Topic: 📝[Discussion topic] Overview of Bitcointalk Signature-Ad Campaigns📝 - page 10. (Read 6442 times)

Bitcointalk.org aims to allow about as much freedom as is reasonably possible. But this is not a darknet forum, and with mixers looking "grayer and grayer", it's no longer reasonably possible to allow linking to mixers. Even though "a cryptocurrency mixing service is not necessarily illegal," a clear pattern has emerged where mixers pop up, last for a little while, and then get taken down by law enforcement once they get too big. Allowing mixers to be posted on bitcointalk.org before they seemingly-inevitably get declared illegal and seized is not sustainable. Therefore, linking to mixers will no longer be allowed, just the same as linking to darknet sites is already not allowed.

To avoid disruption, there will be a grace period: Nothing will change until Jan 1, 2024.

Starting Jan 1, 2024:
 - Existing mixer announcement topics (and a few topics that have no value without mixer-links) will be locked and archived.
 - Going forward, directing people to mixers in new posts/edits will be totally disallowed, and doing so could lead to a ban. Many mixer URLs will be wordfiltered-out, and if you bypass the wordfilter, then that'll definitely be ban-worthy.
 - Any remaining mixer signatures (etc.) may be deleted. Anyone persisting in advertising mixers will be banned.
 - In most cases, old posts will not be deleted. Nobody should be banned for old posts.

You do not need to go edit/delete your past posts. Links will be automatically wordfiltered-out as of Jan 1, or in a few cases mods will archive or delete posts, but you will not be banned for old mixer-related posts.

It will continue to be OK to discuss mixers in a general sort of way. Just don't direct people to mixers: don't link to a mixer, don't link to a directory with links to mixers, don't tell people to "Google ASDFmixer", don't link to a mixer's telegram, etc.

Definition of a mixer

For clarity, here is a detailed definition of what we mean by a "mixer". Most people know intuitively what a mixer is and don't have to read this.

Something is considered a mixer if it meets all of these requirements:
 1. It has a feature advertised for taking property, improving its privacy somehow, and then returning roughly the same type of property.
     a. Even though you can sometimes use non-mixers to mix coins by depositing and then withdrawing, this doesn't make it a mixer because this is an incidental use of the service; the service isn't advertised as privacy-enhancing.
     b. If a site is not primarily a mixer but has a mixer function, such as a mixer function on a gambling website, then the whole site is considered a mixer.
     c. If the site takes coins, gives you a possibly-transferrable IOU, and will convert this IOU back into mixed coins much later, then the temporary conversion into a different type of property does not prevent it from being considered a mixer.
     d. If the site internally converts your deposit into other things as part of its mixing, but ultimately the point of the product is to get your original type of property back, then that's a mixer, not an exchanger.
 2. It is possible for the mixer to steal property passing through it. Assume that the sender does everything as correctly as possible. Also assume that no miners/verifiers on the base-layer cryptocurrency are evil. But assume that every other actor involved is evil (everyone able to vote in a DAO, every coordination server, every counterparty, every member of a multisig, etc.). Ignore short-term software bugs which are expected to be quickly fixed.
 3. The service does not collect KYC-type info from all users.

Examples of things that are not banned mixers include exchangers (unless they have a mixing function), CoinJoin-supporting non-custodial wallets, and Monero.

Mixers are a very risky business model and I believe this isn't the first time such thing happens. Back in the time, 6 years ago tho, circa 2017, Bitmixer shut down voluntarily after other services being seized by US government. Bitmixer at that time was extremely popular and their earnings were incredibly high, yet the owners saw that they should stop before being tracked down.
I don't know what's going on right now with Sinbad but I am not very surprised to see that coming. Mixers should take on consideration the risks of running such service and where to operate it.

No I don't think so because for many governments these type of services are equal to money laundering, tax fraud and illegal activities even though they are operating in clearnet. It is hard to convince these politicians, who are by the way doing the same thing with offshore companies, that all mixers aren't the same.
Personally, I find these services as a good way to keep your privacy and your money from being tracked by curious people. Governments think otherwise since they fail to track them.

Bitcointalk.org is not a darknet site. Linking to illegal services is not allowed. As mentioned in the law-enforcement press release, "a cryptocurrency mixing service is not necessarily illegal." But a seized mixer is rather different from just any old mixer. Sinbad, if still operating, is now clearly a darknet site, and therefore not allowed on bitcointalk.org.

