Topic: Is there a chance we get a takedown notice? - page 4. (Read 1683 times)

I’m aware. Who do you think the $400m belonged to? I’ll answer, it was user funds. Why do you think they used Chipmixer if everything was on the up and up? Seems like an unnecessary waste of money. If Chipmixer was so flawless, how did people know those funds were sent there anyway? Do you really think the blockchain can’t be assessed to see where those funds ended up?

I don’t agree with your line of thought that those $400m weren’t owed to customers and I still say if you lost funds on FTX, you should thank Chipmixer advertisers for supporting the theft and attempted laundering of funds owed to you.

Disclaimer: I’ve never used FTX or Chipmixer.

Why that? What's the difference between using a centralized solution and using a decentralized one, self-custody asides? ChipMixer is just a service that does what a protocol should do, that is not currently possible on the base layer, with exchange of your custody. Of course, there's also trust involved, but if I find it eligible to trust, then where's the problem?

Wasabi Wallet also requires a coordinator to work. You can't have the same effective CoinJoins otherwise. Does that mean that CoinJoining is also for money laundering, de facto?

Less talk, more pointing to my coins.

That's a sign that it works. Whatever authorities can't track is money laundering until proven otherwise. It won't take a lot until usage of Lightning is also flagged red.

This is precisely why I want some serious privacy. Laws are crazy, most of the times. If I'm thriving for protection from anti-bitcoin and anti-freedom state laws, then the first thing I'll make sure is to keep my Bitcoin activity disconnected as much as possible from my real identity.

Lol. ChipMixer subjected to laundering funds that were stolen from the yet biggest money laundering service in crypto space. Just lol.  

Og, the $400m FTX "hack" was just the Bahamas regulator seizing assets.

And the user funds were gone since as early as June; they were lent to Alameda Research who then lost all of it on trading.

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Plus, FTX did not even have bitcoin on its balance sheet at the time of its bankruptcy. Chipmixer and most other mixers advertised here only mix Bitcoin. So it is unlikely they will face a collective legal problem from the governments, considering that the spotlight is currently being shined on the exchanges and almost no attention is being given to mixers.

If you go on this path you can most probably also consider that many electrum servers, block explorers, maybe even mining pools too may be created/owned by governments.
In the surveillance era you either go off grid, either take some chances. In most cases you are not targeted, even if, by chance, you've used government owned services too and your wallet privacy is (partially) lost.
Or, maybe we're just too paranoid. We may never know.

However, I loved the answer about CM being or not owned by govt:

I doubt that this can be done in the USA. In the EU, I'm telling you, it can't be done. Retroactive effects can only be applied when they benefit the population, not the other way around, and I understand that this is a general principle of law.

The public authorities cannot take and prohibit writing in forums, and apply retroactive effects, putting us all in jail. For something to be a crime, there has to be a law criminalising it at the time it is committed.

So I doubt very much that a law can be passed whereby those who advertise or use CM on this forum will be punished retroactively.

To be fair here, a lot of nonsense FUD is circulating about that law. It's not "banning mining" as often said because it is still possible to do mining there from existing mining farms. It's even possible to start new mining farms. But new mining farms are required to avoid reactivating old and dirty coal plants because it's targeting such cases, where old, inactive coal plants have been activated to engange in Bitcoin mining. Existing contracts will only be renewed, expanded or new miners allowed to start operation if energy used for operations is 100% renewable.
So, still valid contracts and renewable mining isn't affected as far as I know.

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Regarding the debate on mixers: I haven't done any academic research on the issue but wouldn't it be 100% stupid for this hacker to use ChipMixer and think he'll go unnoticed? His big amounts sent through ChipMixer should clearly create a trackable pattern, where Chainalysis could analyze his transaction flows. Chips going out of ChipMixer have a certain "size", so trying to cash it out (and therefore consolidating his Chips) should result in a nice, trackable pattern.
So yes, let the hacker feel safe when he's trying to cash out the stolen Bitcoin after using ChipMixer while Chainalysis is well aware where he's cashing it out. Catch him, done.
= Play stupid games (use Bitcoin for criminal activity), win stupid prices (get caught).

