Topic: Cryptocurrency mixing services do more harm than good to blockchain technology (Read 543 times)

It could stop it if all the players would act as they should, but a lot cheat.
To cash out from an exchange you don't need just the selfie, you also need a bank account with that name, you need to get the money out of that bank account if al the banks would really employ KYC and AML policies this would become harder and harder and what's more important, far costlier for a thief to do so.

But yeah, when there are people acting knowingly as mules, selling the usage of their bank account knowingly for pennies, things get a bit messy.

Also, there are other ways of cashing out, not directly via a bank account.
You know that event from your own country, and I have a feeling the same is happening in mine with an ATM network, not giving names but since it's one of the few which posts online the sums available in their machines it's pretty easy to guess. I've seen some pretty weird numbers on their machines, sometimes there are days when they lose only 5-10k euros from their available balance and then in a matter of hours all the machines around a whole area of the country are down a few hundred thousand euros, and more, their balance goes down to 50-100 euros, so somebody that is almost counting to the last euro.

I just wanted to say that mixers just semi-anonymize the source of the funds, if people want to point them as the ones helping scammers cash out they are overlooking other and more important links in the chain

I don't think KYC could stop this, even if was being primarily focused on stopping this rather than exchanges just covering their own backs.

KYC makes it a little more inconvenient for scammers to cash out, sure, but if you are scamming several thousands dollars then you can definitely afford to buy some fake documents on the dark web for <$100. Hell, you don't even need to use the dark web, as you semi-regularly see people on this forum and other sites offering to sell their own documents, verify accounts, pose for selfies, whatever, for a small fee. Remember of course that scammers and money launderers have been cashing out fiat for decades without getting caught, and can use all the same tricks when cashing out bitcoin - money mules, gift cards, wire transfers, etc.

Really not the smartest thing to do.


The exit gate of scammers are never mixers, hey exit the market when cashing out into fiat, and this is where the so-called KYC and AML and all other bs could stop this, but instead they are used just to scam normal users of a few satoshis when they can't provide a thousand and one proofs.

Everyone tends to forget that in order for a scammer or a thief to use a mixer first he must commit a crime, a scam, a theft, people should be focusing on preventing those to happen in the first place rather than targeting things which the scammer might not even use in the first place.
Just as you don't ban cars to stop thief fleeing after a theft they should focus on what's more important.


Oh lord, seriously?

There's no way that you can find a data regarding with that, coz everyone literally everyone can mix their bitcoins without registering. A common guess for mixing is that this kind of platform is the exit gate of the scammers to avoid being traced or tracked so obviously they are using these services. Without even thinking so much about it, there are and there will be scammers that will use mixers.

Yeah, I also wonder if he forgot to include what he really meant by his post, I didn't find that on read. But honestly having a disadvantage is not a hindrance in adoption, everything has its own disadvantage so it happens to be this one on the mixers. I don't find any harm to it than being used by scammers to wash the stolen funds, I mean they gotta do what they gotta do.

Negative use cases are unavoidable in decentralized, open, permisionless, censorship resistant systems like bitcoin. That is not what we should fight against. To the contrary, that is what bitcoin is loved for. It gives your freedom to act however you want, however you used to. If you are a good guy, bitcoin gives you an ability to do good things without having to ask a permission from bad guys. If you are a bad guy, you continue to do bad things with any means you like, it doesn't matter if you use bitcoin, it won't change your character and your evil habits anyway. People should change themselves in order for them to use bitcoin for a greater good, bitcoin shouldn't be changed, it works perfectly.

Thanks. A lot have been discussed about this subject and this has makes me realize no matter how good a technology is people will also look for the negative part of it and used it. Just as we can't separate people that use bitcoin for legitimate business from those that use it for evil so also it is applied to crypto mixing platform. However, we all want more adoption of crypto but this negative use cases remain the obstacle we should all fight off

Mixers are not 100% guaranteed that will hide your privacy after all its still a theoretical technology. It's not really proven to bring privacy to an transaction once if you use the service.
I still think that mixers in some scenario's are necessary to avoid tracking from third parties such as government trying to cease your Crypto assets. I guess this all depend on how you use the technology.

