Topic: We can not discuss if 'ChipMixer is a honeypot or not' outside their own thread? - page 4. (Read 1808 times)

Nobody ever told you ChipMixer isn't used for illicit activity. It's just that you can't prevent someone from gaining privacy, just because some do use it illegally.

You're crazy to me, when you're in favor of decentralized privacy enhancing techniques but go completely against centralized. It makes no sense.

Well, this is awkward. Can’t say I didn’t see it coming and try to steer people in the right direction. I got a bunch of trust exclusions for my efforts. If anyone feels like apologizing feel free.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/03/15/germany-and-us-seize-over-46m-crypto-tied-to-chipmixer-investigation-europol/

I guess maybe I wasn’t a crazy person sounding off about the dangers of Chipmixer and how those advertising for it were maybe not the most upstanding members of our community. Signature campaign managers are about to be flooded with requests…

Tornado Cash tried that, and they were shot dead.

Also the DOJ won't care whether it's done at the blockchain or the smart contract level. It's all the same to them. The justice department aren't privy to blockchain schematics.

Watching the Department of Justice live stream about their recent International Cryptocurrency Enforcement Action. It seems directed at those who try to launder funds or use the blockchain for financial anonymity. They’ve stated that being offshore will not provide protection while enabling financial anonymity.

This is why I say financial privacy should be done at the protocol level. They stated their battle, “is just getting started.”

I recommend watching the announcement if you are a user or promoter of any coin mixing activities. You’re wearing a target and they’re taking aim.

https://www.justice.gov/live

Absolutely. And there are kinda-sorta-usable workarounds like CoinJoin. The point is that I don't get him cheering for centralized mixers to be outlawed... if that happens we're in deep shit because the gubbermint won't just leave us a nice shiny loophole in the protocol.


Just look at this: https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/DAAML%20Act%20of%202022.pdf

Among all sorts of crazy shit, it defines mixers and "privacy coins" (i.e. anything that has protocol-level obfuscation) in the same category, and would basically outlaw it. If a law like that gets passed I don't see how Bitcoin gets an exception. At the very least any part of the Bitcoin ecosystem that provides privacy tools (be it CoinJoin, LN, Taproot, etc) would fall under that. But hey, at least Og would get his petty grudges settled so I'm sure he's rooting for Warren to push this through.

Didn't you saw latest US news?!
There was OG complaining and protesting every day about money laundering of US dollars.  
If Elon Musk laundered money with his DOGE scheme than people shouldn't drive Tesla because they are supporting money laundering.
Anyone who sent deposit to buy Tesla is supporting money laundering, drug trafficking and illegal surveillance.
Don't buy a knife because knife can be used to kill people, and in some countries knife is already illegal believe it or not.

I have to agree with him on one thing, it would be much better to have protocol based privacy for Bitcoin.
We can compare this with Monero, but Bitcoin is much bigger and it would be much harder if not impossible to make it illegal at this point.

Protocol-level fungibility can be used to launder money so by your own logic you're promoting money laundering.


Fungibility on its own is not against the law, at least not where I am, and if it ever is outlawed then it would likely make protocol-level fungibility (or usage thereof) unlawful as well. For example some exchanges delisted Monero etc for "compliance reasons", which is a good indication of how this would play out.

That's the point that made me post in the first place. I don't understand where your confidence for that assertion comes from. Why are you so convinced that everyone in the ChipMixer campaign is some kind of sellout? Has it occurred to you that people might have taken an ideological stance?

That seems like a pretty minor thing to hang all of your gripes on. You're okay with protocol-level fungibility? But you're not okay with trying to accomplish the same thing (in the meantime) with third-party tools?

I mean, your position then seems (to me) to be: "I'm okay with making life difficult for AML initiatives, but only if it's built into the protocol."

Do we agree on the last part? The one which you don't have problem with privacy protection, in and of itself, but with the manner you'll protect it? Isn't your problem with centralized mixers? Would you be fine if somehow we could acquire the same protection ChipMixer provides if there was a decentralized manner to do it? If so, can you justify what's the moral or legal problem if some choose to accomplish in a centralized manner?

Mixing isn't illegal. What's illegal is to mix stolen funds-- and not because you mix them, but because you stole them.

I guess we can agree to disagree.  I'll continue not promoting money laundering and advocating for protocol level fungibility, not fungibility that depends on a 3rd party breaking the law and users being participants in that choice to break the law by using said third party.  That is not the vision I had (not that anyone gives a fuck) for blockchain privacy.  It will only lead to more regulation and honeypot attacks on community members just trying to have privacy, who like you, thought this was a legal and reasonable option to use because the moral police on bitcointalk were promoting it. 

