Topic: Mixers - Are we the product? (Read 369 times)

Agreed. However, it might be a mistake to speculate if this is the case or not. We should be speculating on how high or how low is the possbility that this might be in our reality or not. If someone in the forum like @alani123 can think and speculate on something like this, it might also be very much possible that there are other people who have also thought about this before anyone of us in the forum.

I am not saying that this is presently the case, however, if much of these different mixers are owned by a moneylaundering ring, it might be possible.

Mixers will always be seen and attacked this way because they are centralized, this is the only weapon that can be used together against them, but does that means they are not safe for our usefulness, obviously no, what we are going after is the privacy and they have come to the conclusion that the bad actors who also uses such mean for a stollen funds transfer are the ones affecting us, we cannot boldly concludes that there's no worst of it kind with the use of fiat currency than we have in bitcoin transactions.

I've always asked myself the same question during the last few years.
I mean, we have private altcoins like Monero. What's the point of using a BTC mixer then? Can't the people, who want to hide the origin of their wealth just dump BTC mixers completely and use privacy altcoins? I also believe in the conspiracy theory that CIA has control over some of the BTC mixers, so it can easily track the movement of illegal BTC funds.
I don't agree about your theory that "we are the product". What do you mean by "we"? I have never used a BTC mixer in my entire life.
I have only participated in a signature campaign launched by a BTC mixer two years ago. The people, who are actively using BTC mixers are "the product", not me.

The forum is the ideal place to promote such services, and the target audience is not the individuals inside the forum, but those who read the comments in it. For example, I read comments in many forums without having an account in that forum. This audience will add new Bitcoins to the mixer, and managing the mixers does not require a lot of expenses. In addition to network and hosting fees, mixers do not cost anything.

bizzlsto? I've never heard of it, and of course, it can be popular here if they are not campaigning. Personally, I do not use m!xers for any service, I know how to work my way around my privacy when it comes to cryptocurrency. Also, like me, I do not expect many people to know many of them. However, the quick investigation I made showed that they are not from an English-speaking country, and neither did they offer their services in English, and it was seized by a non-English-speaking country's law enforcers as well, at least the official language (Europe).

Such M!xer can't be so popular like those of the English-speaking ones, and they don't have any presence on the internet according to my searches either. This means that the darknet must have been their primary place to operate and market and it could only have solely been for evil deeds from the beginning to the end with this setup.

It's interesting that one of the biggest busts with money laundering was a crypto exchange almost no one had heard of, bizzlato. But somehow many of these funds seem to be related. Darknet markets are probably very closely associated with these fronts and mixers are likely no exception to the whole business of laundering with crypto.

Like the traditional money laundering schemes, they do need a front to look legit and 'clean' in a lot of ways (albeit being loud of what they actually do).

They wanted clean coins to trade with their dirty ones in order to continue their operations in the darknet. They cater to customers that 'actually wants to stay hidden,' while the rest of us clearnet folks use mixers because we think it saves us our privacy.

Personally, I think those who wish to mix their coins are still fine with using exchanges and converting to another currency and sending it out to another completely unrelated address. It shows the trail, but it cuts off after the currency was exchanged to another one. Sure, the exchange might have it, but if you are a regular user not really looking to launder money using small amounts, what reason do these exchanges have to report you to authorities anyway?

I've been a fan of mixers before, but now that I understand that this is all just a front for criminals to get a taste of freshly minted coins in exchange for their tainted ones, I'm trying to stay away from them as much as possible.

For centralized mixers - YES!

Have centralized mixers = get shady operators behind it
Have centralized mixers = operators want to wash own coins from crimes and hacks, get clean funds from Bitcointalk for mixing.
Centralized mixer operators will continue to abuse gullible Bitcointalk members to have fresh funds for mixing.

Do you really mean that mixers are exploiting the clean Bitcoin they receive from users who came through a promotional campaign on Bitcointalk to compensate for the dirty Bitcoin they receive from criminals on the dark web? This is a rather interesting theory, but it is also strange.
First, because this assumes that all of Mixer's clients from the forum are innocent people looking to protect their privacy, and that all of his clients from Darkweb are necessarily criminals who want to launder their money. This is not absolutely true, and it is certain that any information can only be confirmed by the mixer himself.
Secondly, assuming the first hypothesis is correct, this would lead to the conclusion that clean Bitcoin is equal to the dirty Bitcoin that is to be replaced, which does not seem logical because I do not think that an ordinary person who obtained Bitcoin legitimately would be interested in mixing millions of dollars.
Thirdly, this forum or any other place would not have allowed this or would not have discovered it, especially with the multiplicity of tracking methods on the blockchain and the companies that have become specialized in this, able to track many transactions and verify their source.

This is not the first time this happened I think. There was a wave of mixers that operated back in 2016 - 2018, like Bitcoin Fog, BestMixer, CoinMixer (an eventual scam), even Chipmixer itself, all while Helix was getting dismantled. That was the first wave. (all of those mixers have since been destroyed.)

So I don't think it was anything new, and in fact there would've been even a third wave if mixers had not gotten banned so suddenly.

