Topic: Signature mixers question (Read 649 times)

In my country there is no problem exchanging cryptocurrencies for cash.
If you use a bank, you can legally transfer money to a self-employed account and pay 4% tax. There are limits of $26,000 per year, but according to the law, the tax office does not have the right to conduct audits and I am not required to keep accounting records.
If you use the exchange, then without KYC and this is more for the mixer function.

You are only overcomplicating things isn't? Since you are sending your signature campaign earnings throught Monero, and then into an exchange, you are just going to get your dox attached to Monero transactions, and exchanges are increasingly more anti privacy coins, and I suspect governments wouldn't be a fan as well. So that really does not fix anything. Once you cash out, either your bank or your government could ask for proof of funds as well. Not really a solution imo. Either you don't report it, or you try to be as clear as possible if you report it. The problem is, if you don't report it, then what do you do with the coins? You cannot barely do anything with crypto if you don't convert it to fiat anyway.

No, this is not Coinbase. But I heard dozens of such stories and the exchanges were different. A small number of crypto users were able to unlock their coins, but they were helped not by lawyers, but by YouTube bloggers with a large number of subscribers. The exchange is not afraid of lawyers, the exchange is afraid of losing its reputation. But this only helped those people who had everything in order with their documents and tax returns. If you don't have tax returns and documented proof of the legality of your coins, then no one will help you.

That's pretty crazy. Was it Coinbase? I've heard Coinbase is insanely strict nowadays, to the point is just nonviable to deposit any coins that don't come from Coinbase itself, as in back and forth from Coinbase into your wallet back to Coinbase is ok, but anything else adds additional steps of complexity that may lock you out of the coins until you deliver some context. But with a lawyer you may find a solution. The real problem here would be with the taxman. Because most people will not be able to explain every satoshi ever on his wallet, so these are the ones that are expert in screwing innocent people up that just obtained some coins here and there along the years, then you want to cash out and they treat you like you are El Chapo or something.

I will upset you, but you should know that as soon as you transfer even the "whitest coins" to the exchange, it will not save you from exchange blocking.
My buddy transferred 1-2 thousand coins to the exchange from one address, there were no questions from the exchange, but when he transferred 40000 dollars worth of coins, he immediately got blocked.
He lost this money because his address has a lot of transactions, where he can not explain the reasons.
If you decide to take such a step, you should have a wallet where you can give an explanation for each transaction, even if it was several years ago.

It doesn't really matter we believe in or not isn't it. What matters is the consequences of having said alarm to get triggered once you deposit your coins into an exchange next to your full name, address and so on. Now you are screwed. This is the problem. One doesn't know who is paying you, where the coins come from. Only coins that come from a regulated exchange or are freshly mined I would consider safe to deposit into an exchange.

If someone pays you and these enable some sort of a trigger when you go into an exchange and deposit them, now you are audited, and have a case. You have to prove you are innocent. The authorities hate people that deal with cryptos by default, and now you have to prove to them that you didn't sell any drugs for them or something, that you just were part of an advertiser campaign and you are just chilling talking on a forum, but the thing is, you don't want to be involved into such situation. You said the phrase *should* be okay. Keyword should. You never know so I would prefer not to.

I understand that tax authorities in different countries are improving tax collection, but I don’t think that everything is so serious that they would waste resources on users who earn about $100 a week. I think that the spent resources of the tax authorities will not pay off. If my tax office required me to report for each payment, then I would receive bitcoins for the subscription campaign to an unofficial address, and then every quarter or year I would transfer bitcoins through an exchange for Monero from the unofficial address to the official one and pay taxes.
But sometimes it is better not to report coins, and you will not be asked questions.

What is that real you need to file a report every time you get paid, here in my country Just the same as zasad@ that you need to fill in a year.
What country do you live in bro? just curious 

and maybe if I were Op I would not going to record any money that comes from the mixer neither from signature or my personal fund since the mixer in my opinion is kinda in a grey area at least for the regulator. so better opt-out.

If this bank card is involved in petty fraud or cash-out or a minor crime, then it all depends on what testimony the person who sells the bank card will give. If he says that he sold the card to an unknown person, hiding it in the specified place. And the reason was an acute financial need, and there was not enough money for food, then the seller will not have criminal and administrative liability, except for a red mark in the bank.