As a criminal then you  would surely have that thing in mind on making yourself untraceable which means when it comes to any theft or fraud situation then this will automatically tie up with these mixers
that we've known since when they do already able to mixed up things then its impossible for them to be traced up. Anonymity do really have its pros and cons and it will

vary on the individual thats been using up on the service.This is why they are primarily target out by authorities.

Right everybody needs privacy in crypto, and I'm sure most of us here are trying to do that by using a mixing services to protect and hide our every transactions. So I don't think that mixing services are doing harm, they are design for that specific purpose. Criminals will always be criminals, they will find ways to circumvent the law and I don't think that most of them are using mixing services anyways, because it they are then it will be hard for authorities to track them.

I'm sure the main purpose of mixing services is for good things, I've read lots of reviews about mixing services and most of them
feel helped because it can increase the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. In my opinion everything is good and bad, as well as mixing
services depends on the person who wearing it. And I'm sure the number of scammers who use mixing services is no more than 2%,
so the conclusion mixing services are very good for blockchain technology. Because everyone does need privacy.

Everyone needs privacy one way or the other Regardless of who is using a mixing service. Which is part of Bitcoin's purpose. There's no proof to back your claims.
Crimes happens all form before crypto came into existence. Fiat scam rate is higher than the one in crypto.
We want solution? Let's ban cash and crypto. Maybe that's going to work.

I have never actually used a coin mixer before but I've not heard much positivity when it's been brought up.  The same goes for coin-joins, I've not heard many positive things about those either.  The need for privacy is real and is important however.  I would prefer use an all privacy coin such as Monero then mess  with stuff.

You can't stop progress just because criminals might benefit from it, with that thinking we would still live in caves and use stone tools. Historically, crime levels are going down across the world, and the invention of crypto didn't make any global impact on it, so even if darknet markets exist and use Bitcoin, they aren't some huge social problem. There's a lot more things that need to be done in terms of crime fighting, before you can start looking at Bitcoin.

If everybody needs privacy then all human beings need it regardless of their trade.

As scammers they are spineless people but still people. We shouldn't throw away a useful device just because a scammer might want to use it.

It's not even a case of a gun that can be used to shoot a wild boar or a police officer but rather similar to a bank account. Should we not allow convicts to have bank accounts because they were once caught doing something illegal?

Scammers and thieves have the right to eat, sleep, voice their opinions, vote, and have some basic privacy.

Maybe OP is claiming that, if there is no service exist the scammers may not be able to use them to increase their privacy.I guess this thought has been raised as a result of many mixers were closed in the recent months due to that they were used by some criminals.

We all thinks that privacy matters only for criminals but why we shouldn't keep our privacy so mixers are used for legit purposes more than criminals, because criminals knows better way to hide their identity for now.

First, many people stated that Bitcoin is harmful because it is used by many terrorists and also used for money laundering. Then here, the mixer is also harmful because it is used by scammers to make their transaction privacy. Well, thinking about it, all things can be used for any kind of criminal. Let's see how fiat can also be used to do it. We can also think about other technologies that are also the media for criminals. But should we blame them to be harmful? I think that harmful or not depends on the users.

Correct, It's just we need to be careful for the things we are going to since at the first place we are the one who's handling our money and we are the one who's gonna decide if we will trust those junkies as you said or not, remember in this world no scammer if there's no willing victim. So its not really good to blame that in mixing service since for sure many use that for good reasons.

As you can see from the replies above, it's not that simple. In the free world, the fact that something is used by scammers(or abusers) doesn't imply banning of the thing. (Well, I mean, ideally. Unfortunately, in real life we still keep suffering from some wrong decisions of our governments). If junkies are misusing cough syrup, it doesn't mean that little kids should suffer from unbearable cough, when the syrup is banned.

Kind of, if you can remembered the past issue about mixing services wherein authorities found out about the illegal transactions using this kind of services thus issued some banned to used it. That actually ruined somehow the reputation of btc's name.

It was calm now and regains good name back thus if this scammers continue to use mixers to mask their identity, the adoption we are aiming for will be hard to achieve.

You are totally mistaking. So, mixing services are harming just because they help scammers and criminals, What about the privacy? One important goal of Bitcoin was always for some people who really care about their privacy. None will understand their total funds, including governments. Otherwise, Bitcoin would never be than much popular between people. Mixing services will help people to increase their privacy when they really care about it.