Topic: Consolidation of mixed outputs - page 3. (Read 1044 times)

That might work, but people should be careful since NiceHash ToS mention they implement AML/CTF.


Some people happily use credit card which usually has 3% fee for convenience sake, so IMO 3%-6% is acceptable for those who want to protect their privacy.

True, and that is more than enough, it will take some cooperations between the pool and the rental service (nicehash or whatever else) and that's very unlikely to happen, because the two services are so far from regulations unlike many of the exchanges.


You are correct, that's the drawback, but still, you can find PPS pools with 0% fees, also nicehash has been paying 5% less than the market on the 7-day average reported on whattomine.com, so that might even get you more sats than you deposit, but of course, this isn't always the case and thus one should go with the assumption that it will cost anywhere between 3% to 6% to obtain those coins.

With that said, if my life is at stake, and I want the maximum privacy I could get - I would still prefer a similar method to any exchange of any sort for these reasons.

1- Using an exchange of any sort means both your deposit and withdrawal addresses are known to a single entity, so they or anybody who hacks them or forces them (like a government) to reveal their data will know about your new address.

You can overcome this issue if you use 2 different exchanges as you mentioned earlier, but then that's also an extra layer of risk added on top of an already risky approach.

2- Most exchanges fall under the regulation and KYC b.s, at any point you might be forced to give away your identity, while a mining pool or a rental service are the last places to be regulated due to the complexity of their business model.

Also, getting some outputs with little to no history is a plus, but it really all depends on how far are you willing to go. Will I pay 5% in this process given that my life isn't at stake if someone happened to link my transactions together? hell no, would I even risk using an exchange for that purpose? also no, to me, using a good mixer like Chipmixer while applying a few of the many tips mentioned here is more than enough in my case.

Technically they know where your hash comes from since the NH relays are well know. They don't know how you PAID for it.
However, since NH charges a 3% fee and most PPS pools are in that same 3% range you are taking a big cut off the top.
Probably no more then some of the other ways discussed here however.

-Dave

How about (ab)using hash rental websites like nicehash, deposit mixed coins into your nicehash wallet, rent SHA-256 hashrate, and mine to a large pool that pays every 24 hours (you don't have to pay withdrawal fees), you get fresh coins or otherwise completely unlinked.

The pool doesn't know where your hashrate came from, nor how you obtained it, it only knows the address you are going to deposit to.

Cool, then besides convenience there's no real downside to always doing this 'session-restore trick' anytime you mix multiple UTXOs with ChipMixer!
Now that you quoted the FAQ, I remember last time I read it was right after sending some 0.xxx8 or 0.xxx9 UTXO, expecting to be able to send the missing amount to reach the next chip size separately, causing almost the largest possible donation during funding process...

Wow. Even at the current bitcoins sale prices, that's only ~3,000 sats. Most services don't accept such small inputs for obvious reasons.

Yes, it would be donated either way, unless you combine the two UTXOs in the same transaction and send 0.004 BTC in a single transaction. Each individual deposit is floored to the nearest 0.001 BTC and the remainder donated, regardless of if you make multiple deposits in the same session. See from their FAQ:

Coin swap is a privacy-oriented technique which involves you swapping your history of transactions with someone else's history of transactions in a non-custodial and trust-minimized way using the smart contracts capability of the bitcoin protocol. The chief advantages of the given method are that (1) you avoid creating toxic change completely during the process of swapping, (2) there are no any thirds-parties or intermediaries involved in this process that can steal your money or surveil your inputs, (3) everything occurs on a base layer of the protocol, which minimizes the attack surface, and, which is arguably the most important point, (4) poor privacy practices of the people you are swapping with doesn't lower the amount of privacy you get and doesn't affect negatively the anonymity set.

I don't remember which one, but I remember one or more wallets did this a long time ago... Though I've got no memory of their names anymore, whether they're still around and if they are, whether they changed this by now.

Cool, thanks for clearing that up! I agree that for certain use cases and certain users, solutions that involve trust are viable options and give them benefits that would otherwise be hard to achieve.

What I meant was that if e.g. you have a 0.0025BTC UTXO and a 0.0015 one, if you send them both in the same session, you end up with a balance of 0.004. But if you want better privacy and use the session restore trick you described before, you will end up with 0.003, right? Or will the 0.0005 of each UTXO be donated either way?

Thanks, this is new to me. I'll have a look at it!

That looks to be to cover the $2k / day limit. Unless you have a lot of UTXOs then I doubt you would ever hit that wall. But as always when using a service to do something it's always a risk.


As of now $1.00 (when it hits not when you send so don't send all those $1.00 with a low fee since if it takes a while to get there and even a small dip occurs.

As for all the small TX if a lot of people start doing it I can see them raising it from $1 to $5 to even higher.
For now it's an option.

There are other services out there that do similar with gift cards that allow you to bank funds but Bitrefill is one of the oldest and stable, and has a really good reputation.

-Dave

Teleport transactions software, a CoinSwap implementation from privacy expert Chris Belcher, can potentially be used for the consolidation of previously mixed transaction outputs. One of the ways this could be done is the following:

1) You have multiple mixed outputs of a different amount, which you received from Chipmixer, for instance;

2) Instead of consolidating them directly or sending them to another mixing round, you could perform a series of coin swaps, where you would be sending your TXOs one by one at random intervals and with different fees;

3) After your coin swaps are done, you will have a set of swapped TXOs, which will differ from your initial one (because coin swap uses multi-transactions to avoid amount correlation);

4) Next you either consolidate all TXO into one transaction or into several transactions, it doesn't actually matter. You can also create additional hops before "real" payment to be able to plausibly deny any connection to a previous output merge, but again it is not necessary.

What do you think?

