Topic: Why not use Exchange instead of Mixer? (Read 802 times)

Well, it depends on the exchanges and the size of fund. People who prefer privacy will generally avoid the exchanges due to kyc and withdrawal limits. There is also the risk of fund being seized by the exchanges. It's quite hard to recover fund seized by exchanges that do not exist in ones country

It's not just personal preference, those who use exchanges as mixers are putting themselves at risk of locking their funds because if exchanges notice something suspicious about your transaction they could freeze your account. Mixers wouldn't hesitate to mix your transactions, they usually charge fees but you can still save more as there are certain mixers like ChipMixer for example that lets you pay fees whenever you feel like paying.

I guess a lot have been said here the reason why there are still people using the mixer services. So it is really personal preferences on how they want anonymity in terms of crypto transactions. But if you don't care about this aspect, using exchange won't be a big deal for you.

with exchange, it is quite easier to trace transactions if you know the right addresses to monitored. In as much that multi transactions happens on  exchange platforms, they are not meant to mix bitcoin transactions making it impossible to trace transactions made by anybody on the platform. Mixers on the other hand have their platforms designed strictly to mix up bitcoin transactions making it impossible for transactions made by people to the mixer platforms untraceable..

Cryptocurrency exchanges are not equipt for privacy and anonymity by design while the bitcoin mixing services were built with privacy and anonymity in mind. The bitcoin mixers are more sophisticated than cryptocurrency exchanges when it comes to protecting user privacy, security, and anonymity.  

No problem, glad to help.

Pretty much. They may have a couple of main wallets, and go back and forth between hot and cold wallets, but this is essentially the principle.

If you use any third party service, (mixer, VPN, email client, etc.) you have no way of knowing for sure exactly what logs they are keeping. The difference is that exchanges are legally required to keep logs and hand them over to the government. ChipMixer states that all logs are deleted once your seasion ends, and there has never been anything to suggest otherwise.

You are very helpful. This is the second time this week I have read helpful info from you. Thank you very much for clearing that all up for me. It's not something you can just google.

Most of what I said was theoretical and out of interest. I thought that they had a main address they scrape everything to and then payout from there I just wanted to make sure and bring up alternative theories.
I would assume that yes the exchange will know what coins you have since they know what you brought with and what you leaving behind or taking with. They even have a history for that. If they didn't do these things they wouldn't be making any profits.

So it is basically internal is what you saying. Same as chipmixer. Only those internally can see and know what is going on? Or does chipmixer mix so well not even the owner knows?


What if your government is a corrupt piece of shit?? Is laundering still for bad people then?

Is Mixer is exempted of any existing regulation? Although mixers are in favor to those who dont want to exposed their identities that their data privacy will be surely respected and protected but its looks like this kind of transaction might be abuse by the bad people as it might could be use it in money laundering.

Go to https://www.walletexplorer.com/ and look at the 4th column entitled "Gambling". Click on any one of the sites there followed by "Show wallet addresses" to see lists of thousands of addresses known to be owned by each site. These are just the addresses which have been publicly collected for free. We also know exchanges pay large amounts of money to various third parties who specialize in blockchain analysis, and so they will have a much more extensive database to compare to.

Even if you do that, it is still obvious to the exchange exactly what you have done. I've seen suggestions that exchanges will track the coins you deposit back up to 10 previous transactions, but nobody seems to know for sure.

There are endless reports of users having their accounts on various exchanges locked, frozen, or even closed entirely, because they deposited or withdrew from various gambling sites.

This is the correct answer. A good mixer liker ChipMixer will mix your coins regardless of where they come from and with much more privacy than an exchange.

how will they know if the coins you are going to depo are came from gambling/site ?

they will know it if the address has a gambling name on it ( recorded on the blockchain ) but you can always transfer it first on other wallets and then transfer it again on exchanges but that will not make sense it all since you will only waste your energy and fee  .

 better if you can only use mixers because they are not strict and also less hassel to use  .

Not usually. Yes, each account has its own deposit address. In good exchanges, that deposit address will either automatically change after every use, or you will have the option to request a new deposit address, so you never have to use the same address twice, which is good for privacy reasons. However, most exchanges periodically sweep the funds from every user's deposit address in to a main, central wallet, and then pay out withdrawals from there. Leaving coins in each individual user's address would either leave them with huge amounts of dust, or leave them having to take coins from other users to pay a large withdrawal. So no, you don't usually get back the exact same coins which you deposited.

