Topic: Coin.ph exchange BTC addresses in the Philippines are connected to each other. (Read 717 times)

Would you say the same thing if a Filipino user were to run a Filipino-language version of some CoinJoin-style protocol, that linked (and mixed) together the inputs and outputs of, say, a hundred different individuals who post in the Filipino local?

For that matter, what would you say if a large proportion of Filipino users started sending their money into ChipMixer?  After that, it would be infeasible for you to discover who owned what.

Or what if everybody were to just start using the Lightning Network, which never exposes transactions to the blockchain at all?


Why does an exchange have an obligation to make blockchain analysis easier?  I think that it is rather the opposite:  I would prefer an exchange that made it very difficult to figure out who owns what coins.  Much more difficult than what coins.ph is doing.

To be clear, coins.ph is NOT running a privacy service.  The described behaviour is NOT a privacy feature, and is NOT providing anybody any significant privacy.

This discussion is just too close to an attack on actual privacy services.

By analogy, it is like complaining that the use of CGNAT makes it difficult to associate users with IP addresses.  No, CGNAT does NOT give you any significant privacy.  But a demand for ISPs to make it easy to associate individuals with IP addresses would be too close to an attack on Tor and other privacy services.

It is beneficial that many forum abusers lack the opsec skills to evade very basic analysis of blockchain evidence, IP evidence, etc.  (And it is probably not good to talk too much about this in public—hint.  Let them keep making dumb mistakes.)  However, that itself is not a reason to demand a change of behaviour from other parties, such as exchanges—or down the slippery slope, privacy services.

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FWIW, I also think that the chance is nil that an exchange will change its wallet handling based on this discussion here in Reputation.  I doubt that they will put their engineering team right on this—when nothing is actually broken.

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Edit—Addendum:

To be clear, I am absolutely against blockchain transparency.  You may quote me on that.  Transparency is the opposite of privacy.

The Byzantine agreement produced by the blockchain is its ingenious feature, and its only good feature.  Otherwise, the blockchain as a global public ledger is a terrible concept.  Broken by design.  (Fixed by the Lightning Network.)

(This is why I’m not “Bitcoin-rich”...)

One of the reasons that I avoid many business sections of this forum is that there are too many misguided traditions about publicly posting txids, etc.  Basically, it is a culture of self-doxing.  And let’s not get started on such things as the various demands in mid-2018 for Lauda to dox the money of 5000 investors—just because, “transparency”.  WTF?

And I object to a demand that a business change its wallet handling so that innocent Filipino users who did nothing wrong will have their coin ownership absolutely trivial to trace.  Please focus on busting the abusers!  Nobody is harsher than I am with that; I cheer whenever a forum abuser gets busted.

At first I thought so, but my intention changed...this is not true, if I continue...plus more nonsense like what was said though:@Polar91 at that time. Crazy.

Maybe @Avirunes, quick to realize me, with the address of the swallow he posted:


There are thousands of accounts that do the same thing, this is a bad phenomenon that is currently experienced by the philippines.
Maybe the coins.ph exchange company should be aware of it and rearrange the shipping and outgoing strategies of each individual who makes a transaction.

Maybe, but not a basic reference, even though the majority of the community in the Philippines is fine, as long as they understand the existing campaign rules.

You did it, before everything went crazy.

Yes...that's not supposed to happen, but at least for coins.ph exchange companies, have to review the largest exchange community in this bitcointalk forum...maybe they consider it normal, but just the opposite.

Maybe it's better for coins.ph companies to use one community one address exchange, in transactions from wallet 3 & d, etc.
so coins.ph address becomes the main address for each community in the Philippines.

I think that this can be called an accidental case of, “I taint an alt!”






There is nothing to “fix”, because it’s not broken!  Nobody in the world is obligated to make blockchain analysis easier.  To the contrary, I and others spend much time deliberately confounding blockchain analysis.

Coins.ph is not providing privacy here; and I don’t want to inadvertently start some stupid rumour that this is a feature.  It is not.  It is just a side effect of how they apparently handle their wallet.  But this does raise another question:

Will it be called “chaos” or a “mess” or “intolerable”, if/when CoinJoins get more popular—and more sophisticated?  E.g., would this be “chaos” when scaled up to as many users as privacy advocates can get involved?  Hypothetically, what if a Filipino privacy advocate started doing something like this, and many members of his local forum got involved?

https://joinmarket.me/blog/blog/coinjoinxt/


Yes.  There is just nothing to bust here—and insofar as has been shown on this thread, there is nothing wrong with the exchange.  (Not that I approve of keeping bitcoins on any exchange, but that is a different subject...)

There's no chaos or messy on here, I can't even say if its an issue, just because that's how people do here to get rit of some alts (though I admired people who take their time to get rid of this cheaters ), it's just that how the exchanges and gambling wallet works.

Once some user on that exchange makes an outgoing tx, that exchange will be using the address(es) with unspent BTC in single tx, even the "owner" of the address on coins.ph account didn't make any activity concerning the tx.
Regarding the timing of the tx where those 3 addresses were used in single tx its because of the time of inputs registered where
And these are the odds.

