Topic: Is there a chance we get a takedown notice? (Read 1694 times)

Mixers to be banned.

The authorities answered my question. Yes, there appears to be that chance. 

Locked.

Thank you for having the balls to even post this philipma. I’ll co-sign it so the trolls can target me instead, but your opinion is clearly that of common sense. I’m sure it’s how a vast majority of this forum feels as well, but retaliation here is real and most people don’t want to be involved in the drama. Especially when those defending money laundering here are paid well to do so, while average users are not. It just isn’t worth the fight. Luckily, I love sticking my dick in the hornet’s nest.

And here we go again


https://gizmodo.com/tornado-cash-money-laundering-charges-1850767649


https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/23/two-founders-behind-russian-crypto-mixer-tornado-cash-charged-by-u-s-federal-courts/


Another USA money laundering charge against a mixer.

Now Bitcointalk is a USA based website

and I still see many ads for mixers on the website.

So from me a former I.R.S. employee

if you are a U.S.A. based person avoid mixers.

As they paint a target on your back.

I can not make it any clearer than this. I would if I knew how but I hope that this is clear enough.

Splitting is also mixing. You're somehow in favor of the former but not of the latter.

But you don't have proofs. What you do with the addresses you actually belong is irrelevant. The authorities will never question which address you own. If you receive coins from a criminal, without knowing anything, and you split your coins across addresses (aka, mix it in your wallet), you can only prove that you're the same entity who owns all those mixed coins; you can't prove you are not the criminal. Just as "I don't have access to that address" says nothing, so does "I have access to that address".

Secondly, privacy protection for once more is irrelevant to "proofs". I don't have to prove anything until proven guilty. And as long as I'm innocent I don't want third parties to link my identity with this Internet board. How difficult is this to understand? Splitting doesn't help. It might obscure minimum for some individuals, but not for a chain analysis company. Chain analysis could easily de-anonymize me the moment I spent my "split" funds to a merchant.

Should I explain you for once more than if regulations become tight, miners can leave the borders of the country?

If they're interested in their income, they should ensure Bitcoin remains censorship-resistant.

You can also do this with a mixer. It gives you receipt. What you sent, what you received. Why doesn't this count as proof? Also, what if you split your coins, and if asked, say that you spent them? What then? What could the authorities do to a criminal who wants to get away with it likewise?

Dude , do you make things up just to continue argument? In what way splitting my money has to do with a mixing service ? At what point did i say that splitting is bad for bitcoin users ?

Maybe you don't understand the meaning of what tou have quoted . I'm not good in english , but i think the meaning is easy to comprehend ( if you try to ) .
So before accusing me that i din't read your attached document , try to understand what it says and how what i've said so far ensures that you can't be accused if you have the proof of your transactions . Also try to think how you can prove that you're not a part of ML/TF by taking part into an anonymous ring .
In case you don't get it you are proving my point . Could my address pose risk ? Not if i have proofs . Can my address potentially be used to avoid AML/CFT ? Not if i have proofs .

No rational(?) home miner might do what you say . But home miners are only a small portion of the current hashrate . Should i explain why big mining facilities can easily be forced to follow regulations or do you get it by yourself ?
What you fail to understand is that miners are interested mostly for their income . Politics are for a part of users that have nothing to lose . 

You said something and i showed that untraceability doesn't apply in all cases . I agree that in small sums paper money is untraceable . If you were getting millions of dollars per day from illegal activity would you try to spend them in such small quantities ? Why do you think money laundering is hard in real life ? 

Because i'm not getting involved with other peoples funds , duh . I can prove that i'm the sole owner of the adresses that funds were split .
"A cryptocurrency tumbler or cryptocurrency mixing service is a service that mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others, so as to obscure the trail back to the fund's original source.This is usually done by pooling together source funds from multiple inputs for a large and random period of time, and then spitting them back out to destination addresses. As all the funds are lumped together and then distributed at random times, it is very difficult to trace exact coins ."
That's the definition of a mixer , a pool that mixes users money . And getting paid to do that . So it is a money laundering service ( mixes legal with illegal money ) and a money transmitter ( gets a fee to send funds from a user to another ) .
What problem causes to me that lie ? I don't get it . That's exactly what i say , i'm not lying , i'm not exposing the owner of those funds . If there's a need to prove that i'm the owner i can do it . That's privacy .

Nope. Not necessarily. You can mix your funds and transmit none to some non-regulated party. But according to your opinion, that's bad for Bitcoin users as well.

From the PDF I linked above, which you didn't even take the time to open:
No rational miner stays at a pool that censors transactions. Rejecting a block doesn't mean that the transaction will not confirm later. You just need one pool that hasn't gone full authoritarian, ergo one pool that isn't inside the borders of that one country.

If I give you $10, and you give them back to me, is this recorded anywhere? If I give a banknote to a merchant, and he gives me no product, is this transaction recorded anywhere? You can surely defend your position in the court, but you can't prove that the transaction took place.