Yes, that is the downside. As with any such service, coins you store on the service are entirely owned by the service and not by you until you have them safely back in your own wallet. However, it's a risk I'm willing to take for small amounts of coins for the benefit of having instant access at any time to mixed coins, just as I'm willing to take the risk of storing small amounts of coins on an insecure mobile wallet for the benefit of having instant access when I'm on the go. Your own risk profile may vary.

Yes. This method will not work for any change amounts below that value.

Oh, wait, you meant literal reuse of the change address? Which wallet does such thing?

Oh, the issue with this is that I assumed the change doesn't all land in the same address. I'm not sure if there's a standard way; as far as I know, change is handled a bit differently from one wallet to another.

Well, those gambling sites could also close your account, though. So I see no benefit there; the moment you use a centralized party, there is going to be some risk involved.

I really like this idea; these gift cards come in handy anyway from time to time; even as a small birthday gift or simply to purchase something on Amazon. I've only used the service through Lightning so far and didn't know you can also create an account and top it up little by little.

This implies you fully entrust those remaining 0.079 BTC to CM though; not that I'd ever doubt them, but in general I try to minimize such trust. It could be that there is a problem with the website and I can't access it right when I need to or similar sorts of issues, but otherwise it seems like a viable option if the Bitcoin price was a bit lower or the smallest chip size was reduced.

Yup, makes sense; so basically restore the session for each output as long as the output's size is large enough; link smaller outputs by submitting them during one session to reach the minimum size.. You'll maybe pay a bit more though, since every time you create a new session and deposit some coins, they'll be 'truncated' to 0.001 amounts, right?

It's been nice knowing you!

Probably worth pointing out that using more than one account is against their terms and you risk getting hit with KYC demands, which obviously defeats the whole purpose here:
Drat! I've been doxxed! Time to abandon this account I guess.

Yes they do. I just tried it, sent BTC to the given address and as soon as it was confirmed and I went back there was a new deposit address.
And even if there is an 'upper limit' of the addresses they will give you all you need is another email and you can start the process again.

Perhaps not the best or even an ideal way of doing things but it does work.

EDIT TO ADD: If you do use the referral link in the post above and make a qualifying purchase I will know what email address you signed up with, no way of tying it back to you but wanted to put it out there.
Although [email protected] might point back to someone :-)

-Dave

Let's say I deposited 0.1 BTC to ChipMixer. I then wanted to pay for something which was 0.0207 BTC. I would withdraw a 0.016, 0.004, and 0.001 chip, pay the merchant 0.021 BTC (not minding that I just overspent by 50 cents or so) and leave the other 0.079 BTC on ChipMixer as a voucher until I next needed it. No change created. But as I said before, this isn't really economical anymore since the lost 50 cents in this example is now ~$10.

Well, a single ChipMixer session provides a single deposit address, so no, it would link all the outputs. The way to do it is to deposit any UTXOs you don't mind being linked in a single session, withdraw a voucher for the total amount of your deposit, and then destroy that session. Repeat with another sessions with another set of UTXOs and withdraw another voucher. Repeat as many times as necessary - you can do as little as one deposit per session if you want (bearing in mind the minimum deposit limits). Once you have multiple vouchers, you can open yet another new session and combine all the vouchers together, and then make a single large withdrawal.

I get the point, but people who bother use mixer/coinjoin (even with risk blacklisted from some service) is likely have better privacy practice and unlikely doing example you mentioned.


It seems neat idea, but i wonder if there's privacy implication if you keep doing it for long time? I know Bitrefill give new address for each purchase, but i don't remember whether they also give new address for each deposit.

Also, and since I do like the service you can use Bitrefill and buy gift cards if it's available where you are located.

https://www.bitrefill.com/signup?code=mibrahcu <-- referral link
https://www.bitrefill.com <-- non referral link

They have the option of adding BTC to your account. They will convert it to a 'cash balance' at the time you send it and each time you deposit you get a new address.
The minimum is $1.00 at the time of sending.

So in theory you could create an account with just an email add a bunch of small amounts of BTC, withdraw to a gift card that you can use in person.

A bit more limited then an exchange since they have to offer service where you are and you have to want to use a gift card at one of the merchants they offer. But still an option.

EDIT TO ADD: If you do use the referral link above and make a qualifying purchase I will know what email address you signed up with, no way of tying it back to you but wanted to put it out there.

-Dave

The biggest downside of this method is that your account may be frozen after you made a deposit and you will no longer be able to withdraw your funds or consolidate them unless by sacrificing your privacy by providing your real identity. If you still consider exchanges a means to merge your small inputs, a simpler solution would be using a nice bitcoin-only gambling website like bustadice where, as you said, you need nothing but an email address to sign up and where it is highly unlikely that you will be asked for documents. If you like, you can gamble with part of the funds to further obscure the link between your initial amount and your withdrawal amount.


Fair point, but you are not obligated to withdraw immediately and in a single transaction.

There are two things I don't understand from your response:

• What's "untainting mixer outputs"? Haven't we already made it clear that "taint" is an arbitrary rule? Mixing and trying to have your outputs "untainted" is contradictory.
• What's the benefit of mixing with BTC <--> XMR <--> BTC compared to mixing directly with BTC <--> BTC? If it's time, which is the only think I can think of, that's where vouchers and chips take place.

True, but doesn't this answer on why you shouldn't keep change at all? As said by Leo above, whenever you're going to have a decent change left over from a transaction, send them to ChipMixer instead. Or, if you're thinking of buying in bulk, make your purchase and send the rest to ChipMixer.

What I said is: If you have change in x outputs, which are essentially linked from your previous transactions, it doesn't matter that much to broadcast 1 transaction where you spend them all, or x transactions where you spend 1 in each.