You have some good points there, but you are mistaken if you are limiting the reach of this forum to the users here alone.

Like any other forums and presence online with domain, we generate active traffic that is organic, this is what the m!xers and any other companies campaigning here are mostly after. It shouldn't shock you if a very small number of us active here use the service we promote, and yet, more companies are coming for advertisements.

It's about the SEO, we are delivering that excellently and they know it. If not, m!xers would not have come here campaigning with big money.

A really interesting theory, then it can be said that mixers play the role of intermediary between criminals looking to hide their tainted money and users looking for privacy, as the tainted coins are discarded and replaced with clean coins.

Criminals get clean coins while privacy-seeking users get tainted coins. This is a scenario that sounds pretty disgusting.

I do not know if this scenario is correct, but on the other hand, the opposite can be said, that governments are promoting such a theory to discredit mixers?

It cannot be said that all mixers are innocent, but at the same time, not all of them are evil.

We have to consider, why was chipmixer caught with thousands of HYDRA marketplace bitcoins when they were busted?

Since they are a service that gets coins and disperses different coins in short notice, why would they hoard so many coins?
This brings more credibility to the theory that mixers are just a front by darknet market operators and other types of notorious persons to launder their own stash.

I doubt this part of your theory is true when authority simply treat all known coin from mixer as tainted.


In that case, consider CoinJoin instead.


You need to see difference between,
1. Checking whether a coin comes from mixer. This part isn't hard.
2. Knowing actual source of the coin with it's associated TXID (before it's mixed). This part usually is much harder, although it comes down to how well certain mixing process works.

Before Chipmixer we had bitmixer. Bitmixer was really the biggest bitcoin mixer but their owner decided to shut down this money-making website because many people were arrested in 2016-17 and many darknets were seized, he would probably be the next. Bitmixer shut down their service and then many people created mixer websites, many used the shut down of bitmixer to start a new business and many mixers came up on market. Chipmixer was only invented two months earlier before bitmixer announced shutdown of their service. Chipmixer started signature campaign similar to bitmixer.io and slightly increased their payrate soon. Then soon bitmixer announced a shutdown but chipmixer continued. Despite a huge rise of bitcoin's price, chipmixer kept their original bitcoin payrates and hired even more people. Chipmixer hired one of the best, trustworthy and famous bitcointalk users, promoted service through them and become one of the biggest mixer.

Btw not many mixers started operating after chipmixer was shut down. Many mixers that you see advertised on this forum started this business before chipmixer's shutdown, not after their shutdown.

Every mixer become famous from this forum. There is no better place other than this forum for crypto enthusiasts. This is the forum where satoshi was posting himself, isn't that enough?

Why do you think that bitcointalk users wouldn't generate large volume? Every early adopter comes from this forum, every business rose from this forum, how can you say that?
These mixers weren't using our clean coins to feed darknet users. You can check that recent mixers focus on offering you offering coins that will pass AML test with high score. Mixers focus on making you untraceable and protecting your privacy.

Why is that a bold move?
Do you know my name, my account on that exchange, the amount I sent and from where, and even if you where to find out that, why would the exchange do anything about it?
Are the 4 guys that sent their coins from Sinbad directly to Binance on death row awaiting their execution or am I missing something?



Why call it pretending when there are numerous cases proving the opposite, it's not just me doing this, there are a few others of my CM colleagues that have done the same, I won't quote them here but a simple search would show you enough examples.

Pretty bold to admit connecting exchange accounts to a mixer publicly 😅 I wouldn't do that based how cases for accused darknet market users (that the use of a mixer makes you adjacent to) have been tried in court.
Good for you I guess!?

Seriously though, let's not for a second pretend that mixers are actually untraceable. With pretty simple checks they can be identified and many have had their accounts limited on platforms for depositing with a mixer. I guess most people wouldn't say so publicly but we've seen such posts on this forum too.

Even for mixers that supposedly keep no records, feds were able to identify how many coins they had mixed (see chipmixer bust).

Yes you are!


No illusion, I've sent by mistake and then just out of pure curiosity coins mixed from CM directly to two exchanges, it's been two years thousands in and out and not even one email or anything, and one of those exchnges is probably the most draconian one when it comes to KYC. Same for my currently advertised mixer, sent a batch to Binance, 3 months and nothing..


First, the funds weren't mixed!
The authorities traced Sinbad to this forum and labeled the two addresses mentioned in the topic as being owned by Sinbad when in fact they were the campaign payment addresses. Some used for payments not their own wallet but Binance direct address, so ...like how hard was to trace that?

So again, there was no mixing whatsoever involved at any step!!

I'dn't say it's easy, it takes a lot of effort including tracking down criminals first. An address can't simply be a means of identification without finding the person and then investigating whatever they have. In other words, criminals are the first target, then mixers are second. If the mixer is in first place, then global regulations will close the existing mixer services regardless of whether they've been involved in money laundering or not.
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They receive coins from different sources, from criminal and innocent users, clean and dark coins, then they mix those coins together and even with their coins from their budget to initiate their business.

