Topic: Europol Sezied 1909 BTC from "Chipmixer" - page 2. (Read 411 times)
This is also a good wakeup call for all the other centralized services and altcoins (eg. Tether, Ethereum, Ripple, BCash, ...). The governments could shut them down all the same and make the same exact claims they made here (used for illegal activities) and arrest the centralized authority of them (like arresting Butterin and seizing his tens of millions of premined ether).
Only time can give the right answer. Based on the seizure it looks like the authorities have got solid evidence against the mixer service. If not it isn't possible to seize and shut down the service all of the sudden. One of the reputed service provider accused and shut is completely unexpected. Most of the participants of the promotion were much experienced users, they could've never thought of being into a campaign that had promoted an illegal service support system.
Sad stuff for the bitcointalk community, as their campaign's revered as one of the biggest campaigns here. In any case, I don't really have much of a say in this other than I fear that they may go after other mixers in the market, because as of now what I get from this coordinated pincher attack against chipmixer is that the government sees cryptomixers as "bitcoin mix, bitcoin can't be traced anymore, mixer bad, mixer money laundering" awooga bullshit.
Which begs the question of why in the hell are they specifically attacking mixers when the problem is still at large? Scammers, thieves, all of those entities still roam free and are still availably tricking people out of their hard-earned money! Stopping mixers from operating isn't gonna solve the problem, and for me this is just a lame attempt just to say "hey, we're doing something please praise us".
Which begs the question of why in the hell are they specifically attacking mixers when the problem is still at large? Scammers, thieves, all of those entities still roam free and are still availably tricking people out of their hard-earned money! Stopping mixers from operating isn't gonna solve the problem, and for me this is just a lame attempt just to say "hey, we're doing something please praise us".
I can't help but ponder the timing of this take down.
We have a US bank going under, which they say is the biggest collapse since 2008 financial crisis (that led to creation of bitcoin) and we also have bitcoin price starting to rise as the US banking system is feared to fail catastrophically in the near future.
All of a sudden Justice Department decides to shut down a very old business while releasing a statement listing all the negative/illegal things they claim has been done using this service (which they are actually saying is done using bitcoin).
I don't believe in coincidences
This too, now that you pointed it out, I'm beginning to formulate some conspiracy theory in my brain that leads me to think that they are attacking mixers and will continue to attack the industry to tip the balance of power in their favor once again, since all of their banks are falling down under whilst bitcoin isn't showing signs of stopping. We have a US bank going under, which they say is the biggest collapse since 2008 financial crisis (that led to creation of bitcoin) and we also have bitcoin price starting to rise as the US banking system is feared to fail catastrophically in the near future.
All of a sudden Justice Department decides to shut down a very old business while releasing a statement listing all the negative/illegal things they claim has been done using this service (which they are actually saying is done using bitcoin).
I don't believe in coincidences
I must say if something bad happens then we should not promote it.
Mixer avatar? Checked!
Mixer signature? Checked!
Doesn't that make sense? Checked!
Well look at it this way. They shut down Chipmixer, right? (And I'm still wearing this stupid signature until next week probably)
Speaking of, has anyone come up with some smart quote to replace the now not working links?
I tried to play with it to add a in memoriam or #privacy forever but it went so bad I just kept the old one.
Of course this is the most shocking news I heard today. Some of the other mixing services still advertised on the forums still seem safe, but they are on the government list. I don't know how these kind of things can affect bitcoin, but I don't think anyone should blame bitcoin even though it is used in many illegal activities by some people.
I don't expect the government and its authorities to blame bitcoin in this case, but I do expect the government to blame those who misuse bitcoin for their illegal actions.
I don't expect the government and its authorities to blame bitcoin in this case, but I do expect the government to blame those who misuse bitcoin for their illegal actions.
How did they do it? How do you seize assets of a company that literally specializes in ensuring that assets are mixed well enough to not be traced? I mean, I understand how you block a website, but seizing assets and closing a business down is a whole different thing which required either Chipmixer's cooperation or very impressive investigative work of the authorities. I've never used mixers because I've never felt the need to do that, but I do believe that some people can use mixers for privacy reasons rather than money laundering. Then again, it's not like a company can check which reason its service is being used for, and mixers are very convenient for financial crimes, so I'm not surprised that the authorities cracked down on it.
"ChipMixer" one of the most popular signature campaigns on the Bitcoin forum has been seized by an agency today.
It's very important to clarify one fact and dust off a wrong assumption and narration of the situation from the paragraph above. -Chipmixer signature campaign is different from chip mixer itself even though they promote the company it is 100% normal for anyone in this forum to have the right to promote whatever services their wish unless it is a proven scam then the community will not support it.
-for certification's sake, it is the company that was seized and not the signature campaign, and as far as I know, the campaign is still ongoing until otherwise from the manager.
because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it, almost replied most of the OPs asking about the legalization of BTC, Blockchain, when will BTC dominate Banks, When will people use it as a normal currency, When do people stop afraid of P2P transactions. Questions to these questions also lie in their good and bad use cases.
It does not matter what BTC is used for, many countries would never make it a legal tender because of it is a decentralized currency. But you should understand that there is a difference between legal tender and legal. BTC is legal in most countries around the world, only in a few places is it illegal; and in the places it is legal people spend it like a normal currency through merchants that openly accept payment in BTC. all we can do is promote good use cases of blockchain and BTC, not the bad use cases which harm the beauty of BTC.
Fiat is used for all kind of bad purposes, but nobody preaches to people how they should use it, Fiat is even easier to use for bad purposes than BTC because it is harder to trace the criminals. I do not want people to use BTC to do bad things, but the beauty of BTC is in its freedom, and we can't dictate to anyone what to do with their coins. 
