Topic: Is there a chance we get a takedown notice? - page 2. (Read 1683 times)

You oversimplify things . Imagine what you have said for 50 addresses and not for 5 . These 50 addresses are getting funds in a period of time , let's say 1 week . You have to understand that i'm talking for everyday use money ( not an easy task with btc ) .
The only known factor so far is that binance knows i got my money . No one can be certain if the split money belongs to me .
If i start using each address for specific purposes , eg real life use ( super market , groceries , gas etc ) chain analysis knows i live in a town and someone gets paid , but so do tens of thousands of people with me . I might have paid merchants directly , maybe not . So anyone in my town can have the split funds . I'm not obligated to show an identity , right ? So do most of the costumers that live in my city . The more i create addresses and split the money the more i increase the chances that i'm not the owner .
In your example you used 4 out of 5 examples with internet stores . Out of those 4 the 2 are companies that require KYC . The other 2 can't reveal my identity . In your real life , how many times you buy things and show your identity ? Should i assume close to zero ? Try to make a drawing with the example i gave you and you will understand how hard it becomes to have undeniable facts that all the addresses i own are not private .
Someone can be certain that i am the owner of an address only after i have spend the money , not before . So , bitcoin protects my privacy by itself and it doesn't need any mixer .
On the opposite side , most people that want to money launder will use a mixer and are looking for people to provide them liquidity . You can consider yourself each time you use a mixer as the exit liquidity of scammers , traffickers , thieves etc . And the fun part is that you don't even get paid more for your risk of providing liquidity .
Also , something to consider for the future . If things change and regulations get really hard ( pools level ) , your coins that are a result of illegal action might get frozen . How would you prove then that you were only looking to protect yourself and you were not a part of the anon ring ?

 

Have you heard of GPDR ? Do you think it's so easy for a company to start selling your personal information ? Any proof that centralised exchanges give their data ? Or just an illusion to justify your actions ?

Because you provide exit liquidity to crime

I think that's the base of the problem , you consider privacy only as a financial concept . Privacy is much more than that .

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Privacy for me is to be able to let people know the things i want them to know about me . There's not a single picture of me on the internet . I have never shared a specific location of my travels , where i drink cofee , which beach i visited etc . The people i want to know where i am and what i do are specific and i don't have to share it with the whole world .

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

What is your definition of privacy?

Great. So listen how easy it is. You purchase some coins, likely from a KYC-ed exchange? Say Binance. You immediately withdraw to your non-custodial wallet. Binance now knows one of your addresses. Binance, and every single exchange like it, share this kind of information with chain analysis companies, like Chainalysis, Elliptic, CipherTrace, Merkle Science etc., and with every other entity that demands it.

Let's say now that you do this little "trick" of dividing your amount to several addresses, 5 for the sake of simplicity, trying to obfuscate the destination of your withdrawal funds. Now Binance and every entity they share information with, know that you either split your funds to 5 places, or that you paid 5 people, or a combination of those two. At some point in the future, you'll spend those 5 outputs. Let me choose some merchants for you:

• UTXO 0: A domain name provider, who uses BitPay.
• UTXO 1: Coinsbee, to buy a month of Spotify premium.
• UTXO 2: Amazon gift card, from Bitrefill.
• UTXO 3: You want to sell this one for fiat, you use Kraken.
• UTXO 4: A local place at your town that accepts bitcoin.

- BitPay, if you don't know it, has implemented KYC and AML requirements, so it does involve blockchain analysis in some level. Just a phone call, and UTXO 0 is de-anonymized.
- Coinsbee. That does not interact with chain analysis companies, but it's trivial from a blockchain perspective to know which outputs are Coinsbee's. So UTXO 1 can later on be de-anonymized in some sort (that it was sent to Coinsbee, from unknown yet sender).
- Bitrefill. Same as with Coinsbee.
- Kraken. Fully KYC-ed, interacts with companies that trace the chain, you send the money there, you de-anonymize that output.
- Local place. If we assume they don't use an intermediary, then it can provide decent level of privacy, but once it reports anything, it can reveal that UTXO 4 has been sent to a merchant near UTXO 3's owner, which is essentially all UTXO's owner, because they're also linked with Binance, to whom you've given the same name as with Kraken.

And that's before we even mention that centralized exchanges get breached all the time, all that info is ending up to the dark web, or that you rarely spend the entire output, so you frequently have some change outputs that you can't merge together, because you'll reveal you were the owner of their parent outputs-- until you do, because... change outputs are meant to be merged for the same reason you don't spend an entire output.

Except that they rarely rely on that. They have so much information given by centralized exchanges, that whatever you do, you're likely at some list waiting to be de-anonymized. The transparency of the chain is not as useful per se.

Why isn't "I used a mixer" an acceptable response?

You know there's a difference between knowing what dog videos I like watching and how much money I have.