The answer is still probably not. Although that might be cheaper and make more sense, most exchanges deposits and withdrawals are automated and don't have somebody making decisions at the other end. Simply put, you deposit to the address they give you, all deposit addresses are swept to a main wallet, and the main wallet pays out any withdrawals. Even if you try to withdraw exactly what you just deposited, the likelihood is the automated system would still perform as above.

Changing currency isn't the stumbling factor to using an exchange for privacy. The stumbling factor is the exchange, and anyone working there or anyone they share data with, can see exactly what you've done. It doesn't matter it you deposit BTC and withdraw BTC, or deposit BTC, trade to ETH, withdraw some as ETH, trade the rest to XMR, and withdraw the rest as XMR. The exchange can still link all your activity, all your addresses, and all your coins.

Yes, but everything is traceable unless you use something like Monero where you can transfer anonymously between a couple wallets before you finally send some to an exchange to convert back again. Sending the "same" amount in would also be a stupid thing as well as doing it within a short time frame. You'd need to spread it around over time to mask it. Well, that's assuming you had some largish amount. You'd probably be fine with small amounts.

Don't they bind addresses to your account? So when with deposit eth and trade for something else and come back at some point to sell something for eth then you get that eth back. If you just deposit and not trade won't they just send it back using the same address you just sent it to? I think it is best if you go from one currency to another and either keep that or trade that currency back to a second exchange and withdraw from there?


This is what I am talking about with using another currency instead(see above)

Don't know why people are talking about exchanges and mixers to try and make coins untraceable. If I remember correctly, a few years back someone stole some BTC I think it was, or maybe it was NXT? Doesn't really matter but they transferred it into some exchange, bought Monero and withdrew that. From there they were able to just make it all disappear.

You might be able to do anonymous transfer within the exchange like you rightly said, but that is only not visible to the public, it is still very visible to the exchange itself, so the government can still get details of a transaction from an exchange if they force them to do so through court, but with cheap mixer, even the exchange itself will not be able to trace the transaction, like the way binance was not able to trace the transaction when the hacker stole that huge amount of money from their client’s wallet.

You can see that they tried everything possible but to no avail, which they later found out that the hacker used cheap mixer to actually take out the fund through their exchange. So I don’t think using exchange directly will be able to provide the full anonymity as you think.

Exchange market have different fees for every transaction depend on which one altcoin we make withdrawal, you can use altcoin for get lower fee transaction like litcoin, ripple and doge, many trader use doge when make withdrawal their coin from one exchange market to the other exchange market for every transaction.

Perfect explanation mate, that is reality in addition for this if I am not wrong exchange are not allowing or accepting coins came from the gambling. So gambler need to use mixer before to transfer their winning fund unto the exchange, but I do not know why exchange not accepting coins derictly from the gambling.

There are almost 0 fees when you compare a mixer to an exchange and almost 0 downsides as well.

Exchanges will sometimes charge a deposit fee, definetly a fee if you want to exchange your crypto-currencies, and another withdrawal fee which may vary. Mixers will be able to set their fees from 0 to 10 percent with some mixers (Chipmixer being a good example) making their fees completely optional.

This simply comes down to mixers are anonymous, exchanges are just not.

Can't afford you meant?

Discarding all privacy issues of using an exchange as mixer, they in most cases charge a pretty steep withdrawal fee. ChipMixer doesn't charge any fees by default at all (donation based business model), so it's pretty much a free way to obtain an extra layer of privacy, so not being able to afford the fees of a mixer (which generally are low already) is not an issue here.

The only fee that occurs is the on-chain transaction fee forth and back, which you would pay when you would use an exchange too.

cryptocurrency exchanges are not good for anonymity. though they are combining users' transactions similar to mixing services but they are not doing that for the purpose of anonymity while bitcoin mixers are specifically designed for that, to anonymize user transactions for more privacy and security. 

