 7755 - Difference: 9 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 18 BTC.
2048 mBTC chips: March 15: 196 - March 16: 37 - Difference: -159 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -325,632 BTC.
4000 mBTC chips: March 15: 1615 - March 16: 1620 - Difference: 5 funded addresses. Total balance swept: 20 BTC.
4096 mBTC chips: March 15: 127 - March 16: 15 - Difference: -112 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -458,752 BTC.
8000 mBTC chips: March 15: 397 - March 16: 392 - Difference: -5 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -40 BTC.
8192 mBTC chips: March 15: 61 - March 16: 3 - Difference: -58 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -475,136 BTC.

Native (addresses starting with 1) only:
1 mBTC chips: March 15: 202374 - March 16: 200753 - Difference: -1621 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -1,621 BTC.
2 mBTC chips: March 15: 45485 - March 16: 44496 - Difference: -989 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -1,978 BTC.
4 mBTC chips: March 15: 19819 - March 16: 18920 - Difference: -899 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -3,596 BTC.
8 mBTC chips: March 15: 8595 - March 16: 7936 - Difference: -659 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -5,272 BTC.
16 mBTC chips: March 15: 3916 - March 16: 3486 - Difference: -430 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -6,88 BTC.
32 mBTC chips: March 15: 2191 - March 16: 1848 - Difference: -343 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -10,976 BTC.
64 mBTC chips: March 15: 1193 - March 16: 823 - Difference: -370 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -23,68 BTC.
128 mBTC chips: March 15: 650 - March 16: 548 - Difference: -102 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -13,056 BTC.
256 mBTC chips: March 15: 356 - March 16: 264 - Difference: -92 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -23,552 BTC.
500 mBTC chips: March 15: 15473 - March 16: 15460 - Difference: -13 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -6,5 BTC.
512 mBTC chips: March 15: 283 - March 16: 207 - Difference: -76 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -38,912 BTC.
1000 mBTC chips: March 15: 42015 - March 16: 41998 - Difference: -17 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -17 BTC.
1024 mBTC chips: March 15: 244 - March 16: 208 - Difference: -36 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -36,864 BTC.
2000 mBTC chips: March 15: 6352 - March 16: 6314 - Difference: -38 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -76 BTC.
2048 mBTC chips: March 15: 32 - March 16: 19 - Difference: -13 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -26,624 BTC.
4000 mBTC chips: March 15: 1499 - March 16: 1496 - Difference: -3 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -12 BTC.
4096 mBTC chips: March 15: 109 - March 16: 97 - Difference: -12 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -49,152 BTC.
8000 mBTC chips: March 15: 518 - March 16: 515 - Difference: -3 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -24 BTC.
8192 mBTC chips: March 15: 19 - March 16: 11 - Difference: -8 funded addresses. Total balance swept: -65,536 BTC.

I just saw the news that is crazy after what happened on tornado cash now chipmixer its kinda scary tho, for me and the whole mixing industry I hope everything settles down


and you was right and all of this happen in the first Q1 of 2023 damn. We need a good news right now.

Yeah. I am not buying that story neither. One would be incredibly stupid to believe that a man from Chi- I mean Vietnam was behind the whole operation. Whoever was running the operation probably made him and his family incredibly rich so they could use his name on the papers. Everything was good as long as no FEDs were involved but when they do... he is going to pay for the wealth he acquired by serving jail time. A fair trade I would say. Balanced. Like everything in the universe. Action > Reaction. Cause and Effect.

I guess there are no mixers that are safe these days; it's just a matter of time, as eventually, a mixer that is still operating now might be seized in the future. Chipmixer has been a reputable Bitcoin mixer, but we know how the government handles this world. Centralization is enforced, and if you ask for privacy in transacting your money and use a service like a mixer, you'll already be on the watchlist, as they might think you are laundering money.

I fear the opposite: CM-users will look for an alternative, and many of them will fall victim to new scam sites.

Am I the only one who's surprised that 1900 Bitcoin was stored in hot wallets?

Or, there's one guy taking the fall now. I always thought that CM had deep pockets from the start, and that doesn't sound like a single guy from Vietnam.

The selfies in the criminal complaint ("press release report") were given to various exchanges as part of their KYC process.

7 TB of data is a lot for a business like ChipMixer to have. I suspect that some of this is a copy of the blockchain, which was potentially replicated across multiple full nodes. It is also possible that, for whatever reason, this guy was keeping some information about his customers.

---

I am not surprised by this. As with the case with SilkRoad, CM was not a success on the day it started, and as such, I presume the operator didn't think he would be as big of a target as he eventually became. It is unusual for law enforcement to devote substantial resources into investigating crimes done on a small scale, and he presumably didn't anticipate how successful CM would eventually become. It seems that he became more careful over time, for example, by requiring customers to only access the mixing portion of his site via tor.

The only positive thing coming out of this is that the scam domains are being seized too (apparently, because Feds never read scam accusations), so nobody will ever launch a scam clone of it again.

Now I understand why bitmixer.io chickened out and left this business years ago. If you never have heard of it, bitmixer.io had the best automated signature campaign of this forum running till they decided that they don’t want to live behind the bars because they exactly knew how risky it was to mix “clean” coins with “dirty” coins. It wasn’t worth it. If you read bitmixer.io’s last posts, they said just that. The account is still around and reading the forum btw. He must be thinking… “I shorted this business right in time. Phew.”

And yet, in the case of Tornado Cash, hundreds of millions worth of different coins linked to the mixer in one way or another were frozen. This was generally a blanket move. This wasn't just done selectively to suspicious wallets and addresses. This included funds of innocent and unsuspecting Tornado Cash users.

Does this imply that there are government agents who are reading our posts and following some accounts who might be a danger to society hehehee?