The OP is banned. This topic is archived. The onion address is wordfiltered, and bypassing the wordfilter will get you banned.

Good  morning :-D

Bitmixer at that time was extremely popular and their earnings were incredibly high, yet the owners saw that they should stop before being tracked down.
I don't know what's going on right now with Sinbad but I am not very surprised to see that coming. Mixers should take on consideration the risks of running such service and where to operate it.

Hi all!
Despite the huge profit we earn, we are closing our activity. Let me explain why.

I'm bitcoin enthusiast since 2011. When we started this service I was convinced that any Bitcoin user has a natural right to privacy. I was totally wrong. Now I grasped that Bitcoin is transparent non-anonymous system by design. Blockchain is a great open book. I believe that Bitcoin will have a great future without dark market transactions. You may use Dash or Zerocoin if you want to buy some weed. Not Bitcoin.

I hope our decision will help to make Bitcoin ecosystem more clean and transparent. I hope our competitors will hear our message and will close their services too. Very soon this kind of activity will be considered as illegal in most of countries.

It was a really very hard decision. Especially it was hard to drop this business because of incredible high income. But we never had any government or legal pressure, it is only my own opinion. I really believe in clean transparent Bitcoin. I really happy that Bitcoin legalized as payment system and currency in many countries, I actually didn't believe in this in 2011.

The government pressure doesn't work like "Oh man please close your service!". No way. They just come and arrest you for illegal activity. We are the privacy experts, it is hard or impossible to find out our location and personality, our servers are located in the country where Bitcoin is not considered as a currency, etc, etc. I could sell the business for our competitors for $5-6M, but I will not do this. It is important that you understand my position. I really revised my view about Bitcoin as a transparent system. Bitcoin has no future with drug/weapon traffic or any other illegal activity. This is my point.

Don't worry, we didn't keep logs, we deleted all used wallets, our servers never been seized, we had very strong mixing algorithm. We never collaborated with feds. All our clients are protected. We did our work honesty as described.

About "I'm not a criminal. Why should I mix my coins?". I really believed in this years ago. But look, in 2016 we mixed about 1M bitcoins. What do you think what part of this sum was non criminal? I don't know, we provided just a tool and didn't ask from what source coins coming. But I guess not all of them was clean. I really don't want to earn helping criminals. It is not only personal. Bitcoin couldn't be accepted by general public and governments if it is a crime tool. No, no, no. Fortunately last years appeared special anonymous cryptocurrencies for this purpose. But Bitcoin has another big aims. It is a finance revolution, but not a crime finance revolution.

I received a lot of questions by PM, let's clear the situation.

1. We are not under feds control, all our users are safe, all logs and old wallets deleted. We had incredible multiserver custom written Bitcoin software and outstanding mixing algorithm. It is impossible find out even the fact you used bitmixer (it is possible only by logs of your provider if you didn't use tor version). We didn't had linked wallets, traceable ip addresses etc. Don't worry about your past transactions.

2. We do not sell the domain name nor our software nor methods we used for mixing.

3. All I wrote is true. I've changed the view of this business and Bitcoin future. About question "is a knife good or bad tool?". If you sell knifes and you know that most of your clients are murders, will you stop your business? My pastor suggest me it is not a business I should continue. Sorry for that.

4. The message to other mixers. If even btc-e considered as money laundering service, what do you think about your business? Don't be innocent.

Very important message for our investors who still didn't take money. Please take your principal using your investor panel.

Thank you.

About "I'm not a criminal. Why should I mix my coins?". I really believed in this years ago. But look, in 2016 we mixed about 1M bitcoins. What do you think what part of this sum was non criminal?

Not wanting to deviate too much from the main topic of the OP.
Do you think that a mixing service that only works on clearnet is less exposed to these types of problems?

I don't know what's going on right now with Sinbad but I am not very surprised to see that coming. Mixers should take on consideration the risks of running such service and where to operate it.

Another mixer down. Sinbad.io

According to news reports. they have been linked to North Korean group Lazarus: https://www.techradar.com/pro/sinbad-crypto-mixer-used-by-north-korean-lazarus-group-seized-by-us-government

Not only the campaign is closed but Royse777 is freaking out (and I don't blame him):
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.63245716

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

The case is serious and I am considering not to touch any funds that is in the escrow address right now unless I speak to a lawyer. This means no one is going to receive anymore payments unless I have a direction from the lawyer. It's for the safety of everyone.