Bitcoin mixing services are more private and secure than the cryptocurrency exchanges. if crypto exchanges can solve the anonymity problem then no one would create a bitcoin mixing service. Mixers are excellent tools for anonymizing bitcoin transactions while the crypto exchanges are not. though you can try crypto exchanges if you can afford the mixers.

Once I have wondered  why not to send (anonymously)   bitcoins through the chain of a few  exchanges  to  achieve effect of their  shuffling and the answer I have been contented  with was the following:


Obviously, trading on every of those exchanges would refine  the mixing  but the matter of the cost of such solution remains.

@aysg76


We all know that!

Then you can't use exchange to mix your coins in case you are looking to do it in large scale .. unless of course if you only want to mix coins worth less than $1,000 or so which mixer services is still the best choice.

I do often mixing coins through an exchange... it's not as instant as what the mixer services provided and the fee itself on the mixer service for me is worth it , so it's a wong statement if you think it's better to use an exchange platform instead the mixer platform.

I have done this a lot of times and probably other people around here in this forum too , we know what's best for us.

Exchanges are not anonymous, when authorizing on the exchange, you can calculate the IP address, and the exchange can also track from which address it came and to which address it went

There's a reason why mixer sites are built, it is for shadowing all your information which you can't get from exchanges cause some of them required some ID's/verification before you can cash out. Mixers are made to shuffle transactions to the point that it isn't trackable anymore, you can't do that using only an exchange wallet because most exchanges use 1 specific address for cashout only which can easily be tracked.

You can use other option coin for take less fee when you make withdrawal your bitcoin assets, I think using bitcoin payment for withdrawal have higher for paying fees and you can use other option like using doge coin and using litcoin, I use litecoin for withdraw to my local exchange account because just to paid 0.002 LTC for every transaction.

Mixers charge less fee when compared to depositing and withdrawing bitcoins from anonymous exchanges (binance has KYC) and you end up paying sending and receiving fee and plus there are some exchanges that use one wallet whose address can be easily tracked while mixers don't have any address that can link them to the address. When I receive ETH from exchanges, I can see the wallet having the name of the exchange and in BTC transactions, I can see most exchanges sending from the same wallet address to multiple people. Mixers also break down the transactions (sending it to more than one output) while I can't imaging sending such small amounts from an exchange paying enormous amounts as fee. I don't like mixers as for me it makes no sense in paying fee for anonymity but for others it does.

Both exchange and mixers are essentially helpful and has its purpose, choosing it will vary according to its purpose and where you're gonna use it, if you're planning of investing, trading, or you want to have a high-powered and reliable security, i think uou should use mixers because it will actually break.the link of your address both the reciever and the sender making it untraceable together with making your privacy key private as it said. , if your gonna have a simple life in crypto you can use exchange instead.

It is not just because exchanges may ask for KYC when you reach a certain limit, but it is because almost all exchanges log their users personal data such as IPs, browser, OS.. besides they keep a record of all recent transactions and used addresses.

Mixers are completely different from exchanges. They are used for different purposes and hence don't work the same way.

You should pass KYC in the exchange often

That's not what KYC is. KYC is demanding pictures of driver's licenses, passports, bills, tax forms, paychecks, selfies, and so forth. You can't bypass it with a fake email address.

Just because they do not collect your personal details or ask for KYC, doesn't automatically make them anonymous. They will of course collect your IP logs, browser fingerprints, and other potentially identifying information. If you are trading fiat, then depending on your chosen method you may also reveal your details to the person you are trading with (using a bank transfer, for example). If you want to be anonymous in your usage, then you should be using Tor and an anonymous payment method.

some exchanges dont require manual sign up and dont require a kyc at all . kyc are only for bigger amounts of transactions . also ,  if an exchanger ask for kyc , you can use temporary email to hide your real identity.

dex or decentralized exchange were already anonymous , so why need for tor or vpn ? though you can still use those tools if you are really conscious about your privacy or if the site is blocked on your country

Agreed, with exchanges you are opening yourself up to a lot of eyes, and we've seen so many issues with big deposits. We've heard all about the stories where exchanges would stop a transaction due to it being dodgy, and we've never seen that happen with mixers.

Mixers are definitely the safer bet, even if they might not be moving as much as exchanges - most of them after the transactions are completed, they won't even record any transactions so it's truely safe.