Exactly , you don't know what to say because you have nothing to say . And if you can prove to me that someone can connect my identity to all of my addresses than i'll say i'm wrong and i have misunderstood what privacy is . If not , read what privacy and identiity is .
Identity is protected , as long as you respect your privacy and not taking part into illegal actions . What a chain analysis company can see is coins moving between addresses . They can't be 100% certain which one belongs to a specific owner . If i split my coins between 50 addresses how can you be certain that these are not donations , buys or anything else ?
The owner on the other hand can prove how he got the coins , that's exactly the point of using a blockchain , traceability . By using a mixer all you accomplish is to take away from yourself the privilege of proving that your transactions are legitimate .
I'm tired of listening people ( especialy young ) that try to justify their actions in the name of privacy ( and consider everyone on the opposite side a fool ) while they don't have a clue of what privacy is . You see kids taking out their whole lives on social media and on the other crying about being watched by the "Big Brother" .
 
 

If you think that's enough to hide your activity from chain analysis companies, then I don't know what to say.

Seems that you live in a fantasy world that everyone is after you . I'm protecting my privacy , staying away from illegal activities and i have nothing to fear . If i decide to mix my money with drug dealers and traffickers to "protect my privacy" then probably i'm asking for trouble .
Bitcoin is the perfect tool for privacy , split your coins into many addresses , no one can be certain that you are the owner . You are messing privacy with anonymity . By using anonymity you are throwing away all the proofs that you are innocent . If you want to follow that route , good for you , no one can stop you . Just don't be a cry baby if shit hits the fan .

And what you all fail to understand is that any quest for privacy makes you a target to authorities. Is this an excuse to not have it?

It's funny that this community has turned into a leftist/woke community where everyone that express a different view/opinion is a troll and doesn't understand x,y,z .
What you don't understand is that by using such services , in the quest for privacy some will be on the target of authorities . When they face jail time they will be cry babies and ask for support because they were fighting for privacy . Some of them will be innocent . But it's not so easy to prove that you're not an elephant if you are a part of an anonymous ring .
 

And don't say I did not warn you all.





Now I am not sarcastic or condensating (sp)

 I don't want anyone that was on the chipmixer campaign here on Bitcointalk to get hurt hopefully it all passes over.


And I understand privacy I also understand governments don't give two or three or zero fucks about any citizen's rights to privacy.

As per my last post,

Do you still consider the warnings of those who were against illegal money laundering schemes to be trolling? I received a bit of pushback for sounding warnings BEFORE chipmixer was shut down by authorities while others here were pretending everything was fine so they could collect a check. Has your opinion changed at all or is this the big bad government infringing on your privacy?

It's funny when trolls reveal their hate on mixers. They never understood privacy, and most never will.

I'll save you some time: check the troll's feedback. There's no point interacting with him.

No.

Nope.

Wrong.

well according to Dantes Inferno, the 9th circle of hell is a lake of frozen ice.

just sayin

Don't you use centralised exchanges eventually to cash out? The same entities can track you then, right?
Problem is the source of your coins, if you want to try hide the source, that means you got the coins illegally.
By law, you are doing something wrong, I don't like to bring up morality and ethics.

That's not true. Do you think withdrawing cash from the bank, exchanging your $100 cash bill with your friend's $100 cash bill and then going shopping with this 'mixed' cash is money laundering?

Or let's say you withdraw a $100 bill from the bank and buy a $4 beer with it; you'll get $96 of 'mixed' change back that is untraceable to the original $100 bill. That's the current state of cash fiat money. It's not money laundering.

Exactly. We don't want random people or entities to track what we do with our money. After all, it's ours.
When we have cash bills, we can run around the city and spend a few bucks here and a few there, give some to charity and buy some food; without creepy entities following every single such step.

Why should we allow them to do so when we use Bitcoin?

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Furthermore, there are enough places today where the 'creepy entities' are actually very evil state actors and letting them know how you spent your money can put you in jail or cost your life. Letting them know what you really think and what you post online, can have the same effect.
That's why privacy tools exist and are actually saving lives every single day.

Mixing bitcoin is money laundering by definition. What is the excuse for privacy, who shouldn't know where you got your bitcoins and where you are sending them?
 You would only use a mixing service if you got something to hide, hiding money transfer is illegal and a judge can issue a warrant for investigation.
And yes they can put you in jail for advertising such services. I wonder why they haven't done so, maybe it's because they can track the mixed coins with no difficulty?

It depends if coin mixer services are money transmitters . I know it's a gray area but if regulators want to take em down it would be easy through it .https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/2019-05/FinCEN%20Guidance%20CVC%20FINAL%20508.pdf
As for the penalty for unlicensed money transmitters it can go up to 5 years . https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1960

Laws are different everywhere; as far as I know, in most places you can (and should) be punished for something that was illegal when you did it, even if this fact is only discovered later.
'Back punishing' in the sense of punishing someone for something that at the time was permitted, is at least morally, really fucked up. Because how could you have 'been a law-abiding citizen' without a time machine, then?