No, you do. You can't have it both ways. You either promote money laundering privacy enhancing tools or you operate in draconian manner. What have you been taught by Orwell anyway? The fact that some such tools are not decentralized doesn't mean they don't protect your privacy, and that's probably where you've confused it. As far as I can tell, you're in favor of CoinJoin, MimbleWhimble, ring signatures, confidential transactions etc., which can obviously be used to obfuscate outputs and therefore launder money, but you're opposed to methods that require you to hand over custody. (which isn't even relevant)

It doesn't have to be that way.  You don't have to either promote money laundering or force everyone to operate in a vast draconian infrastructure.  That's ridiculous.  There is also a third option.  Don't promote money laundering.  The fact that so many users are willing to openly promote money laundering for a couple hundred bucks a week while trying to maintain some level or authority over other users here is being a hypocrite on a level you can only describe as being a sellout.  Now I see people are personally attacking me and going after my signature sponsor?  I wonder why...  This is what they do.  Try to villainize anyone who shines a light on their bad behavior.  Stake is perfectly legal though, operating sites for use in many countries including my own.  There is nothing illegal about it and while more and more laws are being passed to support online gambling being legal in more and more states/countries (including my own), you'll find these same places moving forward with regulation against money laundering "mixers" and the like.  I don't expect any apologies when mixers do become illegal and aren't allowed to run signature campaigns here anymore, but remember those who were supporting organizations that launder funds for members who defraud others here.  Similar to those who supported extortion attempts (shocker, they're mostly the same individuals).



You mean the members who support money laundering and extortionists might not be good people?  Absolutely shocking.

Indeed! Criminals will always take advantages. But we should not enable it too much! Even Bitcointalk is giving scammers a hard time from DT.

It's somehow all of it. You and I know mixers are loved by criminals and you are NOT a criminal by using it. But it's providing criminals liquidity and personally I would appreciate it to keep me an option how to reject such tainted coins.


If such accounts don't scam, where's any issue?
As long as an account does not scam or abuse Bounty, it doesn't do any damage.
If it does damage = sent out red paint. Account will be useless.
Easy, like taint coins.

Usually, banks are protected by security.
Criminals are caught and arrested.
Bukele did some raids against criminals recently.
Money transport are usually heavily weaponized and armored.
Good luck trying to rob a cash transporter today. 
Or Fort Knocks is also protected.

It's not like wild, wild west like saloon, where a sheriff is overworked and understaffed, where houses shortly build after moving west made out of weak wood have lousy locked door security or where a Dallas Cowboy is hunting down a Denver Bronco (joke). We are modern socienty right now.
Modern problems require modern solution, SIR!

@AliErkic: Either you're arguing in bad faith, or you've misunderstood my position.

The first half of your post reads to me like you're saying: "Oh, so you're okay with facilitating criminal activity!?"

The second half of your post reads to me like you're saying: "Oh, so it's just like with a shady signature campaign then, you're happy to turn a blind eye, if it serves you!?"

Those are two paper-thin takes which in each case are already addressed either by footnote or the text immediately adjacent to what was quoted.

I'll try one last time (in this thread) to clarify my position, by way of analogy:

Analogy (Sockpuppet Accounts)

Imagine the problem you're trying to solve is secret alt accounts on Bitcointalk. How would you do it? One way would be to enforce a KYC procedure on the forum (both retroactively and moving forward). To prevent people from selling pre-KYCed accounts, the procedure would have to be periodic, so every few weeks/months you'd have to go through it again, with a fresh photograph of you holding a written-out security phrase, or maybe a (recorded) video chat with a staffer. It might also involve the sharing of other personal information and a few documents, for good measure. Bitcointalk would offer to keep all of this data completely safe on a "best effort" basis.

Here's my position: I'm against sockpuppet accounts and would like to find ways to reduce/eliminate them, but I'm even more against adding KYC to Bitcointalk; the cure is worse than the disease.

Analogy (The Old West)

Imagine the problem you're trying to solve is bank robberies and cash-carrying train heists. How would you do it? One way would be to pass a law that from now on every cash-accepting establishment (the saloon, the general store, etc.) needs to have a government-appointed security clerk standing next to the cashier. Whenever a customer hands over a banknote, the security clerk looks up its serial number in his little black book and sees if there are corresponding instructions (e.g. "confiscate", "detain for questioning", "accept, but ask for identification", etc.)