The KYC regulations is just one of the things that makes it difficult for exchanges to mix people's coins. These exchanges keeps logs of every transaction that are done on their platform, where most Mixers have no logs of any of their transactions. The exchanges also use transaction analysis software and surveillance methods to determine where coins originate from to enforce their ToS. 

Mixer services do not even look at the previous track history of the coins you are mixing, it just takes any coins and push it through a tumbler with other coins and then push out mixed coins, without asking any questions. 

That's true, in exchange your transactions can be seen the history of transactions where you send your transactions. Using mixer is better it will give you anonymity. Most of the biggest exchanges now requires KYC to be able to withdraw, sometimes it also have a level of how much you can withdraw everyday or every month. In mixer you can avoid those limitation when sending funds.

You could use your own wallet as long as it and the chain was BIP65 which many are and someone listed it on BlockDX.

Then you are your own exchange - no KYC unless you are checking your own ID's LOL

Wallet to Wallet trading with ATOMIC SWAPS.


Since its me at my computer and you at your computer - there is no email. You run the dApp which is the Peer to Peer DX.

So you are the maker/taker and so am I with atomic swaps - we are both protected 100% trustless.

Heck we could exchange offer on bitcointalk or for that matter 4chan post it on the BlockDX dApp and neither of us could scam each other.

It needs to use Full Node - REAL wallets (lite wallets in future) so this isnt a newb exchange platform - you need to run your own wallets.

That won't work. Most exchanges ask for email addresses or worst, KYC. if you fill this up, you are already telling them your location so it won't work when you want to do anonymous transactions. Mixer is still a better choice. Well, decentralized exchange can be a choice too if that is what you are saying. I don't know much about the transaction process of decentralized exchange but they don't ask for KYC or email address. Just don't forget to use TOR or VPN.

If this is the main reason then i will ask again why we need mixers?
The transaction of bitcoin is anonymous and there will be no identification needed on both parties.
Therefore there will be no one knows who made the transaction.

Unless the exchnage you use doesnt required KYC .  you can easily be tracked if you will use exchange for that . and if the   BTC ypu send is came from illegal activity you will be jailed,

well, i never using mixer service before.
but, based on my knowledge, mixer have more privacy and anatomy after all.
for example : u deposited some btc to binance, then u withdraw ur asset from it.
of course, they have track record about ur transaction,ur data as well.
although they will never share ur history to anyone, but it doesn't make u cant be tracked.
since the history of blockchain can be viewed,and transfer between the exchanges to the users have a simple transaction with original transactions and the final address of the coins.
and the simple explanation about mixer works is attempts to sever the links between your old address and a new address by sending coins from you to other people and coins from them to you with randomizes transaction amounts and sometimes adds time delays to the transactions.

from what I know, some exchangers are not anonymous. this is because the exchanger requires its users to do KYC. it makes a person's identity no longer a secret. Because of this, the exchanger team might be able to find out what you are doing to your money, and can prevent if something unexpected happens, can even cover the delivery that we do. in contrast to mixers, which are actually used as a pathway to eliminate transaction traces, and difficult to track

The reason on why most mixers are profitable (and prohibited) are due to the fact that it provides absolute anonymity in the transactions. For example, if you were to use a mixer, the funds will be sent intermittently with necessary intervals to avoid tracking.

Exchanges, on the other hand, require you to fill details about your personal information (basically KYC). Depending on the exchange, some require personal IDs and addresses so you can increase the limits of your account with regard to withdrawal and deposits.

Although both have their corresponding transaction fees, mixers are generally higher in fees but they do provide absolute anonymity if you were to transfer funds from one wallet to another.

There is no full anonymity in this crypto space, including mixer so people who said mixer is to anonymize the transaction is not 100% true. I'm sure the company holds the notes. So the reason why people rather to use mixer than exchange must be in its function, its purpose. Exchange is made for trading and mixer is made for anonymizing your transactions. Have you try to mix your Bitcoin on exchange? Oh your efforts is actually useless because it's not made for it.

it comes down to whom you are trying to hide from when mixing your coins!

for many users it is to prevent any random prying eyes from snooping around in their pocket to know how much bitcoin they own and where they spend it at. and since most of them already have accounts on some exchange site for buying bitcoin or trading altcoins then using that same account for mixing some  coins makes a lot of sense.

although it may not sound like it but using mixers is a lot safer than using exchanges! there has never been any cases of a mixer scamming any user ever (there are scam sites calling themselves mixer but that is different) but there has been lots of cases of popular big exchanges scamming their users and robbing them!