I'm still trying to figure out why splitting your coins across your wallet should not be considered mixing. You say that you can prove the route of the coins. So what? What if you decide to lie, and say that after a few routes, you gave the money elsewhere, and they somehow ended up back to you?

Do you understand what's money laundering ? A mixer is a combination of a money laundering service and a money transmitter . Stop trying to defend mixers and try to understand the basics . I know it's hard as you're biased , but your bias doesn'nt change reality .

As i have explained in previous posts , regulators should do their work , without regulations you have anarchy . Bitcoin specifically gives you the ability to prove that your activity is not suspicious . If you don't understand what regulators are trying to do try to study it and understand it better . Can you point me to a spot in their report that says self custody is prohibited ?

Nope , PoW consensus doesn't work that way . You just need the majority and pools can reject a block that comes from a non compliant pool that's outside of their ruleset . Look at how much concentrated is the hashrate today ( which will become more concentrated in the future ) and you can easily see that enforcing freezing addresses gets easier day by day .

Can you prove that chain analytics companies have the personal data of exchange customers ? Exchanges have that data by default as they need to do KYC . That doesn't mean that every company associated with them have the customers identity data . Don't try to make a point out of nothing .
Privacy violation fines don't necessarily mean that they are selling customers identity data . For example GDPR fines https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
I do agree though that KYC procedures should change ( and bitcoin can help with that ) so you can prove your identity without the company knows detailed data about you . And that's what we should aim as community , not try to make things worst by acting outside of law because privacy rules are not applied 100% . To do so , we need to understand what privacy is and at which spot our privacy is not applicable .

Paper money is not untraceable . Have you heard of cases that police did arrest someone by using marked banknotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marked_bill ?
As for the prosperous societies , you have to understand that we are reaching a key point . In these past societies the interaction was mostly physical and it was based on trust . We are turning our interaction to mostly electronic . If anonymity prevails that would be the time that we can see disastrous results . Without trust a society can't work . Without identities a society can't work .
Look at the mess that happens in the social media . As most people tend to act anonymously ( and not pseudonymously ) the whole section is a f**k up . Imagine if that happened to the real world , total anarchy or fascism would prevail . Look at the paradigm of TAY https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-shuts-down-ai-chatbot-after-it-turned-into-racist-nazi/ . Imagine if we raise our childrens in such manner , by teaching them that they can do whatever they want and have no consequences . Will the upcoming society become prosperous ?

NGL, that kinda defeats the point of using a mixer if they have to give them user information.

Its about the US government declaring mixing services (like ChipMixer) to be money transmitter businesses. This means they are required to register with FinCEN if they want to service US-based customers. If they don't, the US will declare them an "illegal business" and come after their operators, especially if they have direct links to laundering funds on behalf of criminals or sanctioned entities (like North Korea's Lazarus Group).

This is about money transmitting services. A mixer can be much broader than that. Mixing can happen without losing custody of the money. Point me to a law that forbids you from being anonymous on your Bitcoin transactions.

Note that the US is much more hostile and regulative to Bitcoin than that. According to FATF, even self-custody is considered a suspicious activity.

This isn't effective, unless all pools and all miners of those pools operate inside the borders of one country.

Do semantics matter? The result is an exchange that shares everything you do with carriers like chain analysis companies and anybody else who requests them. Sure, GDPR applies, but the perpetual fines from large multi-nationals about privacy violation should tell you a lot about their business model.

Just a side note: there have been prosperous societies operating with paper money, which is completely anonymous and untraceable, in far larger scale than with mixed bitcoins. How did that happen?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61921520

I stand for the right to privacy . Governements by definition must have access to our privacy when it is provably needed , otherwise there can't be any form of civilised society . The problem is that big companies don't respect our privacy . And i think that there should be draconian laws for anyone ( private entities ) that violates it .
But that doesn't mean that we should move to the other side which is anonymity . Imagine a society where everyone is anonymous . That means there can't be any trust , anyone can lie or do harm and have no consequences . Where that would lead ?   

If these terms are not linked to the internet, then, the definitions are correct. Hence, I don't think anonymity on the internet is "full" privacy because we can't be always careful. Full privacy is having nothing to do with the internet. Nguyen practiced anonymity; he made contents on this forum and reddit with information that had no clue to his real identity, but he faced a loophole on paypal. Except a person limits their usage of the internet which is rare, they may not attain full privacy. We need emails, browsers, ISP etc to firmly utilize the internet. Tor, Vpn, hushmail etc can guarantee us anonymity by changing or keeping safe our IP, but that won't work if we are the target of the government. The privacy law has been compromised with the use of tracking tools and third party apps. Once a person's anonymity is raising dust on the internet, that is he/she spreads bad news, carry out illicit businesses or breaks laws, they can easily get traced. Those software that claim to guarantee anonymity online can work for an average user, and fail an illicit user. I'd say that both anonymity and privacy is a term for the real world, that shouldn't be added to the internet. As it'll be hard to attain full privacy online. I don't think, currently, Satoshi is using the internet, that's anonymity.

