Topic: What are the best non-custodial Bitcoin mixers available today? (Read 413 times)

As far as I am aware, Bisq is the only trading platform which meets that criterion.

Which is why you limit what data it can collect. If I use LocalCryptos, for example, connect via Tor, communicate with my trading party using end-to-end encryption, only trade mixed coins (or immediately mix any coins I receive), then LocalCryptos can only collect very limited information about me.

It all comes down to the way you access trade liquidity. A litmus test for any platform would be like this: is it possible to deploy your own autonomous instance of the platform and still have access to the same pool of buyers and sellers? If the answer is affirmative, then the given platform can be characterized as "decentralized." If the answer is no, then you always have to rely on a central point of failure to communicate with counterparties, which is a clear indicator that such a system is far from being considered decentralized.

Doesn't any centralized website require trust that it doesn't collect and sell your data to third parties? Don't tell me you are ready to give up your privacy for convenience.

No, I am not using it because it is still in early development, doesn't have GUI and currently doesn't allow swaps from XMR back to bitcoin. But if you are familiar with CLI and willing to exchange BTC->XMR, you can try this guide: https://sethforprivacy.com/guides/bitcoin-monero-atomic-swaps/

I never tried these services myself and I want to, for some time now! I hear a lot about conjoin services and I need to dig a little bit on the subject before I chose any of their services. I need to kind of mix some of my coins to be able to clean them from exchanges and untie them from myself.

I would call Bisq a decentralized platform. Sure, there is a centralized website which hosts information, user guides, etc., but the website is irrelevant to using the Bisq platform to trade with other users, just like you don't need to visit bitcoin.org at all in order to run a node. Other platforms such as LocalCryptos do make use of a centralized website to set up trades, but still trade in a decentralized and trustless manner. I'm not averse to using a centralized website if the trading itself remains peer-to-peer and does not require any trust in said website.

Interesting. I'll check this out. Do you use it? How big is the user base? What's the liquidity like?

The concept of a "decentralized platform" is nothing more than a mere oxymoron or a buzzword widely used by those wanting to lure naive investors into dubious quick money-making schemes. If there is a platform, there needs to be an owner, but only the mere fact that the owner exists makes a platform centralized. Networks, however, can be decentralized provided that they consist of interconnected peers that talk to each other using different communication protocols while not relying on a central server or any other biased decision-maker. The biggest advantage of such networks is that they are permissionless, meaning that everyone can join the network and become a peer by simply downloading a compatible client. Just like in the case of Bitcoin and Bisq, which are both decentralized networks, not platforms, you can download an XMR-BTC atomic swap client (https://github.com/comit-network/xmr-btc-swap for example) and join a decentralized network of users also running compatible clients.

That's my question - what platforms exist for doing this in a decentralized and trustless manner?

You should be careful combining a VPN with Tor, as often it can lead to worse privacy than simply using Tor alone.

Strongly disagree. If the devs cave to every little demand of every government then bitcoin rapidly become no better than a CBDC.

Yes, but I'd still use it over Wasabi every day of the week since Wasabi are anti-bitcoin. If you want a decentralized coinjoin implementation, then you should look at JoinMarket.

You can also trade BTC for XMR via cross-chain atomic swaps. There's no need to use a separate platform like Bisq to trade coins. Everything is done directly in a P2P manner. You simply send your BTC to the protocol and receive XMR to your address almost instantly. I've tried it and it works like a charm. However, the technology is quite experimental (as far as I'm aware) so it's not recommended for exchanging large amounts between blockchains. I've been a little paranoid about my privacy lately, so I use a combination of TOR + VPN and XMR to keep my transactions as private as possible. There are a lot of centralized exchanges requiring KYC these days, so it's best to be prepared for the worst.



That's the problem. When there's money involved, developers often sacrifice Blockchain's core values (which are privacy and decentralization) in order to fill their pockets with money. You can bet that if developers opposed government's requirements, crypto wouldn't have been as widely adopted worldwide as it is right now. It's all about making governments happy in order to keep crypto afloat. At least, we're not stuck with a single privacy solution. As long as everything remains open sourced and decentralized, people will always have a choice to preserve their privacy in the crypto/Blockchain space.



Isn't ChipMixer a centralized mixing service? It is hosted on a centralized server, so I'd assume that is the case. Maybe I'm wrong?

If I'm trading BTC for XMR (or vice versa), I almost always just use Bisq, or very occasionally someone on this forum. What platforms (with reasonable liquidity) exist for making trustless BTC to XMR swaps?

As much as they try to justify it is somehow being a good thing, I'm pretty sure the Wasabi team know fine well they aren't doing the right thing whatsoever by cooperating with blockchain analysis. It's just that they care about lining their own pockets much more than they care about privacy, their users, or doing the right thing.

I would choose ChipMixer over Wasabi 100% of the time, since Wasabi spy on their users, cooperate with blockchain analysis, and are anti-privacy and anti-bitcoin.

Thanks for the very helpful clarification

I don't know about it in details but from their terms (custodial, non-custodial mixers), I can guess what are their platforms, what they provide, what are sort of wallet they provide to customers.

It's clearly that I will never choose custodial mixers to use if I want to mix my coin. I can use centralized exchanges for trading but if it is about coin mixing, it's terrible to use custodial mixer. Because it is not helpful for the purpose we want to use mixer/ tumbler service. It's bad from the beginning.