Well, if you could use exchanges to shuffle your funds, what would be the point of having a mixer? There's actually been a lot of cases where exchanges have taken or paused a transaction either due to the volume of it, or it being possibly illegal - mixers don't care and wont do this to your funds.

Exchanges will also have/keep your data and it's no way near as safe or anonymous as using a trusted mixer service, for example chipmixer.

Yeah, I think the benefits will be the same, but I think the answer is the mixer is more simpler than the exchange site. imagine you have to create an account, verify KYC so that your account can be used for large transactions, and other complicated requirements. Whereas in the mixer, you only need 1 click and your money will go to your wallet from an unknown bitcoin address.

Earlier, it was not mandatory to provide the KYC information to the exchanges. In such cases, it was OK to use them to anonymize your coins rather than using a mixer. But as other users have pointed out, exchanges are not exactly created to add a layer of anonymity to your coins. If someone wants to trace back the cryptocurrency transactions to you, then he will be able to do that. Exchanges maintain logs containing information about the incoming and outgoing transactions. Anyway, now the question no longer arises, because KYC is mandatory for almost all the exchanges. If you want to trade using an exchange, then you need to provide the scanned copy of your passport or the national ID. BTW, if you are really looking for anonymity, then is 1% to 3% fee that high to afford? IMO, it is not.

mixer provides anonymity to its users by spending a small percentage from your transaction, without having a limit you remain anonymous. while in an exchanger, you can generate new address but I know it has a limit, unless you do KYC like what you have mentioned. they prefer to use mixer due to its use of service.

You can't use an exchange as a mixer because of the limits set by the exchange. If you will want to increase your limit or remove your limit you will have to verify yourself. This means that you will have to provide identification documents to the exchange. So you can eventually be tracked anyways. As far as I know, in a mixer you don't have to provide kyc stuffs and you also don't have any limits.

You can in certain situations use exchange after a mixer to make your coins look more innocent . Let's say a country outlawed mixers and made a regulation that doesn't allow local exchanges to accept coins from mixers, and they are able to detect that coins come from mixers. If you have an access to some foreign exchange that doesn't have your KYC data, you can send your coins there after mixing and withdraw, and then deposit to your local exchange - they shouldn't be able to tell if your coins were at some point mixed, to them it would look like they come from an exchange. Of course they still would be able to ask that exchange directly about your deposits, but chances are their request will be refused.

Binance regularly works with law enforcement agencies and regulators. They also hire blockchain analysis companies like CipherTrace to analyze customer activity. If they flag your inputs or activity as suspicious, they freeze your funds and demand KYC from you.

Mixers don't do any of that.

Exchanges like Binance are fine for things like obfuscating the source of gambling withdrawals. Withdrawing directly from a sportsbook to Coinbase, for example, would put your Coinbase account at risk of closure. It's not against Binance's terms, though, so they're a fine intermediary in this case.

However, I wouldn't risk sending DNM bitcoins or otherwise tainted bitcoins to Binance. That's asking for trouble.

It is not anonymous if you do it on Binance or other exchange and you have done KYC.
The mixers are not doing their job, if I recall correctly there was a thread on this forum where it was described with sources that mixers can be easily cracked with simple analysis.

Mixers are just better and this is why they exist and remain popular. It's not even about you being the good or the bad guy. It's good to be safer and if you can do it for a few dollars then why not?

You never know what will happen 2 or 3 years from now? What if exchanges decide they should not serve customers with coins coming from a big hack or scam and will have a software to easily detect coins that aren't mixed? What if one day the police asks you to explain all your transactions because you have stolen coins? I don't know what will happen but mixers aren't a bad thing for the ecosystem.

But what will you choose to send and receive Bitcoins with a crypto exchange who has your KYC documents or a Mixer who can do the service for you without even knowing who you are? If you are smart enough and you really want to have the best chance to remain anonymous then you can go with the latter as that is just really your best option right now. Plus if you go with a mixer you won't have the common problems being faces by crypto exchanges when it comes to sending cryptocurrencies on a large amount like your transaction being hold, or certain flags being raise because of an unusual amount.