This makes sense, but that doesn't mean I like it. Privacy is a right, but it's implementation relies on trusting others. Our government for instance made many privacy laws, and the same government violates those privacy laws. So I have the right to privacy, but I don't get it.
If, however, I'd be anonymous, I don't have to rely on others for my privacy. I can control it by myself.

Agreed.

Anonymity refers to the state of having completely no identifying information about an individual. Privacy refers to the state of being able to control which information is tied with your identity. This is why I argued anonymity is "full" privacy.

Don't change the subject... The subject isn't whether sacrificing custody is a safe choice; it obviously isn't, in comparison with not doing it. I used the word "safe" privacy-wise.

Forget about custody. To whom I trust my money is none of your business. What you're arguing is that mixing is a bad practice. Not if decentralized mixing is better than centralized.

Point me to a law that forbids mixing.

Lol. That's not address freezing. Confiscation happens all the time. Freezing an address means you have to change the protocol; and not any protocol, the most freedom preserving protocol on the planet.

Oh, so Binance's partnership with Chainalysis isn't financially bonded. Sure. 

If you're not convinced already, in a world where large companies get fined for privacy violation all the time, that they take advantage of it financially, then as I said, I don't know what to say.

Seems that you got the whole concept of privacy and anonymity wrong . Privacy has to do with protecting your actions while your identity is known to the parties you want to be known . Anonymity has to do with your identity and not necessarily with your actions . Someone can see what you do but he has no ability to know who is doing it , including authorities . That's why the law protects your privacy but not your anonymity ( except special occasions like whistleblowers etc ) .
Quote from proton ( https://proton.me/blog/anonymity-vs-privacy ) :

"What the law says

The right to privacy is a common legal concept enshrined in over 150 constitutions worldwide. It is, for example, incorporated into:

    The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights(new window) (Article 12)
    The European Convention on Human Rights(new window) (Article
    The Swiss Federal Constitution (Article 13)
    Various amendments to the Constitution of the United States

The “right to anonymity”, on the other hand, is not so clearly defined and does not enjoy the same legal protections (if any at all)."

By using anonymity you abandon all your rights , because you are nobody ( anonymous = he who has no name , no identity ) . You can't go to a court as an anonymous , because courts are for cases between entities , and an anonymous is not an entity .
So your saying that anonymity is full privacy is totally wrong as privacy and anonymity are two terms that overlap only by a little . Of course , privacy and anonymity is a philoshophical and legal concept and unfortunately most technical students can't grasp it . And the most important , they can't understand the consequences to the society when they are advocating for anonymity .

A perfect example of the consequences of anonymity on this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlT5SdLeXtM  

It's safer to trust someone else with your money ? Do you think that the people who lost their coins still think that it's safer to use mixers ?
And from what i recall you are a proponent of don't trust , verify . Why trusting someone in this case ?
And the most important . Is it safer to use an illegal way with anonymity that can lead to the loss of your coins ( even if you are not seeking anonymity but privacy ) , or a legal way that has privacy and you have the control of your coins ?


Nope . That's childish . Do you live in this world or in a fantasy world ?
How many users do you know that were not part of illegal actions and had their coins confiscated ? You are trying to prove that when authorities are able to freeze addresses they will do it for everyone . No , it's the same as with banking accounts . They are not freezing every bank account just because they can . There has to be a reason .


They are doing due dilligence which is legal , not selling personal information , try to read what i write . That's from where the argument started , you still prove my point .
" 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 . "
Does any of what you quoted means that i don't have privacy anymore ? They have managed to de anonymize one of my addresses . What happens with all the rest ? I really don't see your point , maybe because there's no point .
Blockchain analysis is a useful tool that the people that have to hide something hate and affraid . These are the ones that they don't want to have even one address de anonymized because it will point to their real identity .
I don't have such a problem .

This "lost in the crowd" is the situation where you don't want the rest to know who you are and what you do. It's the definition of privacy. Anonymity is full privacy.

Let me ask you the same question: if splitting your coins across your addresses is a safe privacy technique, why don't the overwhelming majority of privacy interesting Bitcoin users do it? Answer: it's not safe.

What you say is exactly the same as what I say. "Freezing" addresses in a censorship resistant network requires the encroachment of each individual user's freedom.

Kindly use a search engine:
- Coinbase the most anti-Bitcoin organisation. Make #DeleteCoinbase great again
- Binance's partnership with Chainanalysis to detect "Dirty" Coins..
- What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint?

Or if you're that bored and unable to verify an argument, use ChatGPT now that's trending:

Because they want anonymity , not privacy . They need to be lost in the crowd . The bigger the crowd the more the chances of getting lost .

There are more chances to happen what i say than what you say . Bitcoin is a clever invention that solves the problem of traceability and forgery . We can both follow our paths and time will tell .

kindly provide cases . I might be wrong .