But if this bank card is involved in a serious crime, such as terrorism, extremism, then the seller may have very big problems, even a long criminal sentence. Such criminal cases are closed and classified, so it is difficult to say the exact result.

One member of the forum offers such "No KYC cards" at a price of around 1000 EUR per year of use, and it seems to be quite a lucrative business. Of course, there are some rules for using the card so that it would not be blocked. However, regardless of the fact that the sale of bank cards is not punishable in Russia, I wonder who is responsible if such a card is involved in a criminal offense - the owner of the card or the one who actually uses it?

Not using. For P2P transfers, KYC is required, but for trading cryptocurrencies, KYC is not needed.

In Russia there are no criminal penalties for people who open a bank account and sell their bank cards.
Such a set with a SIM card costs $50-100, but if you only withdraw cash from an ATM, then blocking can happen very quickly, after withdrawing 2-5 thousand dollars.

Do you use those exchanges for fiat transfers? In that case they'll know your bank account details.

I use centralized exchanges without KYC, but I transfer a few coins there at a time so that I can answer any request: “Go to hell.”

Don't you think that this is an intermediate stage?
If Bitcoin becomes a global cryptocurrency, then permits or licenses will be required for its storage, or citizens will be allowed to store Bitcoins only in custodial bank wallets.

That depends on where you live. Here, all earnings must be reported, and there's an annual wealth tax. I really live in the wrong country

We don't have a capital gains tax, so I don't have to report any of this.

You don't pay taxes until you "cash out" your bitcoins into the appropriate fiat currency.

So Bitcoin transactions don't have to be declared.

Deposits and withdrawals do have to be declared (i.e. how much BTC you bought and sold).

Yes.

I got one question. In short: "explain the origin".

It wasn't difficult, but it's annoying. I hate how governments force companies to spy on customers.

Have you ever encountered the compliance procedure of crypto exchanges?
Do you know how many basic questions you will be asked at the beginning and how many additional ones?
This procedure can only be completed if the coins were purchased legally on a large exchange; in other cases this is very difficult to do.

For me, the good thing is that there are no laws related to Bitcoin or mixers yet. The government in my country completely ignores Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and there are no regulatory laws, so there is no concern about taxes or the like.

Personally, I receive payment from mixer campaigns to the wallet and then convert it to local currency in my country through a local intermediary and therefore I do not have any problem with the IRS, basically they do not know anything about my work.

Give me the official definition of tainted coins. I'll help you: it doesn't exist. There are several companies trying to sell the idea of taint, but it only exists when you believe it. And I don't believe it.
Most banknotes contain traces of cocaine, and that doesn't matter. Fungibility means all banknotes are equal. The same applies to Bitcoin. And just like banks don't want to take banknotes from criminals, exchanges don't want to take Bitcoins from criminals. If you're not a criminal, you'll be able to prove you legally earned those Bitcoins. And you should be okay.

True, it's annoying having to deal with this.

Im on a jurisdiction that's considered first world, so you would expect a stable set of rules whose cannot change arbitrarily and to not be applied retroactively, however, I think it's a good principle to never trust the government and lawmakers in general when it comes to crypto, they hate it by default and they have some of the best lawyers out there trained to make your life miserable if they want to. Even if you managed to win a case, the amount of stress and money spend fighting them may wreck you financially in the process. So I would like to avoid these situations.

You report your taxes, but what do you do if the address that pays you had tainted coins, and once you deposit them on an exchange, it activates an alarm next to your dox. Not a great situation to be at. This is the main problem I believe, or at least the first one you want to solve, because this is automated. The government or bank or both may or not ask about context of the money, but if the coins are tainted and you deposit them, it will be guaranteed that you'll face some problems there.

I've also made private deals. I don't see a problem with that for "my" taxman.

That's true. The exchange may ask questions, just like my bank asked questions. My bank doesn't like that any more than I do (and spying on their customers is expensive), but governments demands them to do so.

It might help if you start by sharing which jurisdiction you live in. If your government can criminalize things retroactively, you have other things to worry about than just signature earnings.

My bank gets a lot more nervous if I'd use P2P trading instead of an established exchange. That would mean I have financial transactions with people I don't know.