Exchanges will not protect your anonymity. Even using a casino is a better choice.


At some point you should start thinking if it's worth it. You could use 3 mixers in a row but think of the cost. Only the richest people with the biggest transactions will go this far to protect their anonymity. You also have to trust the mixer enough and there aren't that many trusted mixers to safely shuffle your money between them. Especially if this is big money.

Depends on your purpose.

If you want to gamble or buy drugs then obviously an exchange is not going to work. If you just want to make sure no one who has your addresses can trace future transactions, other than the exchange, then you may as well use an exchange. I do it fairly often.

I would only do it with a place I was fully KYC'd on and had plenty of track record. And if you did it constantly they may eventually ask you to bugger off.

It all depends on our needs and our capital.
Lets say mixer would just get 1-3% fee from using it while on exchange we would pay some transaction fee us well and if you would only send a small amount then using an exchange would cost you more,
And of course it would be different amount of fee in every exchange.

Of course the mixer could be not keeping logs or erasing them after some hours, but the problem remains: How do you know?

If Bestmixer didn't keep logs, then after gov seizure they would find nothing and the only result would be one less company.

But the problem remains: How do YOU know? Who can audit the mixers? They cannot let you inspect the thing. Same can be said of exchanges.

The country where the service operates could simply order them to provide the data or else...

Choosing between exchanges and mixers depends on your needs such as the level of anonymity you prefer.  If you were just an ordinary crypto enthusiast who is not privacy centric and doesn't a need to hide any crypto transaction you might have, then you can choose the service of an exchange, otherwise, you need to use the services of Bitcoin mixers.

The transaction can still be traced even if you are using an exchange that does not require KYC.  They keep their logs of transaction unlike mixers which I believe clear their logs after sometime.  So that is the huge difference.


I think exchanges are not exempted to receive "dirty"  Bitcoin, they do not regularly check where these Bitcoin are coming from.  So from an exchange that does not require KYC, there is a possibility that this thing may happen.

 Mixers guarantees anonimity of the trader's address both the reciever and sender by breaking the links of both addresses making them essentially untraceable. Meanwhile, exchange requires log data, so if unfortunately the exchange got hacked and entered by hacker obviously your data will be put at an abvious risk including your bitcoin and the transactions that was supposed to be private. So why use mixers instead of exchange? It is simply because of the guaranteed anonimity of my identity, transactions, and address.

In my opinion, exchange is definitely better than mixer. But you need to find a great one, not every exchange is reliable.
Anyway, exchanges are safer, and you can trade there. Check out exchanges like Kraken or CoinDeal, these two are my favourites. In reference to CoinDeal, this is the most profitable exchanges for trading imo because they have free deposits and what's more - you can use Mistertango to deposit your funds in EUR (your funds will be settled in 3h).

And not only are they quite willing, they have done it before and will continue to do it for as long as they're trying to cover their own asses.

I almost am tempted to talk about the incompetency of exchanges' own accounting systems and their shocking negligence in keeping compliant (if they were ever interested in doing that in the first place), but it's enough to say that they'll give up everything and anything -- even data they're not supposed to, as soon as the screws turn on them.

Exactly, this was my main point... Sure, mixers *could* fall into the hands of the authority, they *could* be honeypots... However, exchanges usually have a direct link to the governement built-in as part of their procedure. The argument that it's better to use an exchange to mix your coins instead of a mixer because a mixer *could* be forced to hand over (hopefully nonexistent) logs in case they ever get traced is false (imho).

Using 2 or 3 mixers in a chain would decrease your risk even further, especially if you work over tor... As for the trust factor, do you know how many exchanges pulled an exit scam/went bancrupt/got hacked over the last couple of years? Don't trust anybody, that's the main idear...

That is not even close to being anonymous. It will be completely obvious to anyone at YoBit exactly what you did, and they will be able to easily track your coins moving forward. Even people outside of YoBit would be able to be fairly confident that the coins were linked by looking at the size of the deposits/withdrawals. You should also assume that all exchanges are willingly sharing data with governments around the world because, well, most are. I'd actually say that your suggestion is less anonymous than doing nothing - you are giving YoBit data about your account names, email addresses, IP addresses, and deposit/withdrawal address which they otherwise would not have.