I don't have have a problem if the authorities have info about me , on the contrary i want them to have info so i have proof in case that something goes wrong . For example if a murder or a rape happens and i can prove that at that time i was not present at that spot that's a plus not a minus . Proving a negative is one of the most difficult things if you don't have proofs .
If a paedophile can be arrested i want that to happen , even if have to give away a small portion of my right to privacy . A society can't work if each one of us is looking only his own prosperity and good .
I agree on the big tech companies part , and the only thing that can save humanity by these vultures is bitcoin . The problem with these companies is that we are the product . They are "selling" us to the advertising companies . If the model changes they will fall apart . If the advertising companies can pay you directly ( if you want to ) their role is finished . That's why satoshi wanted micropayments and electronic cash . To solve the 402 payment required problem https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402 .

We see things differently . I believe that authorities should have access to my information in some cases . I want full privacy from interactions with anyone except authorities .


If an AI matches me with a criminal i will have proof by my phone carrier that probably i wasn't there during a crime . The odds of two identical persons being at a spot at the same time are close to zero . Stop oversimplifying things just to prove something . I need surveillance cameras to have my photo and my phone carrier to prove my position during that time . As i said proving a negative without evidence is one of the hardest things .
As for the coded bias , it's the perfect example of why code shouldn't be law that's been promoted by cypherpunks .
And for supporting mixers , be my guest and provide liquidity to criminals . It's your choice as you will face the consequences . We have reach a point that regulators are getting mad . I will support people that act inside law , not those acting against it . The orwellian future has to do only by little with surveillance , it has to do mostly with the change of history , destruction of language and education , and the will of people to "nail" even their own family members . Have you ever thought that 1984 could be mentioned to Stalin's Russia ?

Let me put it this way, if you don't understand the argument: if splitting coins across your wallet is a clever, privacy-protecting technique, why do criminals use mixers? They must want some pretty decent levels of privacy. So why not splitting?

That is not a healthy mindset. Anything can change hypothetically. Bitcoin can be made illegal if regulations get really hard. Your right to encryption, privacy-- freedom in the end-- can change if regulations get really hard.

Have you taken a few seconds to use a search engine before asking me these questions? Don't be surprised if you do it.

They don't need any of that data to identify you. You saw how the Fed has over 140K data points on the Chipmixer operator, and most of them were from Google and mobile phones. And don't think it's just the feds who can identify you at will - these Big Tech companies are already doing that just by browsing the services - registering not required as they can use your IP address, user agent, and GPS location, your carrier can also track you, your ISP, as well as every 3rd party all these guys sell this information to [which ironically can include stalkers and other criminal personalities!]

You, like everyone else walking on this earth, have a right to privacy, but it's not just in not sharing things. It's by taking appropriate precautions to limit the data you share with services, as well as limit the services you use in the first place. Even when you think you're doing everything possible, your face still gives you away even when you walk on the street - farcical recognition.

And once we get to that territory, it's no longer about whether you are doing criminal or even suspicious activity. It's wherever an AI identifies you as matching good enough to some other guy who did those things. Once we reach that point, nothing is going to save us, because you'll never be able to get rid of your signature - the collection of data points people have about you. It'll be stored on other people's servers forever (you should also watch Coded Bias documentary, as I told Jollygood).

By supporting the use of mixers for legal activity, you're pushing back alternate Orwellian futures even if it's by a few nanoseconds.

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 .

---

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?

---

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?

I agree with Phil. If the government wasn’t planning to backpunish people for breaking laws then why on earth is the NSA building massive datacenters and collecting unbelievable amounts of data on everyone to store forever? You really think at some point they won’t have AI going through that to try and bleed people dry in order to push their agenda?

The blockchain can be good or it can be used for evil. Chipmixer won’t save you from it being used for evil.
https://twitter.com/zachxbt/status/1597605409883566080

And we should all join your shitcoin projects right?  
If I remember correctly you got accused of doing some illegal things before, that means we should all avoid you and anything related with you, right?
You and OGN should take each other hands and sing kumbaya song, because you seem to be plying for the same team.

Yeah, but that is why they are creating CBDC to track everything and I think some guys here will love this modern day digital slavery system.
Twisted minds of some people is thinking like this: Let's make privacy illegal and there will be no more criminal...

I find it mildly amusing that CSW's iron fist on this forum has shrunk so much by comparison, to the point where an arbitrary mixer is now considered more of a threat to the forum's operations than him. That is despite hosting the Bitcoin Whitepaper and committing every kind of defamation against him possible 

Ie. We're all good.

That's like saying 'criminals drink coffee in the morning', though isn't it?
Another way to put it: if ChipMixer is suitable for cutting the trace of stolen funds, it means it works, right? That's all that counts for me, whether they did steal those funds or whatever, is none of my business.