Seems that's the issue here, but I hope not

Just continue to keep busting Yoshie you're an asset of this community.

I have also previously faced a dead end following addresses from this wallet. You can search the address through wallet explorer and check the wallet connection. I hope you are familiar with walletexplorer and how it connects the addresses.

You need to understand how this exchange do transaction.

1) "A" makes a deposit into his address in coins.ph say 331skcjh76u5Qt2hAbabb8Zv8EMXtNkggL
2) "B" requests for withdrawal of some amount from his coins.ph account.
3) If the deposit of "A" is confirmed, the exchange uses that deposit to process the withdrawal request of "B" and thats what you are watching it here.

This happens in many exchanges and not only in coins.ph. I hope I have cleared the doubts you are going through. Let me know if you have further questions.

The only thing that comes out of this thread is that there are lot of Philippines in that campaign.

Do I have something to do here?
Seems like an issue to Coins.ph but not with the users. If any problem persist you can ask me
Also seems like we, users from the Philippine Community, are getting too much attentions in this current times. I simply do not know if this was caused by the previous incident.

Yes, this is clearly a witch hunt.

Don't get me wrong @YOSHIE, you are an asset in this community by exposing cheaters.

But saying that coins.ph is a "chaos" in our local community, doesn't sounds right. First, this is an exchanges that I would say that 100% of all Filipinos here are using to received their payment in a BTC paying campaign. And if we ever wanted to convert it to Philippine Peso (PHP), you can simply cash it out without worrying that you will be connected to someone.

Heck even a gambling site can have the same issue: Transactions from gambling websites, lets talk about it. And I doubt that coins.ph will "fix" the issue on their end, we can't tell them to upgrade because all Filipinos in the bitcointalk community is accused of being connected because of your flawed system. So I don't see any problem or chaos in our local exchange. If that is the case then we can say that Xapo wallet is in chaos if we found addresses interconnected with some users here.

And I think you need to change the title as well, those 3 SR members haven't been found cheating right? All of this is an accusations, with no conclusions. And why you spend time and the results are chaotic and messy? Maybe there are no connections after-all? I'm not defending the accused 3 users here, but to me this is like a crusade to all Filipinos here in this community.

We even have our local LENDING SECTION HERE (Mores Funds Available - Wanted Borrowers!. Most of the transactions are coins.ph->coins.ph so obviously you might found some connection but it doesn't mean they are alts.

I've just woke up by now and got a message from @Harkorede.

I read the entire thread and have to figure it out. What a mess that this coins.ph did to all the members in the Philippines? It for sure we are not aware of this and we are confident using this without knowing that we got connected to the other person's addy.

I have to ask them later today to their support team and let them answer this scenario. I think we are not safe anymore.

Thank you OP for having this awareness and clarifying the situation.

Thank you for hearing me (us)...
I'm also glad of your hard work letting me(us) know that coins.ph making us all users of this exchange connected to one other.
I don't expect that though...

No I did not connect you to them, but this is strange to me, you send btc to the same address as other people, that's not good.

At a glance, I see there are hundreds of accounts like this, this is intolerable for your local exchange.

I also gave an example of my transaction, but it still ran to my main address.

Not as I see it, this is a mess, that's all if members in the Philippines use coin.ph purses, like this, everything is messy, you are accused of being all Alt accounts. Strange exchange at your place.

This is an experience for you in the Philippines, to change this way of exchanging, connecting with one another, it doesn't make sense to me, there are hundreds of accounts that use the same address.

Glad you explained it, i will edit this topic.

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I spend time, but the results are more chaotic, messy.
Example: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/15amswyih862g2SzMg1Fxf8nwXDoutxhwF

I remember @ cabalism13 once made a topic about the address coin.ph.
Topic: Question About Using Another BTC Address...

Ok I don't know how we are connected here, but one thing is for sure, we are all come from the same country and using the same custodial wallet. COINS.PH to be specific because this is the only possible thing why these addresses seems to be connected from each other, and there's no way we are the same people, because Coins.ph is requiring a full kyc verifications, and there's no way someone can use kagebunshin to multiply themselves and register each clone to a custodial wallet.

Now, lets not be quick to judge. I request the OP to further investigate this accusations. If the only way to narrow down this situation is to compromise my identity, then I will do it for the sake of my reputation that had been accused wrongly here.
Thanks have a good day and keep safe.


I'll explain how I receive payment from any signature campaign here.

I'm using Coins.ph direct convertion from BTC to Pesos(Php) that's our local currency. So, basically the payment that was sent to my wallet will be on a Pesos(Php) form not BTC.
https://ibb.co/gmXz01n  
https://ibb.co/wwr7LSs

As you can see in the above picture, there's a word there saying "Receive BTC as PHP".
Now, I don't know how we get connected from each other, but I suspect, this has something to do with how coins.ph took care of the output or transfer.

I don't have any other account anyway, this is solely my only account in Bitcointalk, besides I barely have enough time to post for a single account because I'm busy with my day job.

Edit : Thank you for clarifying everything OP. Atleast this will give a heads up for those who are going to suspect these addresses in the future.

