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.
Some insights from the person who run an used-to-be a big mixer. The operator proactively shut down the service even it was very big, brought big income for the operator. After due diligent consult with his lawyer, he decided to step down and shut down the business, even did not want to sell it to other people.
Some thinking from BITMIXER.IO
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.
Mixers are not necessarily to be illlegal but see this point that is true for all mixers. Police can not catch criminals and they want to find alternatives who have to pay the cost, it's mixer.