Exchanges don't even need to "fall in the hands of authorities". They are quite willing to hand over your data whilst still operating. Just ask any of the thousands of Coinbase users now getting hounded by the IRS for tax money.

I wouldn't say there is no difference if you use mixer or exchange. Although I beleive there is no more absolute anonimity in Bitcoin anymore, by using mixer you will get at least some privacy.
Exchanges are obliged to KYC, that is needed to run legitimate business and if any law enforcement agency requests such data they are obliged to give them, including the transaction history.

Agreed! More and more governments across the world are making it difficult for people to use cryptocurrencies without restrictions. Days are not far when mixers scope will be limited to very less countries. In my country, it is not possible to run a business like mixer. With time, more and more countries will start banning services like mixing.
Also, it is not correct to expect that people with dirty money will ever prefer Exchange over Mixers not matter how high are the fees.

Haven't you ever thought that exchanges require KYC and every transaction/log/activity that happens from your account is recorded and what's even worse is that it's done by a regulated service provider, something that has common with government.
While mixers require zero KYC, at least this is guaranteed, we can't 100% surely say that they don't keep any log but for example if we remind bitmixer, it was the greatest and biggest mixer ever, top with anonimity and very trustworthy. Also to add, you can use tor link for better anonimity, none mixer will ask you about fund sources and etc, all you do is deposit and get, without problems and traces.

Do you think it is hard to fool any site online? Without KYC, you can easily hide your correct location, real name and what not. Nobody can trace back to you.
For example, you can deposit funds on Yobit, then create YoBit token and then redeem that token on other YoBit account and make withdrawals from that account. There you go, you are fully anonymous!

You have a point in your argument, but exchanges require kyc which means that people can use exchanges only if they have funds from honest places. A criminal will not take stolen funds to exchange, he will take stolen funds to mixers, which is why I believe that in a few years governments will pursue the mixers more severely and I believe the punishment for executing a mixer may be as severe as possible. Note that most exchanges and even online casinos are asking people to do KYC and it won't be long before the wallets also make people do KYC

Nobody should rely on mixer or exchange, or whatever it is. You can't stay anonymous forever, so your best bet is to mix the available options to increase your privacy. Bestmixer or similar mixer which uses the same strategy mostly keeps logs to maintain the data, while other mixers use another technique, such as giving private key to several preloaded addresses, i.e. Chipmixer.

If you want a better alternative, then use Coinjoin, and combine it with Monero. Promoting exchange as an alternative to a mixer is just wrong imo. Even if you use non KYC exchange, they still require you to register and not to mention they have the logs of every withdrawal/deposit.

Exchanges make use of KYC for some daily volume of withdrawal, while an exchange like liquid in Japan, requires full KYC before one can even make withdrawals. Well, exchanges can always know customers that make withdrawals even without KYC as they do tie their deposit address to their account even without KYC. 

As far as I remember, BestMixer provided most of the mixing data to Dutch Authorities once they were confiscated by Dutch law.
We cannot rely on mixers too. They are not as anonymous as we think. If big mixers like BestMixer can fall in the hands of authorities then just imagine how anonymous small mixers are.
So it can be easily assumed when interfered by authorities, both exchanges and mixers can't be trusted.

This is a visual representation of what a mixer does. I understand the fact that it could look easier and cheaper to do it with an exchange but this involves a huge manual work which includes manually sending transactions at an address from one exchange account. Now the thing is even if it looks safe but the amount involved sometimes become a problem. Let's see for example binance has a fees of 0.0005 btc per withdrawal now. Now in a mixer, taking example of chipmixer you can distribute your money into smallest unit which is 0.001 and one unit needs to be paid as fees. So spending 0.001 extra for almost 100 times more accuracy with mixing and all automatic work is worth it.

If you think centralized exchanges provides you anonymity, think again.

If you have problems with mixers expensive fees, here's a guide for cheaper methods [Guide] Decent mixing methods

The use of exchanges and mixers were entirely different. Exchanges were meant for the trading between different assets. Mixers were designed to perform the mixing service, which makes the transaction anonymous. What we do through exchanges weren't completely anonymous, because it isn't possible to trade on exchanges without proper KYC fulfillment.