I don't see problems that mixers mix coins from multiple sources and send mixed coins to their users after a completed mixing process. I think it is too naive to think that if I am an innocent user and my coins used to deposit to a mixer will give me clean coins after the mixing process. I know my received coins after mixing will be tainted.

Usually exchanges don't trace your coins too far, too deep in history so tainted coins will be limited with some rounds of transactions. It can be differently defined by exchanges and their analysis tools for AML compliance.

I think everybody who is using a mixer is a product so to speak. The mixer needs as much funds from different sources as possible. The more users, the more they mix, the better for privacy. So, every unique user is actually contributing to the most fundamental operation of the mixer. In which case, they're all products. But, in a way, those who are bringing in clean coins are probably serving more those who are only bringing in coins coming from criminal transactions. After all, mixers have two kinds of users, those who are simply after privacy and those who badly need to erase some criminal tracks.

Alot of things that were not n place before the government threat on mixers are now coming out after the stipulated ban of mixers on bitcointalk, now we don't know the way forward, but the truth to be told here is that not all miners are found guilty of this alleged fraudulent related activities, people are making business to help safe the privacy of bitcoiners, but it's now a pity that the whole idea has been hijacked by miscreants to engage in fraudulent acts and the governments are not also taking decision to help the situation but rather seing it as an avenue to attack bitcoin users the more against their privacy.

It's a real challenge these days to find a mixer that doesn't talk about privacy and anonymity.
Some even talk about exchanges tracking you:
The above is from a mixer's promotional materials. Tell me if THAT doesn't seem like the mixer is directly encouraging the user to interact between exchange and mixer.

What kind of anonymity and privacy that might be, that associates your KYC'd exchange account to criminally tainted coins, I don't know.
But surely mixers would like us to believe that they stand for privacy.

The use of a mixer, as far as I understand it, is to hide the source of your coins, or rather, to break the chain that connects the sources of the coins to the destination. The point of using a mixer was never to hide the trail of your coins to the mixer.

I don't know how some people still don't get this.

This is a very interesting theory.

Do you mean Mixers are in your theory used to replace bad money of criminals with good money from the innocent?

As in there is a pool of criminal money and every Mixing Transaction is pretty much,
Innocent sends 0.5 Bitcoin from legitimate source to Mixer
Mixer sends back 0.5 Bitcoin from criminal source to Innocent

And that they advertised on Bitcoin Talk so they could get rid of more criminal money while bringing in more Innocents?

I never thought of this.  If that is the case, ban Mixers.  But then how difficult is it to get Bitcoin from Innocents?  Bisq, Monero Atomic Swaps et cetera can all be ways of doing this.  A criminal with BILLIONS can open up a seemingly legitimate Blockchain Analysis tool particularly to artificially 'clean' their own criminal Bitcoin by bypassing the filters.  Or they could bribe already existing Blockchain Analysis companies to bypass the filters.

I do not think this is the case but interesting outlook.

Not that your coins was traced, but it was noticed that coins was sent to you from an address that belongs to a mixer. So people that used Binance to receive coin from the mixer address were affected. But people that are using decentralized exchanges will not be affected.

I can't be the only one.

After chipmixer was shut down, a ton of other mixers started operating at a very close proximity time-wise.
Is that fishy or am I paranoid?
It can't be that one sided I think.

Chipmixer had indeed become too big. There was a lot of co-mingling between its funds and funds from darknet marketplaces.
So after one of the biggest darknet marketplaces was traced and shut down, naturally authorities also went for this big mixer.

While authorities claim to have managed to seize more than 1909.4 bitcoins in that sting, that probably didn't cover the full balances of the mixer.

The recently seized mixer, Sinbad, was said to have been a re-launch of a blender that came under sanctions for having laundered funds that were stolen by North Korean hackers. We can all safely assume that this is very notorious business. And what most of these services had in common was that they were advertising on bitcointalk.

This really does make you think, WHY? Why would a service allegedly moving billions worth in proceeds need to advertise here, and so aggressively even, especially when their customer base seems to be set in stone from day one?

I have a simple theory on why that might be happening. By looking at what generated the largest volumes in these mixers, I conclude that no bitcointalk user could be possibly be in need to launder billions in hacked funds, and would never be in dire need to launder cash associated with violent crime like drugs or fraud at this magnitude.

Instead, an illusion of privacy was promoted to clearnet users (that's us here in bitcointalk), while in fact our "cleaner" funds were used to bail out real criminals and terrorists. Because to a mixer, a clean bitcoin, is worth more than market value, so they were willing to overpay for it in the form of advertising. Come to think of it, the recent bust of Sinbad served as a reminder that mixers are in fact very traceable.

Authorities even had contacted exchanges ahead of time and even users participating in the signature campaign faced issues having to answer to authorities:
What's the point then, of using a mixer, when your funds can be traced so easily? Do its methods of mixing really work, or could it be that this is intended functionality for someone to get the short end of the stick?

This is all just a theory of course, but honestly, trust no one, not even me.
It's a very real possibility though, that with mixers, we might be the product.