Most criminals are underestimating how trackable a public Blockchain really is and therefore, I don't see any necessary actions against ChipMixer.

This is why I have avoided mixers like the plague.

Taking down will be harder for governments since developers will just create another mixer. They've done it before with Bitmixer afaik, as they've also sanctioned Tornadocash but it didn't prevent people from going to another. What is more terrifying is if the create government creates mixers themselves to spy on users, this will be an option for them instead. Bitcointalk, I think can be considered social media.

first off i can assure you using chipmixer is a way to be tagged as a suspect in money laundering.

any USA citizen  or Bahama citizen is asking for trouble using chipmixer.

ftx = big fucking money lost.

I for one am glad i do not and have not ever advertised or used a mixer of any kind.

just look how NY made a new no  mining law just the other day.

How would you feel if your governement makes a no mixer law and backdates it so that you have to explain your involvement as an advertisement service for them? and user of their service as you just admitted to.

not saying it will but read up on new york and what they just did to miners.

It implies that privacy for Bitcoin should be done without the need for a third party. If your option for privacy involves a third party, that’s money laundering, not privacy. Real privacy would be done at the protocol level for the benefit of everyone. Trustless privacy is the only privacy.

I also wouldn’t be the first to “break” Chipmixer. Read up on it. It’s not my duty to educate you and worse, you’re too stuck in defending your paycheck to see the truth.

If it's fake, you would be able to point to my money right now. I'm using ChipMixer every once in a while, for comparably large amounts, such as my weekly payment. You don't know if I've spent that money, or if I'm holding, unless you're the first person to break ChipMixer. If I hadn't sent them over there, it'd be trivial to open up the spreadsheet and point to my receiving address. But, you can't.

Am I wrong somewhere? Do we understand the same privacy?

Notice your shift. You started with "I don't hate privacy", and now you're admitting that privacy protection is bad, because it puts us targets in the eyes of regulators. Does that imply that we shouldn't have privacy protection, regardless of whether it comes from a centralized service or from the protocol?

I don't hate privacy.  I hate fake privacy that gives people the feeling like they're being private when they aren't, to enrich a centralized service run on behalf of criminals to the detriment of Bitcoin's future regulatory actions.  If you think that's a bad analogy, you don't understand the blockchain.  I have signatures turned off, but clicked your profile to confirm what was already obvious...  You're on their payroll and think this is an attack against you.  It isn't.  It's me showing those unwilling to do the research just how ridiculous it is that people think mixers will somehow provide them with privacy.  It won't and worse, it puts a target on the backs of Bitcoiners by regulators and gives them a talking point.  If others are stupid enough to believe using mixers provides real privacy, regulators will as well and crack down hard on all Bitcoiners as a result.



I'm all in for not having sex with sheep either, regardless of how much cheaper or effective it may be compared to humans.  How do you like that analogy?  

Obviously, they're tracking those who use it, because they're already done with everybody else. If 90% of the people have already given up with their privacy, then obviously, they'll focus on that 10%.

Perhaps one of the worst analogies I've come across with mixers. Lol. Paradoxically, people like you hate them. Maybe because you hate privacy. 

That's all? No paper that describes the analysis process? Government representatives have also come out and state that bitcoin is only used by criminals, that it destroys the environment, that it wastes energy, that it's a ponzi scheme, that it's a bubble, that fails as currency etc. I strongly recommend you to pay attention to your source of news.

I'm all in for trustless mixing, but ChipMixer is the yet most effective and cheap method.