You are right mate, this is a coins.ph wallet.  And this is like a coin mixer (or an exchange as well) which you can see a lot of addresses appear when you make withdrawals.
May other Filipino members here can justify this how coins.ph work.

I don't know how YOSHIE links us to have a connection. And I really don't know them.

I'll send a pm to them with a link this thread.

EDIT:

From YOSHIE's last post, If I understand him correctly, I think he's not disputing that these addresses belong to an exchange, but he's claiming that they (addresses) belong to the same person on the exchange, as you might already know that some exchanges / gambling platforms (I'm very sure about gambling platforms)  gives you the privilege to generate another deposit address after each address has been used, meanwhile deposits through preceding addresses would still get acknowledged. However, I don't get exactly how he arrived at such conclusion.

Aside from the fact that the wallet from which the 3 addresses were generated from has over 2,146,393 active addresses that were generated from it and over 6,599,736 total transactions through the addresses (Can a normal single human being use all those addresses and make all those transactions in a short time)

With reference to some knowledge i know about how exchange wallets especially HD wallets spend Bitcoins it's clear this is an exchange wallet consisting of very many addresses from different accounts. So whenever the bitcoins balances on the different accounts are spent on one transaction involving a large amount of BTC. A number of wallets addresses will acts as inputs to combine all their BTC balances into the total amount of BTC that is to be spent.

That does not mean that the addresses acting as inputs belong to one exchange account/person. I have seen this happen when i used to use localbitcoins.

For example looking at the address's earlier transactions, i have just picked one random transaction where the BTC is being spent
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/8c8b1646d5c8b5533a21030ddaef89f5566f97c1a235fc8520aac3cf04f8ea3c


Look at that transaction, it involves a number of inputs... That doesn't mean the addresses combined to send the BTC in the transaction belong to one person/account

The reason the transactions of the addresses are usually spent at once is probably because Best change sends out the payments to the addresses at once.

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I hope the people who have been mention can come and defend themselves and tell us what's on ground

Someone recently suggested doing this, but we should be really careful to avoid some witch hunts here.
People maybe use some smaller exchanges or some betting website or mixers.

What I would do is to double and triple check all this transactions in two explorers below:
https://www.kycp.org/
https://oxt.me/

Let's look at blockchain transactions elsewhere.

See from the address you mentioned: bc1qkth7akm0wpa57t9dpjzrlmewqzhn07fg4s5hnn

Transaction: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/797b013d798ce8c8952e085e0281a484bf6f19e074e53ad900ee0f53592f4e60

Appear like this.



Now you open a blockchain transaction and press the address: 331skcjh76u5Qt2hAbabb8Zv8EMXtNkggL

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Now the same results appear, like the first.

Transaction: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/331skcjh76u5Qt2hAbabb8Zv8EMXtNkggL

The result:



To the three addresses, they use one place of the exchange company in withdrawing cash, from the btc exchange results.
No matter what type of transaction you see, the results remain the same.

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Total balance of $ 207 now only $ 150, there has been a withdrawal.

Looking at the inputs and outputs.. i would be more inclined to say the addresses belong to an HD wallet of an exchange. Probably the said individuals used direct exchanges addresses to receive the payout and you can't really conclude that they are connected because very many people can use same exchanges.

I dug further in one of the addresses to confirm this

For example Oasisman
He has ever participated in Bit blender signature campaign using this SegWit BTC Address for Payouts: bc1qkth7akm0wpa57t9dpjzrlmewqzhn07fg4s5hnn


If you follow up the transaction trail you will notice that they end up into the address he used for best change campaign: 331skcjh76u5Qt2hAbabb8Zv8EMXtNkggL (which somehow makes sense that he would send BTC in there to be exchanged)
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/bc1qkth7akm0wpa57t9dpjzrlmewqzhn07fg4s5hnn



I wouldn't be so quick to crucify the folks involved

Pasting any of the wallet address into wallet explorer would show the total address associated with it, and @Avirunes is right, just by looking out the outputs (which are often sent to multiple addresses) you could tell that is an exchange wallet.



It's either I'm the one who still don't get it, or you've mixed the whole thing up, All the addresses in the first layer (From) belongs to several persons in single large wallet (likely an exchange), the second layer are payouts addresses of 2 are unspent, there is nothing unsual, AFAICT.

I will tell you how they are connected.

I will give an example with my own address I use.
You can see in the picture below.
My transaction: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/22d6902a1dc10010981b3c6e9ec7d0b717cb0ebb9b2d391ad5d147d82994f94b



The address that I red line (column), that is, the address of the exchange company, not the address of the member in question.

Now notice the snake-like winding line, the address is the address of the member in question.



So clearly, they are connected to the third address.
In shipping BTC.

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Total balance of $ 207 now only $ 150, there has been a withdrawal.

My question may be silly, but how do you know that? I can see that it is the addresses of some wallets like Coinbase or similar. But how did you know that it was the address of the wallet above? I have looked a bit at the addresses of Bestchange members, and I got this address: 3M4QssVzxqTTf9tZVYqX14wHT8sLCp6zXQ, it's similar to the 3 addresses above, the time of receiving money is the same, but its output is different. I still think that the 3 addresses above are related. Where am I wrong?