I'd also reiterate that making money better traceable is not required to catch criminals. In the fiat world, authorities almost never trace cash serial numbers for criminal investigations, yet still they can get thieves behind bars. There are so many so much better ways to do it than tracing the money, which don't interfere with honest users' privacy.

There are more chances of hell freezing over in comparison to forum getting a takedown notice for advertising chip mixer platform.

I hear what you're saying but that's a pretty unique story.. there are many more situations of sexual assault then the story you describe here, and I'm not really comfortable describing them. I'd guess a story like this is nowhere near the majority of effected criminals.


Well with this line of thinking, we've had a target on our back ever since we registered an account here.. even simply using Tor would paint a target on you because it is also used by plenty of criminals, and there are plenty of Tor nodes run by governments. This forum also has criminals and you're here supporting it... but you don't feel comfortable using a mixer?

All I'm saying is just because someone uses a service for a bad purpose, it doesn't mean the service itself is bad. There are plenty of legit services all over the world being manipulated by criminals, shutting them all down isn't the answer.

right you are in 1993 you are 18 the girl is 17 you are in New York been with the girl 2 years. cross the border to nj while driving over the George Washington Bridge she was giving you a BJ as soon as the car goes into NJ you become guilty of statutory rape and you violate the Mann act a federal law a racist NJ trooper pull you over and now you a black teenager are facing 5-10 for starry rape and 20 for Mann act violation total of 35-30.

You cut a deal and plead to forciple touching. and get 2 years in prison. While in Jail NJ passes Megans law.
YOU are put on a sex registry for 10 years.  The feds pass the federal law in 1996 and you go on a national list until 2004,

That was possible to do in 1993.

Many conditions were flat out bs due to crazy ass laws due to 50 states with 50 sets of laws plus federal laws.

In the US many people got added punishedment once convicted and Meagans law was passed after.

Those lists cost jobs and parole violations.

And many people had their expected sentences lengthen in NY when the time served vs sentenced given was altered.

Which is a joke when you are being charged with 10 possible years or 20 years but if you cop a plea you get 5. 40% served and off with good behavior.

Most will cop the plea thinking I will do 2 rather than a moron jury giving me 20.

Then a year in they change the rules and say you have to do 80% not 40% so your 2 years in prison is now 4 years.

Look I know the discussion is chipmixer not extended punishments after the fact. I can simply say if you are in the USA and you do chipmaker you paint a target on your back.

Now for Meagans law the crossover people won't happen anymore as the law is in effect everywhere. But if you got charged and convicted right before the law went into effect you got added punishment.
If you were in New York in 1990's got convicted and sentenced thinking 40% or the sentence and out it was turned into 80%

and many in New York were overcharged so that they would plea bargain lesser sentences. Then the expected time was doubled.
I know a person that shot some one the head surely attempted murder. The victim survived the shooter plead to assault with a deadly weapon he got 10 years on the plea bargain thinking he would do 4 of the 10. If he lost the attempted murder he would have got 20 years. While in Osining prison the 40% rule was altered to 80% he served 8 years. Fact not FUD

Yeah you will say he shot someone in the head he deserved it. I say yeah you are right. Even though I am his step brother and he was pretty decent guy. But many others were in prison on lesser crimes 5 years for weed sales plead guilty thinking 2 years in jail became 4 years. Look it up not fun real.

So a government that does this routinely can do it with chipmixer.

Look if you are a USA citizen and you leave the country you get a job US law says you have to file a tax return.

Your last prime minister Boris Johnson never filed and never denounced his US citizenship ant time he came to the USA the Feds could pick him up for tax evasion that's how fucked up USA law is. So if you are in the USA and a citizen of it. Using chipmixer they may never do a thing to you. They never bother Boris Johnson so yeah take a shot and hope they don't do a thing to you.

Do you strongly recommend staying away from privacy protection measures as well? You know. To not get involved into criminal activity?

I only said that some hackers do more proper usage than others, and don't get caught. If ChipMixer was a honeypot, then greater hackers (like the Binance ones) would have been put behind the bars. That's all I said.

Hell, do I need to remind you that two weirdos kept billions worth of stolen bitcoin in a cloud this year? Lol. Not all know to use bitcoin properly.

I wouldn't deem any usage of it as "proper." As a matter of fact I strongly recommend staying away from ChipMixer altogether.


You've posited a series of conditions in which you are always going to be right regardless of what happens. This doesn't change the fact that it is possible to trace coins moved through ChipMixer, and that thieves & hackers are ChipMixer's biggest clients.

https://slowmist.medium.com/investigation-of-aml-instances-around-blockchain-technology-for-the-first-half-of-2022-faff3e4bd6e

Owner and CTO - not guilty.
Alameda who borrowed and gambled with funds - not guilty.
All projects funded with user funds never to return - not guilty.
Hacker from story invented weeks after FTX bankrupted - not guilty.
Altcoins and Defi that moved funds - not guilty.
Exchanges that exchanged altcoins to bitcoin - not guilty.
ChipMixer (also called part of top govs) - guilty.