Here's my position: I'm against bank robberies and train heists and would like to find ways to reduce/eliminate them, but I'm even more against having every cash transaction run through an opaque process that could/would be misused; the cure is worse than the disease.

You see the pattern? Now, imagine the problem you're trying to solve is Bitcoin being used for criminal activity...

Nothing new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse

It is not ideal, indeed!
But it's ideal for scammers, criminals, terrorists and enables narcotraffic!
Maybe we'll realize very soon: mixers are very damaging for Bitcoin because scams and crime is enabled on a large scale. Should scammers be left alone on Bitcointalk, too? Is negative trust also bad if it's affecting Bitcointalk account fungibility for scammer accounts negatively? LOL
Yes, let all scammers get away and don't paint scammer accounts red, don't call scammer coins tainted.
Maybe an approach similar to DT as WasabiWallet is figuring out can help but it's ChipMixer paying tons of money every week here. 
Wasn't using centralized services discouraged? But "mUh fuNgiBiliTy".

I would not mix my coins in a mixer known for facilitating coins used in crimes. Still, everyone is free to do it. But don't complain if nobody wants to receive your tainted coins.
Stop enabling scammers, criminals, terrorists and narcotraffic!

We get it, ChipMixer, probably a honeypot, is paying handsomely and most members here don't care. ChipMixer is enabling all kind of shady behaviour, nobody cares as well, so consequences (like getting tainted coins) are on you if you are using it.


Your approach is similar to lazy campaign managers letting red-painted accounts into singature campaigns.
1xbet and friends.
Not beneficial at all.

1xbet and friends are also Bitcointalk account fungibility nuts.
What an idiocy. 



Looks like OgNasty is right once again!

Good to hear you are working on that project, and I don't doubt it's going to be something interesting, judging by your recent forum contribution and suggestions for improevement.
If I want to be honest, all current centralized exchanges are acting like a mixers, more or less, but I guess they are intended more for high-profile customers.
They invented their own detection systems, and my theory is that they conveniently hacked themselves more than once, if you know what I mean.
It's much easier for them to blame some unknown evil hackers for everything.

Yep. It's sad, but I think you're probably right. At this point, too many people have been scared into believing that fungibility is a bad thing. Which is completely backwards, but it wouldn't be the first time that people have been coerced into abandoning their own long-term interests out of short-term fear. An eventual protocol change is likely the only realistic way to properly restore fungibility.

I agree, but (to be clear) my position is not that we should pretend it doesn't exist. My position is that we should be making "taint analysis" as unreliable as possible, by convincing people that being frightened into never mixing their coins is tantamount to them giving up on the concept of fungibility. What I think a lot of bitcoiners don't realize, is that by giving up on fungibility they're unwittingly opening the door to a slew of nightmarish infractions on their financial freedom. By the time they realize the extent of the damage, it will be too late to effectively fight back against (other than by altering Bitcoin itself).

Yeah, I've got some (long-term) plans to develop a few bitcoin-accepting services, and I can promise you that I won't be participating in any "mandated" checking/flagging of deposits. I'm a fungibility nut, so I simply don't care [1] where funds originate from, I'll accept them without bias and likely mix them on withdrawal, too.

Yup. Long live Tor, long live onion services and long live anonymous clearnet web hosting. As long as those remain viable, I'll thumb my nose at the regulators.

[1] When I say I don't care, I don't mean morally, I mean practically (i.e. I don't believe that any organization with the authority to issue a list of "bad" UTXOs wouldn't end up abusing that same power).

I think it's to late for that already, and all we can do is try to make protocol base protocol changes that would include privacy and maybe inbuilt mixing.
We can pretend that concept of tainted coins doesn't exist and close or eyes, but reality is sadly different thanks to scammers like ftx ceo Scam Bankman, Binance CZ and others.
Alternative option is for us to develop separate services that would accept all Bitcoin transactions without checking address history, but I doubt regulators will tolerate that much longer.
They want to limit and cancel cash soon, so I don't see why Bitcoin would be in better position for them  

Most money in the world is probably laundered with gambling, so I don't understand how your ''right'' side of history is allowing promotion of that.
I guess double standards is allowed for some people, and coinjoin, privacy, mixers this are all ''evil'' tools in your ''right'' side of history

It's really interesting how some people suddenly started to care about money laundering...  usually the same people think they are going to ''save earth'' by driving their Tesla's  

Still, he's been like that way before Vod conflict if not forever. Peruse his trust feedback, both sent and received, and you'll see.