Obviously they're tracking people who use it.  Using a mixer for privacy is like buying drugs with cash and posting video of the transaction on YouTube because you think you're safe since the transaction isn't trackable.  It will only bring more eyes upon you.  The government even came out and said they can track mixed coins through chipmixer over a certain amount.  It provides about as much privacy as a bank robber who runs out screaming along with all the customers in the bank after the robbery, only a majority of the customers are also bank robbers...  Not to mention it's centralized and not at all how privacy should be occurring on the Bitcoin blockchain.  If anything, people thinking tools like this are good enough may even take away funds from developers who could actually achieve privacy on Bitcoin's blockchain via real development and not a centralized shell game. 

Ah, fine logic--and I mean that sincerely.  The only problem is that lawmakers, law enforcement, and a multitude of government agencies don't give a single shit about logical arguments if it means that they might be seen to be twiddling their thumbs when a disaster like FTX (or take your pick from the many crypto has seen) happens. 

All of those entities I just referenced are extremely reactionary and always have been, so as to OP's question....it's anyone's guess if a crackdown could happen.  This just reminds me of all the times I've heard that crypto is bad because it's been used for illegal activities and therefore is dangerous.  That idiotic nonsense has been uttered by people who should know better.

Is it hard to believe that I'm not used into the reputation board, and I'm like 2 and a half years registered?

Shouldn't I? I can send 1.024 BTC to ChipMixer, have the chips spent after a few hours, and have them sent to Coinbase right after a while. Does this qualify as proper usage to you?

All I'm saying is that we don't read about ChipMixer often, and when we do it's usually due to hackers' fault. Here's a case of $40 million stolen from Binance, which as far as I'm concerned remain still unresolved: https://cryptocurrencynews.com/chipmixer-binance-hack-btc-laundering/. I'm not implying that it can't be a honeypot, I'm just saying that your argument works in the opposite direction.

In other words, less than 10% illicit funds is sent to mixer. IMO 4th image of Chainalysis blog is less-biased representative about source of money received by mixer.


Source : https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/crypto-mixer-criminal-volume-2022/

And i would recommend people to read "The 2022 Crypto Crime Report" which can be found at https://go.chainalysis.com/2022-crypto-crime-report.html to get bigger picture about how criminal laundry their money. One interesting thing is DeFi become popular in 2021.

I find the debate very interesting from the sidelines, as I have never used Chipmixer, but I think there are two people missing from the debate here, one is franky1, who I have read an opinion similar to nutildah's, and against the majority. The other would be o_e_l_e_o, of the opposing view.

It would be curious, paradoxical, if a tool like Chipmixer, which is used for privacy, would end up putting you in the bull's eye as Nutildah or franky1 (and to certain extent Ognasty as well) suggest.

I'll stay tuned to the debate.

Hard to believe you honestly don't know but I would start here as this is possibly the most famous example.


Your exact words were "I haven't read once a case of a person who used ChipMixer properly and got caught." I simply provided examples of people who used ChipMixer and got "caught", although adding the qualifier "properly" allows you to exclude all examples at your whim. Regardless, if people have perfect OpSec then they wouldn't get caught, so of course you wouldn't read about them.


Because a good chunk of coins they've received for at least a couple years now have been from illicit sources.



They've had terrible press for at least 2 years and are mentioned in just about every major scam/hacking incident in crypto. Very, very silly to risk involving your coins with an entity that is known for being used by thieves and is otherwise highly surveilled (unless of course they're a honeypot).

Going by past precedent, there's a strong chance they will be sanctioned at some point as they have clearly helped to launder funds for North Korea. Again, unless the whole honeypot thing is true.

What does an illegal centralized service have to do with enhancing Bitcoin’s privacy effectively? It’s a disaster waiting to happen for so many different reasons… Let’s forget the fact that it exists to protect thieves and money laundering activities and just focus on the fact the some guy out there could just rob all the customers or misuse funds like Sam did with FTX. You think this is an enhancement for Bitcoin? It’s a centralized regulatory attack vector that makes everyone look bad and is definitely not how privacy should be enhanced for Bitcoin. Not sure why anyone would think otherwise. Maybe if they considered the FTX platform as an enhancement to Bitcoin’s onboarding procedure…