Out of all people on this list only ChipMixer did not get % of those funds.

Megan's law:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/megan%27s_law
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rio/citation/Pub._L._104-145

I don't see it saying anything about the requirement of a life sentence?

If you are saying a public sex offender registry is a "punishment" equivalent to incarceration (you said "time served" was altered - FUD! lol), or even something like community service, then we may have to agree to disagree.. as I wouldn't see a public registry like this in the same way I'd see a sentence adjustment that effects the freedom of an individual or their criminal status.

You call it a punishment, but maybe it's just a sincere effort to protect the public and discourage repeat sex offenders. *shrug*

So I guess the best we could ever expect is some sort of public registry of bitcoiners using mixers if governments could decipher who all of them were?.. of course, we'd have to assume the public will care about this as much as they do the sexual assault of minors for it to ever happen. 

Megan's law was able to punish all prior pedophiles if they were still in prison.


https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-megans-law-973197

"In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed Megan's Law as an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children's Act. It required every state to have a sex offender registry and a notification system for the public when a sex offender is released into their community. It also required that repeat sex offenders receive a sentence of life in prison."

those lists in effect were added punishment to people serving time.

^ Sounds like Phillip may be referring to the reduction of sentences for illegal crimes committed, which is a much different thing then going back and making something that was legal suddenly illegal at a previous point in time and issuing a sentence, and/or imposing stricter sentences at a later point in the future, these I don't believe have ever been done in the US.

Busy but will do

It would be nice if you include a link.

He just quoted the universal declaration of human rights, it's not a UK law, it's a general principle of universal law.

If what you say is true, I knew the USA was rubbish at some things, but this would take the biscuit. I imagine you have an exaggerated interpretation of the issue, because to be able to apply that without limit is not conceivable in a modern democracy.

Better if you provide links btw, I've just searched and I just see an amalgam of scattered information.

Unfortunately U.K. law does not apply to USA. It is a nice law though.

Unfortunately here in the USA we shit all over that idea.
1)Read on how USA altered time served rules after the fact.
2)Read how USA alter pedophile rules after the fact.

To give you an example of how fucked the USA is we could charge Boris (ex PM) for US tax evasion anytime we want.

3)Hard to believe but true. look it up

Not fud for 1),2),3)

 just facts

If your government punishes you for something that wasn't illegal at the time, you have much bigger things to worry about. It would be a Human Rights violation:
This means that:
So to answer your question: if my government would do what you suggested, it would be time to bring out the pitchforks.

It's trivial to know that. If the money are sent to an address that is later used as input with a list of inputs multiples of 0.001, it's likely to be them. I know no other mixer that works similarly. Knowing that I've sent money to a mixer is a feature, not a bug. The point is to obfuscate. It's a clear sign that you can't make a valid assumption about my inputs, because it's crystal clear they belong to a mixer. Same goes for Coinjoining.

If you were registered at FTX, you didn't have any funds to begin with. 

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.

---

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.

---

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…

I thought similar about tornado cash recently too though. I don't know if that can be traced because I haven't investigated their source/algorithm but I think the news articles about that have been great advertisement for it.

Bitmixer lasted 6 years until they shut down and didn't seem to face many consequences. Bitmixer was a big team, chipmixer gives an impression of being small, I think it's possible chipmixer used what they knew from prior mixers and used it to their advantage - with staying fairly anonymous. The history of bitcoin mixing is large enough to include one mixer in 40+ that manages to maintain its privacy.


I think this is how chipmixer remains functioning too. If they give you limited chip sizes, they give you an incentive to donate back change rather than joining mixed funds and making users more traceable.

Most privacy tools available are too advanced for the average user imo and probably a lot of advanced users. You don't need a company to do chain analysis to denonymise you, just an enthusiast with an hour or two to spare (or less).


There's a use case for VPNs improving security of companies and aiding in certain things (ie storing and processing personal information in one territory while accessing non sensitive information outside of it).

No log VPNs are generally well marketed on increasing security and privacy of users (especially on public WiFi) but I'm surprised they've lasted so long and become so widespread.

Obviously I meant the "we" we not the "WE" we.  I will do my part to help I meant. I think you would agree to help too?

At most Theymos can give them an IP Adress which may or may not follow to the actual account users. Opsec baby. Opsec. The honeypot theory in the other post freaks me out more than the possibility of legal action against BTCT.

Like what? Can you name a few?

They weren't. The first ones might had used ChipMixer, but they also utilized Coinjoining (which is inferior in term of privacy) and deposited their money on centralized exchanges a few days later. I don't read anywhere that they traced them by breaking ChipMixer. From the Bloomberg link, we have a person who deposited 1.4 million dollars worth of bitcoin to Coinbase? Am I reading right? Lol, just lol. The third link doesn't load from Tor.