Fair point.
I'd be interested in comparing earnings in the actual value, which is best expressed in USD terms (ideally adjusted for inflation). If I was to take the lazy way, I could just take the BTC/USD exchange rate at the moment the campaign was announced, although that approach could potentially distort the results (if there have been big fluctuations in the BTC price during the campaign). So the best approach would be to take a monthly/quarterly snapshots of all (or major) active campaigns at that time and the USD equivalent of the payouts.
Definitely doable, but quite time consuming.

I don't think comparing pay rates in BTC would be meaningful at all though, given the huge swings of its value over the years.

This topic makes things more interesting for an analysis of this type, without a doubt.

For analysis, we face yet another problem: the method of calculation for payment.
In the beginning, the calculation was mostly done in BTC, and in recent years the majority has been done in $ and occasionally some campaigns in BTC. Since the price of BTC has varied significantly since 2013, this makes the calculation more complicated. I believe that to build a more adequate analysis, the analysis should be divided into two, one for payments in BTC and the other in USD.

Massive thanks. I completely forgot about that thread despite having it in watched.
This is good enough to get the historical data, as the "Overview" thread is missing a few years from 2014 to 2017. And, for the purpose of analysing earnings over time, we don't necessarily need data for every single campaign, just a sample of a few campaigns for, say, each quarter, would do the trick.

I'll try getting to it when I have more free time.

There is a list of campaigns that have been carried out by @romero121. He has made a long list of campaigns that paid for BTC, but unfortunately that thread was last active in 2020, meaning it hasn't been updated for almost 3 years.

EVOLUTION OF SIGNATURE AD CAMPAIGNS (BEGINNING DAYS TO THE PRESENT)

Would be very happy if this thread was updated again by the author.

And do we have a list of campaigns that have already taken place?
It's just that scanning hundreds of pages with topics, looking for campaign topics since 2014 (or something like that), is very complicated.

There's also MixTum (managed by Icopress) with the max payout of $210/week. So I believe we only have those 4 campaigns with max payment of $200 or above.
Still, I'd say that's pretty good.

I wish someone compiled the old data and made a chart of how the median campaign payment changed over time. If I'm not mistaken, we had pretty significant growth in USD terms over the last few years.

Indeed, Tumbler has the highest pay rate at the moment for regular posts but they are limited to 25 posts/week, in contrast to some other mixer campaigns even though they are below Tumbler the rate of pay per post is that they have a larger weekly post quota so participants can earn more. from $200+

Mixero upto $250
Sinbad upto $225
Yomix upto $200

Indeed, Tumbler has the highest pay rate at the moment for regular posts but they are limited to 25 posts/week, in contrast to some other mixer campaigns even though they are below Tumbler the rate of pay per post is that they have a larger weekly post quota so participants can earn more. from $200+

Mixero upto $250
Sinbad upto $225
Yomix upto $200

Currently, the campaign managed by Royse777 has the highest payout.

Yes you're right. Their payrate is the highest for regular participants. If we look at the funds they have, perhaps the tumbler is planning to carry out promotions on a large scale, considering the high cost of their review campaign and they have also sent campaign signature funds to CM in the large amount (0.5 btc). I suspect their campaign will be long term, that's just an assumption. We'll see later

If you look at the required post count and the payment rates for the traditional ranks (no merit ranks) then the Tumber.io pay rates are the real deal for someone who doesn't post much. I don't know how long the campaign will last, but most people obviously prefer longevity of the campaign vs. very high pay rates that could just last for a month.

For now, perhaps the $7 payrate is the highest. However, if calculated per week, the tumbler campaign only pays $175 per week. The sinbad sig campaign promises bigger payouts with a maximum payout of $225 per week, and the highest weekly payout is held by mixero with a maximum weekly payout of $250

For now, perhaps the $7 payrate is the highest. However, if calculated per week, the tumbler campaign only pays $175 per week. The sinbad sig campaign promises bigger payouts with a maximum payout of $225 per week, and the highest weekly payout is held by mixero with a maximum weekly payout of $250