And why are you quoting me when you say that? I am not under the jurisdiction of the IRS and what I say does not apply only to what the IRS does or does not do. There are general principles of law that apply to all countries unless you live in a dictatorship, and they are that you cannot be penalized for something that is not illegal today, no matter what the taxman thinks or doesn't think, and that you cannot be penalized retroactively if it is declared illegal tomorrow.

But you keep on looking for problems instead of seeing solutions, while the rest of the forum has been years without any problem for the signature campaign earnings.

Why is it that some people assume everyone is under IRS jurisdiction? The IRS may not care, I don't know how they operate there. I do know tho, that exchanges like Coinbase and co use chainalysis type databases so if you get paid from a mixer, who is to say the tx doesn't contain a tainted address that you now link to with your dox as you make the deposit? This problem applies under any jurisdiction as long as you use KYC exchanges with enough liquidity to matter.

This is why in the future withdrawing or depositing coins into exchanges will be a problem due the lack of fungibility of BTC, and will eventually probably be outlawed. In part this is why they want to approve ETFs, to move liquidity from exchange into proxies.

If you insist on seeing problems instead of solutions, it is not surprising that you only see problems.

What is clear is that you don't have a fucking clue about law. What the IRS likes or dislikes doesn't matter. If you file taxes for signature campaigns mixers he can't take legal action against you because they are not illegal. And if in 5 years they are declared illegal he can't act retroactively against you for having filed the taxes of this year.

You can continue to insist on seeing a problem while the rest of us will continue without any problems because of our signature campaign earnings.

You can keep records taking screenshots, and archiving webpages too I guess. However, the problem remains: The taxman may not enjoy that you promoted mixers, considering the bad rep they have nowadays, increasingly bad it seems, since they talk about passing anti mixer laws, so you would be promoting the same thing they want to ban. If you hodl on this capital, by the time you cash it may be even worse by then. This is the main problem here. It is only reasonable to think in advance and try predict what the response will be when you show up with mixer sig campaign earnings.

There's also the direct risk of depositing coins that came from sig campaign earnings into an exchange, or any mixed amounts for that matter. On a long enough timeline everything that didn't came from "certified KYC exchanges" will be a risk to deposit since you never know if a few hopes before you contained some tainted addresses, then you go in there and deposit these next to your dox. This is unfair but this is where we are going into.

So for someone with smaller amounts, this may still be a risk, but for smaller amounts, it may not even be worth cashing out, just spend it on groceries or basic stuff.

But for bigger amounts, you'll have problems trying to do anything with that stored capital, which may require some more creative solutions which include additional risks.

I think you need to study more about the laws and instructions for filing a tax return in your country.
I think in any country you can declare small incomes if they are related to non-permanent commercial activities.
In my country, I fill out a special column in the tax return “other income” and there is no point in being afraid of inspections if the amount is small, a few thousand dollars.
The IRS does not have enough resources to review every tax return. Personal communication in such cases is minimal. Usually they can send me a letter asking for an explanation, I write that I translated several texts into Russian and they paid me money by transfer to a card. I won’t say anything about bitcoins, although I will exchange them myself.

Simply put: that's on you! It's your own responsibilty to keep records, if you can't do that, you'll have to face the taxman. I don't think the forum can be expected to keep records for other people's tax purposes. Blockchain timestamps can support your story.

Obviously you need to declare everything, but here, taxman usually doesn't ask for context. But when he does, you have 6 weeks to provide it so you'd better be ready.

It's funny because we have one on our local board who won't stop crying about it, and I think he's the same one who asks the same question on other Spanish-language forums.

The problem with declaring signature campaigns in some countries is that it would cost you so much that it is impractical because you would have to register as a self-employed person and the fee plus taxes to be paid is more than what you earn here.

However, if for whatever reason you have more than 6 figures today and you don't know what to do with it, you are a fool. Gift cards and ATMs are for small amounts, for amounts of millions there are other solutions that you are not going to find in a forum. What you need to do is get off your ass and make decisions, instead of crying in the forums.

But let's say you cannot do this until after the 1st when all ulrs will be redacted with some wordfilter, what then?
There may also be a lot of people that find old wallets, look around and find they got them from sign campaigns from 8 years ago for instance, then they see the threads have redacted urls. You sell to buy a house, taxman wants context, what do you provide?