The feds don't have to break a privacy enhancing tool to get to you. If somebody stole 1 million dollars worth of bitcoin, and at about the same month, Mr. Nobody made such huge deposit on a completely surveilled exchange, he's instantly a suspect.

Um.. why?

Sure. Let's see how it goes then.

Nah, its really not. All kinds of illegal & otherwise shady shit has taken place here over the years yet the forum still stands. ChipMixer will simply cease to exist before forum access is affected by it.


People get caught all the time; of course maybe they weren't using it "properly" according to you. Some of the most famous examples:

https://ciphertrace.com/twitter-hack-update-blockchain-analysis-helps-identify-twitter-hackers/
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-microsoft-xbox-gift-card-fraud
https://www.tradingview.com/news/cryptonomist:86bf18ad1:0/

Then there's an offshoot of the REvil ransomware gang that laundered the proceeds of a huge extortion through ChipMixer, only to send the BTC to Coinbase and be instantly de-anonymized (can't find a reference for that one or remember the specifics).

I wouldn't say REvil and the Lazarus Group - two of ChipMixer's biggest clients - "got away with it"... REvil no longer exists and Lazarus is under extreme scrutiny.

Putting on the conspiracy theorist hat, I'd say part of the honeypot is not letting the public know about exchange hackers caught who had used ChipMixer. Part of a good honeypot is you never know its one until after its all over (as happened with the Hansa darknet market).

Regardless of whether ChipMixer is a honeypot or not, the fact remains you'd have to be out of your mind to be using them in Q4 2022. The forum will be fine, as sig campaigners will probably be as well -- too small potatoes for the feds to expend energy on. Simply advertising a service that isn't explicitly illegal isn't a big deal to them, I don't think...

Surprise!

Government don't have to make no log VPN illegal when they could send secret subpoena.


It's possible the one who run the honeypot is either still looking for much bigger target or waiting for "right moment" to take action against all criminal. Although personally i find possibility of ChipMixer being honeypot is rather low.

It's a potential forum issue.

Um.. except that it has bunches of ChipMixer ads all around?

It's just this concern of mine, which I believe it might concern the rest of the users as well.

Or, it might have operated nearly completely privately so far, and made it infeasible for the feds to figure out where it is, or who runs it.

Answer me this question: if it was a honeypot, why do exchange hackers that use it to mix always get away with it? Seriously, I haven't read once a case of a person who used ChipMixer properly and got caught. Reasonably, if it was indeed owned by the feds, we'd see them getting caught, and in fact it has happened before numerously; mixers that were honeypots went out of business, because the people that needed them the most got screwed.

Funny you should mention it.

The founders of most other high-profile mixers have met terrible consequences, yet for some reason - even after 5 years in operation - ChipMixer has avoided all sanctions and much political attention. I'm not a conspiracy person and prefer hard evidence before making conclusions, but CM being a honeypot would explain a lot.

Even before recent events & revelations, I think you'd have to be crazy to use ChipMixer to mix coins. Unless you are highly schooled in blockchain OpSec and possess the utmost mindfulness when spending mixed coins, there's a good chance Chainalysis could deanonymize your BTC if they really wanted to.


"We" don't have a say in this. You have no rights here -- this is a privately-owned forum.

Regardless, what's more likely than a takedown is a subpoena to theymos asking for info about the ChipMixer account.

The CM site would have a seizure notice first, before the feds interrupt forum activity, as that would be a giveaway that something is up.

Is it a Chipmixer issue we are talking about on the topic or forum issue?

The forum is not endorsing Chipmixer or any business that are advertising on the platform. The platform is independent. Additionally it's not an advertising network too so I do not think it's even logical to warn the forum not to allow advertising a specific service. If anyone wants to take down Chipmixer then it's their problem which they should resolve or do whatever they want to do, why would we discuss it in the meta board?

Are you not using TOR or VPN from all these years to now? 🙄

Yeah, a VPN is probably the perfect comparison. They're often used for privacy, I'd go as far to say that the majority of users are using it for privacy, but technically it can be used for aiding legal activity. However, people don't tend to automatically assume you're a criminal just because you use a VPN, since it's now becoming a common thing to use.

Governments haven't banned no log VPNs from being used yet, and I think that would likely be the area to look into if they wanted to prevent illegal activity since they'd want to have access to that data ideally, even though I still wouldn't agree with that.

So, taking that into consideration I don't think it's much different form this scenario. There's going to be a lot more people using no log VPNs as a way of aiding their criminal activity, yet the government haven't appeared to have much of a problem with it, likely because they identify that the mass majority are using it for legitimate reasons.

I do not think we would take a take-down notice lying down. We would fight for our rights in the courtroom.

Also I doubt that a take-down notice would have any kind of underlying legal basis. At least not in any western non-US countries that I know of. Worst case scenario the servers get moved to some country in which Bitcointalk would continue functioning as before. Business as usual.

Any way I look at it, its not something that seems probable to happen.