That's really sad! But such risk was always there when Bestmixer was shut down by the same enforcement authority. It's quite unfortunate that a huge amount of fund was seized and apparantly there's no way to receive it back now if someone is not involved in criminal activities.
More and more mixing services are being targeted by the enforcement agencies since 2022 and multiple mixing services were shut down completely since then.
More and more mixing services are being targeted by the enforcement agencies since 2022 and multiple mixing services were shut down completely since then.
I can't help but ponder the timing of this take down.
We have a US bank going under, which they say is the biggest collapse since 2008 financial crisis (that led to creation of bitcoin) and we also have bitcoin price starting to rise as the US banking system is feared to fail catastrophically in the near future.
All of a sudden Justice Department decides to shut down a very old business while releasing a statement listing all the negative/illegal things they claim has been done using this service (which they are actually saying is done using bitcoin).
I don't believe in coincidences
We have a US bank going under, which they say is the biggest collapse since 2008 financial crisis (that led to creation of bitcoin) and we also have bitcoin price starting to rise as the US banking system is feared to fail catastrophically in the near future.
All of a sudden Justice Department decides to shut down a very old business while releasing a statement listing all the negative/illegal things they claim has been done using this service (which they are actually saying is done using bitcoin).
I don't believe in coincidences
If Chipmixers were used for Money laundering then they should be shut down. I agreed with this. WHY? because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it
Pretty sure those same authorities would describe all mixers as money launderers, including the one you're advertising in your sig. Governments perceive privacy as immoral because they want to know everything about you. Mixers make that difficult for them.
Sad News especially for bitcointalk community.
I have been following the news in various articles, and I have noticed conflicting reports regarding the fact that the authorities were able to identify those in charge of the project. This prompted me to think about the possibility of using forum data to verify identities. Or maybe identify the advertising campaigns that chipmixer launched since 2017.
I have been following the news in various articles, and I have noticed conflicting reports regarding the fact that the authorities were able to identify those in charge of the project. This prompted me to think about the possibility of using forum data to verify identities. Or maybe identify the advertising campaigns that chipmixer launched since 2017.
They apparently got that information from his devices. Theymos wasn't bungled for IP address data (I hope).
I must say if something bad happens then we should not promote it. If Chipmixers were used for Money laundering then they should be shut down. I agreed with this. WHY? because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it, almost replied most of the OPs asking about the legalization of BTC, Blockchain, when will BTC dominate Banks, When will people use it as a normal currency, When do people stop afraid of P2P transactions. Questions to these questions also lie in their good and bad use cases.
Well look at it this way. They shut down Chipmixer, right? (And I'm still wearing this stupid signature until next week probably)
Did they simultaneously clean out all of the bitcoin doubling scams, Bitcoin exchange scams, Bitcoin services which just take the users' money and don't return it, scam casinos like 1xbit, the KYC scams, and the bitcoin address stealing malware?
No, of course not. Why? Because they don't care about any of that stuff.
Governments that are hostile to crypto are two-faced just like Harvey Dent - on one side you have them fight "money laundering" (including bogus assertions of laundering that are actually just a user protecting their privacy), and on the other hand, they don't give a rat's ass if their population loses all their Bitcoins to scammers vacationing in Malibu.
Just some food for thought. Everything they do is heads - as in "good".
I must say if something bad happens then we should not promote it. If Chipmixers were used for Money laundering then they should be shut down. I agreed with this. WHY? because if Crypto and blockchain technology are used for bad purposes then how can we expect governments to legalize it, almost replied most of the OPs asking about the legalization of BTC, Blockchain, when will BTC dominate Banks, When will people use it as a normal currency, When do people stop afraid of P2P transactions. Questions to these questions also lie in their good and bad use cases.
No doubt everything in the world is used with its good and bad impact, the one which has more fruits in it dominate over the other, than why, feel sad for these project (ahh if I am not wrong as I am not accusing anyone just a thought) does the team know about it? maybe not if not then really it's a sad reality but nothing we can do now, all we can do is promote good use cases of blockchain and BTC, not the bad use cases which harm the beauty of BTC.
No doubt everything in the world is used with its good and bad impact, the one which has more fruits in it dominate over the other, than why, feel sad for these project (ahh if I am not wrong as I am not accusing anyone just a thought) does the team know about it? maybe not if not then really it's a sad reality but nothing we can do now, all we can do is promote good use cases of blockchain and BTC, not the bad use cases which harm the beauty of BTC.
Sad News especially for bitcointalk community.
I have been following the news in various articles, and I have noticed conflicting reports regarding the fact that the authorities were able to identify those in charge of the project. This prompted me to think about the possibility of using forum data to verify identities. Or maybe identify the advertising campaigns that chipmixer launched since 2017.
I have been following the news in various articles, and I have noticed conflicting reports regarding the fact that the authorities were able to identify those in charge of the project. This prompted me to think about the possibility of using forum data to verify identities. Or maybe identify the advertising campaigns that chipmixer launched since 2017.
"ChipMixer" one of the most popular signature campaign on the Bitcoin forum has been seized by an agency today.
15 March, Europol (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) Sezied total assets 1909.4 BTC which current market value $46M from Chipmixer.
The agency has already shut down the Chipmixer website, the agency also alleged that the Chipmixer website has laundered a total of 152000 BTC ($3.8B) at different times since 2017.
Germany and U.S. Seize Over $46M Crypto Tied to ChipMixer Investigation: Europol
15 March, Europol (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) Sezied total assets 1909.4 BTC which current market value $46M from Chipmixer.
The agency has already shut down the Chipmixer website, the agency also alleged that the Chipmixer website has laundered a total of 152000 BTC ($3.8B) at different times since 2017.
Germany and U.S. Seize Over $46M Crypto Tied to ChipMixer Investigation: Europol
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