but if blockchain analytics is catching up and getting more sophisticated, you'd think mixers would need to up their pace to stay ahead.
Definitely, but that applies to ChipMixer as well. It's fairly easy to locate and monitor the fixed chip values, and from there I hope that eventually the chip values will change from time to time to become less common.
Or maybe that we can initiate a mixing session and request a custom chip value to obtain a bit more randomness. But as we speak, the only mixing service I have confidence in is ChipMixer.
Obviously, there is a bias from my side because I wear their signature, but it doesn't happen very often that people wear a signature from a service they are actually using and genuinely like. Bitmixer fits in there as well.
In most cases people are only interested in the payments and they don't care what they advertise for, but I am happy that I can promote a service offering a fundamental necessity for the community. Privacy is precious.
I think even ChipMixer acknowledged that ease of detection using fixed chip values, but did note that as time passed and demand/volume increased, these fixed amounts would be near negligible. I'm not convinced of that myself, to be honest, I suspect the most sophisticated software could probably track down some of my use on it, probably not to me, but at least to my habits on using the service.
Maybe we should recommend a random changing of values from time to time as you suggest.
Yeah, bias from us naturally as incentivised supporters. But that also comes with the confidence of having the service itself back up the advantages we claim. Once Bitcoin moves past its scaling issues, privacy will really be the next area of focus.