I know this is likely a rhetorical question, but the fact that we are all using Bitcoin suggests we already have trust issues, whether that's the government or third parties such as the banks. Obviously, you have the speculative investors too looking to make a quick buck, but the majority of long term users here are here for a reason.

As for this question; I imagine certain parties have tried this on. Probably not government level agencies, as I said I think they'd need to have grounds to request that information (at least for the advertising example given), and would likely need to be investigating a user for that information to be requested. However, I imagine lower level people or companies have requesting this information of theymos. I mean, he's probably got all kinds of requests from the professional to the damn right absurd.  

A government agency wanting to track people using mixers to commit offenses are probably better off building their own honeypot and advertising it - they don't need many people or much of a budget to do that themselves.

Mixing feels, to me, a lot more like a vpn (for legal reasons and everything else). Especially in the case that you could mess up while using a vpn or tor and log into a personal account, or log into a more sensitive account without the vpn or tor in place - I think this is done a lot with mixers in a lot of cases where people don't consider what they're doing before they do it - and it's one of the main reasons people get caught for any crime.

A probe into mixers here, if done, would likely be done on cloudflare or amazon's side. I think a forum hosted on an onion domain for crypto wouldn't be hard to find either but would be slightly harder than clearnet if it had to go down that route (it might find other decentralised channels first though)..

Presumed guilt is becoming a lot more common in Europe (again) and it's likely what the tornado cash developer was actually sentenced on. Their conviction wasn't exactly labelled either afaik and was just a judge saying someone should be held for 5 months - but it was a bit weird.

I know, but can you trust regulators nowadays? Remember what happened with that Ethereum mixer this year? Just a friendly reminder that even self-custody is a red-flag for intergovernmental organizations: https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/recommendations/Updated-Guidance-VA-VASP.pdf

You're going to have a hard time convincing this board, me included, that enhancing Bitcoin privacy effectively, cheaply and in a comfort manner is trifle in comparison with it being used as money laundering in some cases, and in a negligible manner.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a take down notice, unless they came after the forum for facilitating illegal services if they were ever made illegal, which seems unlikely. I imagine the majority of users using the service are indeed using it for legitimate legal reasons, such as retaining privacy, which is why I think it would never be made illegal. Since, cash can be used to money launder, but that doesn't make using it illegal.

 It would be a information request on a particular user or a set of users. I don't think any party requesting this information would have much of a case unless they're already investigation a user that so happens to be advertising it too though. Since, there's no grounds to assume that someone that's advertising is even using the service, and even if they were that they're using it for illegal purposes. So, they'd have to have some suspicion that a particular user was using it for this, and would likely need supporting evidence.

Unless, these services become illegal in the country of the requester. Then, they could investigate for another reason; advertising illegal services. That's at least how I'd think it work.

I don’t think this sort of advertising would result in a takedown notice either. More likely it would be used as a honeypot or it’s participants investigated to see what other shady activities they’re involved in. This site though expects the community to take the responsible approach and not encourage or support users who would engage in the advertising of money laundering activities for their own benefit. Is it illegal to advertise? Probably not. Is it unethical and leads to scammers feeling empowered here, in my opinion, yes.

But ya, they’ll say it’s about privacy…
https://twitter.com/zachxbt/status/1596048606720823297

Did you lose money on FTX? Thank a Chipmixer advertiser today for supporting the laundering of your funds for the hacker.

Surely, the only way that would happen is if the party that's requesting that information has reason to believe user x has broken the law. Advertising or even using the service doesn't mean you're using it illegally. Many users who are advertising don't use the service. Then, as has been discussed several times over the years, many users use services like these to retain their privacy, and as we speak there's no laws against using it legitimately. So, if a third party did suspect someone in particular of using the service to money launder then they could potentially request theymos to release any information that could aid upon that. However, whether theymos complies is up to them, and probably done on a case by case basis.

If governments start cracking down, and deem services like this illegal, then advertisers would have to make the choice of whether they continue to advertise the service, since it would be technically illegal to do so. Until then, I can't see any reason why a party would request this information, unless like I suggested they can tie a particular user to a money laundering case.

The way I see it; sharing or retaining user data beyond the stipulated timeframe is a bit different from actually requesting the website to take down a certain ad cause it pisses you off. It would also be sort of ironic for a Bitcoin oriented forum to work with the authorities to take down a privacy based platform which aids Bitcoin users.

If there is a court order to that effect, it could be possible, but I don't see that happening.

Due to recent events with (another) exchange collapse from hack, and millions in stolen funds that must have got mixed already, I got this concern of mine. Should users who advertise mixing services feel confident in this place? According to our Privacy Policy - Variation, administrator might choose to share individuals' information, even without law enforcement involved.

Has it even happened, or does it seem probable to you, for some agency to request any kind of take down due to the advertisement of a service that might be one of the top targets of the authorities when it comes to bitcoin as we speak? As far as I can tell for ChipMixer, bitcointalk is the gateway. It's unlikely you happen to access it otherwise.