At least theymos isn't deleting the threads, so the post with your address will be there, that's something, however having redacted urls with "banned site" isn't helpful tax wise since it makes it less clear what the advertised service was.

Some people may argue, why bother, just spend it on this on that gift voucher. Well those are small purchases, im talking about people that were there like a decade ago and continued for some years making a nice amount of BTC since it was being paid in bigger amounts due the very cheap prices, and these prices went up a ton and now they want to buy real estate with those earnings, what do you do?

In one hand the taxman of your average developed country will always say to declare and provide context, but on the other hand they will make things miserable if you don't like your explanations. And most people aren't willing to move to some dodgy country. So yeah, not many options there that I can see. If they gave us a peace of mind of knowing nothing will go wrong, a lot of people would do it to diversify in other assets, but since that is not the case, I wonder how many people have considerable amounts in wallets that can only be spent on doing groceries with vouchers, gift cards, or the increasingly smaller set ofs called anonymous ATMS. Bisq and co leave SEPA traces so not that interest. Cash by mail seems dodgy. And meeting with IRL people for cash transactions has massive risks too. And again, you cannot really enjoy those gains, im talking 6+ figures, if you are limited to very small movements to live under the radar, specially if you pay rent and want to buy real state, and diversify and so on. There is no way around paying taxes there and there has to be a way to solve that situation.

philipma1957 is a miner from the USA and I am sure that he pays taxes on the bitcoins he receives for signature campaigns.
Apparently he has an accountant who does his taxes, but you can ask him about this if you are from the USA.

That doesn't matter, the rest of the evidence is on the blockchain.

I'm supposed to do a report every time I get paid - which means every week, which is completely insane. Therefore, if someone makes such an insane request, I think we can agree that paying taxes on the earnings from signature campaigns is by no means an option for people in my situation.

Given that I live in an extremely corrupt country where in the last 8 years about 30 ministers have been fired or resigned due to corrupt actions, believe me I sleep peacefully when I know that my money did not go into their pockets.

Is everyone who requested to join a campaign all accepted into that campaign? The answer is no. To me, what I think one should be worried about in terms of the task report if they are ever going to ask for a detailed explanation should be the campaign spreadsheets.
 
That's the only way the task agent can see the name of the task payer on the spreadsheet together with that of others, and they can see how the payments are being made on a weekly basis. If the money was actually earned as you claimed, the spreadsheet and the campaign announcement page are all that you need to make a proper account of how you earn.
 
And if you know that things like this, where you will be asked questions about how you earn and you are uncertain about what information about mixer will remain on the forum, you can make a copy of the thread and print it out like Loyce has suggested, I think solid evidence is even being offered in paper and document format.

If you need a website as evidence of a source of income later on, you should just archive or print it.

Here, the tax report field looks like this:
That's it. If, however, they have questions later, it's up to the tax payer to give a plausible explanation.

Taxation systems vary between countries. Where I live there is humongous amount of tax when selling crypto is concerned and the capital gains on that. It is the government's method to discourage people from dealing in crypto but they fail to do so.

At present I am not cashing out much of my campaign earnings but buying gift cards for groceries and all at times.

Mixing coins will continue because people are paranoid about privacy and some people have been stacking coins enough to get big eyes on them. It just the consequence of being rich. For now I dont think any desperate step needs to be taken. Let things go by and see how the US takes care of things, other demoractic countries will follow suit.

Since when do you report the specific forum topic that acted as the announcement page of the product you advertised? This sounds similar to filling "cpuminer" when reporting your mining profit.

I guess it varies from countries to countries, but in my place there isn't even a tax framework where you can report bitcoin, let alone the place where you got your job, or the product you advertised and got paid in bitcoin. Please address to an expert (lawyer or accountant) if you haven't already, because it doesn't seem right to reporting everything related to your forum pseudonym.

Each country has different laws. In my country, I have to declare my income and pay taxes every year. In other countries, you are required to report your income every month or quarter.
If you have bitcoins, then you can register as an NFT artist in your country and put your collection on the open sea market. Let's exchange your BTC for Ethereum and buy your NFT tokens and pay the tax.