There are two types of bitcoin mixers: centralized (custodial) mixers and decentralized (non-custodial) mixers. Centralized mixers are essentially privately-owned platforms like regular centralized exchanges, but instead of trading, they provide mixing services. You deposit your bitcoin in their wallet, and they give you other bitcoin in return from their own reserves. You don't control the keys to the coins being mixed until you have been given a private key to a specific address with mixed coins. Like any other centralized service, they are trust-based platforms because (1) they control the keys, and (2) they have access to mixing logs and other sensitive information like IP addresses. On the other hand, they are more efficient and fast than decentralized solutions and, also, they have more mixing liquidity, thus providing their users a higher anonymity set.

Decentralized (non-custodial) mixers don't require users to give up private keys in order to perform a mixing transaction, but those wanting to mix their coins need to find each other first, establish a communication channel, discuss and set the terms of the transaction, etc.

I am confusing. Non custodial mixers.

I am not an expert in Bitcoin mixers/ tumblers but I believe with the idea of mixing/ tumbling, such service should not require users to send their Bitcoin to custodial wallets of that service in order to use it.

You can send your coin from ycustodial or non custodial wallet to a mixer, and get your coins out is outputs. It is unreasonable to create a custodial Bitcoin mixers, that sounds like scam

Please enlighten me if I am wrong.

Bitcoin is operating as it has been ever since day one, what Wasabi wallet is doing is rendering their own service useless.

I suppose it is the same as CEX vs DEX arguments.
People continue mostly using centralized exchanges because they are more convenient despite their downsides while decentralized exchanges are mostly ignored due to hardship of using and low volume despite their benefits.

That sucks. I know they think they're doing the right thing by cooperating with governments but giving away sensitive financial information would make Bitcoin no different than traditional banking. The third party must be removed from the system for things to work out as intended. How would people obtain true privacy if there's a middleman in between? We need as much non-custodial (decentralized) privacy solutions as possible to help fulfill Bitcoin's original purpose. Anyhow, thanks for bringing this up. It's really appreciated.



I think this is by far the best solution to "anonymize" Bitcoin without any third parties. You've given me the answer right here with XMR-BTC atomic swaps. Sometime ago, I've heard that the new technology (atomic swaps) is experimental. If that's still the case, then it wouldn't be ideal to exchange large amounts of BTC for XMR. Once perfected, atomic swaps will be a true game changer not only for privacy but for trading as well. Monero is quite a hidden gem that's often overlooked by the general public. At least, both XMR and BTC have been going strong after all these years. Who needs centralized mixing services (no offense) when we already have decentralized solutions? Just my opinion

Many users will be unaware, since they quite deliberately make no mention of it whatsoever on their website and indeed continue to peddle lies which strongly imply they are fighting against such blacklists as I point out here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5286821. And of course all their social media profiles continue to spread the nonsense that they are the only viable privacy solution for bitcoin.

But I'm sure they've crunched the numbers and figured out if they can attract a couple of big institutions who buy in to this taint nonsense, then they can lose a large portion of their regular users and still make more profit overall.

But isn’t that bad for them in the long run given that sooner or later users will realize that that wallet doesn’t provide what it provided before? Or maybe they calculate that the average user will not understand that something has changed?

As far as I can see, they currently have a review campaign on the forum, and they still claim to provide their users with the same service as before - although according to what you mentioned on another topic, they did not do their job well even before this decision.

That site links to several known scams. Please remove your link immediately and take more care before sharing links to scams in the future.

Profits. They have sold out the privacy of their regular users so they can cater to large financial institutions and therefore increase their profits. No one who cares even the slightest about privacy should ever use Wasabi again.

Samourai is an option if you run your own node and are aware of the limitations of it. But if you don't want to use ChipMixer, then the best option at present is JoinMarket.

I think that it's about offer and demand. The decentralized mixers, from what I know, are costly. Also not as much decentralized and trustless as you'd think (Wasabi has a CoinJoin coordinator, you will need to trust it).
And I think that people will go where it's cheaper and it works. And ChipMixer being for free... do the math.
If there would be a need/demand for more such solutions, I think that a bigger variety would pop up. I will also add that LN is also considered nowadays a pretty good "mixer"-like approach.

You shouldn't just share links from such sites because some links that are there are definitely scam mixers that you can check on this link -> Scams Bitcoin Mixers List and Services closed

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It seems that many are not yet aware that there has been a change and that this wallet has literally become a threat to everyone's privacy. I’m not exactly versed in the reasons why they chose that path, but it’s weird that it happened.

If you are looking for non-custodial solutions to obfuscate bitcoin transactions, consider Bitcoin-Monero atomic swaps [1]. Atomic swaps are basically a decentralized method to exchange coins between different blockchains without participants' necessity to rely on or trust a third party. When you swap your bitcoin for Monero, you break the link between past and future transactions, because what happens inside the monero blockchain remains untraceable and unknown to an outside observer or chain analysis company. Once you no longer feel the need for anonymity provided by the monero blockchain, you swap your monero back to bitcoin. It is arguably a perfect approach to mixing coins because it is impossible to figure out what happens between your initial and final bitcoin transactions. Another solution would be using on-chain mixing algorithms such as the recently proposed DMix, a.k.a. decentralized mixer for unlinkability [2].



[1] https://www.getmonero.org/2021/08/20/atomic-swaps.html
[2] https://twitter.com/nobsbitcoin/status/1528701408341540865

If you want a noncustododial wallet, wasabi would have been the better one I would have recommended but they are now working with chain analysis companies to decide the types of utxo they can spend. Because if this, I will not recommend wasabi again. The only option you can use if you want a decentralized way is to convert your bitcoin to monero on decentralized exchange and convert it back from monero to bitcoin.