I must say that you confused me with most of your narrations, but I like the remarks of fighting the narrative for criminality not to thrive. M!xers are a whole lot of menace if I must say, though some use it for genuine purposes and some m!xers too are so professional in their operation, but the illegal use must always be present and those who want to be clearly unseen when it comes to cryptocurrency will definitely use mixers.

However, the sending accounts can't be the same all the time, but at times, the same account will send to a multitude, and it will be an issue if, in the end, the account is flagged for an allegation linked to m!xers. And finally, I don't think that Bitcoin or m!xers can cover up for anyhow where inflow is strictly taxed in his country. After all, the person would want to convert the crypto to fiat and when reaches the bank account, tax may apply. It now depends on the investigation on the ground, if the inflow which was tax must be investigated to know if the source is legit. I do not know if they will get to know it is from m!xers or not, but it is very possible if the m!xer's sending account is already flagged.

But yours is to explain yourself, and since m!xers are not entirely illegal, I believe you will be exonerated.

In case you forgot, but "a cryptocurrency mixing service is not necessarily illegal," and so far the legislation criminalizing the mixing service in the United States is a draft law and has not yet been passed, so your profits from mixing services are legal, even if a law was passed prohibiting trading in cryptocurrencies, what would it be? Except in the case of sinbad, in which the address of the signature campaign was added to the OFAC list, here you either mix your money before sending it to CEX, or you tell them all the details.

@theymos banned mixers here because he is afraid for his life/forum, not because mixers are illegal.

This is all just my personal opinion, and not meant to be construed as actual advice, and it only applies to those living in the US (I don't know about other country's tax laws):

If (in theory) I had earnings from a mixer signature campaign, I would report them only if they ended up at a US-based exchange where you provided KYC information. If you cashed them out to USD, you'll definitely want to report that, as most likely the exchange will be providing the IRS with this information.

If you cashed them out in any other way, I wouldn't bother reporting it at all. The chances of being audited by the IRS are slim unless you made some windfall profits that are triggering tax documents to be sent on your behalf.

The theory works with everyone on the forum declaring signature campaigns earnings. In practice it works with people cashing out what they earn with anonymous Bitcoin ATMs, DEX, buying gift cards or depositing it in the casino and losing it. Without declaring it.

Others accumulate but may find themselves tomorrow with a serious problem, which has already been discussed many times on the forum. If by accumulating you find yourself with $1M that is difficult to justify to the authorities, you will have to look for specialized lawyers and maybe set up some kind of structure to be able to use that money, or go to a crypto-friendly country where you will not have problems about the origin of those funds.

So, you guys are getting paid in Bitcoin just to pay tax on it? Let me go bash my head against a wall.🤦‍♂️
But in any case if you guys wanna play submissive little b*tch role for the central banks, you could show an archived version of the former glorious and currently banned signatures of mixers to the tax boss man. 😉

Given current events, I was wondering, how are previous campaigns that promoted mixers going to show up? I was thinking that when one does taxes and wants to cash out earnings made off mixer campaigns into fiat, and the accountant, taxman or both, request context on earnings, we are going to have to send them a link to the post that contained your address were you requested to be added, and I would appreciate if it isn't all replaced with something that's showing some text that makes you look dodgy, like "banned site" or something as I saw in another campaign.

I wonder how to go about this at all. As far as I know it's a perfectly legal activity of marketing, but if theymos is going to replace all previous links with some sort placeholder, I wonder what's going to happen from now on.

For some small amount, I may not even cash it out. But those people that participated for years and have staked a decent amount and want to a buy a house or whatnot, will have to explain the earnings from the signature campaigns and provide context, and this context will be marketing activities for casinos and mixers in most cases. Chipmixer comes to mind as one of the longest running campaigns, and this one ended up closed. This sucks because 99% of people just mix their coins to pay without having to reveal your BTC net worth in the process, which can easily be looked up if you stack considerable amounts on a single address, or if you have made payments that joined several of your addresses. This should be reasonable to anyone including the taxman. If we don't fight this false narrative of how mixing coins = criminal activity things will only get worse.

As far as cashing out earnings from sig campaigns, I wonder how that works in practice. If anyone has any experience with this please let me know.