If you are planning to use exchanges and other platforms to wash the coins then you might get your coins and account getting a ban, you cannot deposit money without trading and then withdraw doing nothing and if you are doing that with huge amounts your account will be restricted and you need to verify your identity, so if you are looking for privacy then mixers are the place to go which are dedicated services for privacy.

Trust me nothing is completely anonymous,when you choose exchanges to mix coins rather than a mixer you are trusting more centralized and regulated thing,do you know that they will report your transactions to your government?

That is why mixers were designed for,but its still not ensure complete anonymity after mixing coins.

BTC is not made to be anonymous, and every service that envolves a third party is also not anonymous as you need to trust the third party (unless the third party can prove that there is absolutely no info retained about the service - not sure if this is feasible)
If you need privacy or anonimity, you need to look for privacy coins... not all of them provide a solid service, as there are also some coins like Dash that envolve third parties... I would check out monero, beam, veil, grin... and so on

You might never know whether exchanges are already snooping on your activities and mind you, they are being mandated by law to divulge information if they help facilitate money laundering schemes and/or similar activities that fall within the same line. I'd rather get my coins mixed in a mixing service than rely on an exchange that would probably ask me tons of KYC documents before I get to withdraw my funds.


Which is being questioned by the US authority. Sooner or later, some countries they are still servicing would do the same, requiring them to get local license and conform to the laws and regulations of those countries until the 2 BTC withdrawal limit/day is removed.


It could be, but the risk is less than having your coins tumbled in an exchange. I'm not saying that mixers would not do that in any way, it's just they have the lesser chance of doing it knowing that the moment people finds out, they will immediately run out of business.

But there are some exchange that has some regulation or restricted countries. Like if you are from UNITED STATES, especially their recent announcement:
So, there is still some disadvantage of using an exchange compare to mixers. There are also some exchange that has a lot of countries restricted, even if you will sign up using an IP from the restricted country you will automatically blocked by the exchange or not allowed to use their exchange.
And also, I remember before, I am using some exchange and at that time, I  am also using a VPN which the country I used on VPN is one of the countries that are restricted to use their exchange, that's why my account locked and forced me to withdraw my funds.

An exchange without KYC doesn't matter and doesn't really help. People think they're safe when there is no KYC but they're not. It can be easy to find which exchange your address belongs to and since they keep your IP, etc... It can be enough to identify you because they will have no problem to snitch and will be very happy to do it.

Logs are kept a minimum, few hours/days, exchanges store your information for years.

I am sure we will choose what we feel comfortable. And if we feel that it is better to use exchange than the mixer, then we can choose the exchanges to send and receive bitcoin. But for some people who are not comfortable with that way, they will use a mixer because they care about their personal information. Besides that, they don't want to send any documents. Maybe they have their reason why they are comfortable with the mixer, and we have a different way of deposit and withdraw bitcoin.

Ofcourse I am talking about using exchanges without KYC. Binance allow unverified accounts to make withdrawals upto 2BTC per day which is quite ok.
About timestamps, who knows mixers too maintain logs of every mixing performed on their site. It is not difficult task in PHP to maintain such logs.

In my opinion, it does not matter if you use a mixer or a centralized exchange to ensure anonymity - this is not good enough, and the possible negative side effects from both solutions are rather unpleasant. The need in both cases to trust a third party is something that contradicts the central idea of bitcoin. But in the absence of something better, this can be used carefully, aware of the risk.

Yes, but there’s a higher risk of getting bitcoins from the mixer, which can be marked as “dirty”.

simple: mixers are created to provide you anonimity, exchanges are not...

Exchanges usually require KYC info, they keep logs of all addresses, ip's, timestamps,... Mixers promise to do none of these things. If a hacker hacks an exchange (this is pretty common, happens all the time), he'll be able to link all of your wallets together (sending, exchange wallet and receiving wallet) AND he'll be able to link this info to your KYC documents, ip's, browser signature, timestamps. Same goes for 3 letter agencies requesting all the exchange's data. Thus, by using an exchange as a mixer, you can actually end up DECREASING your privacy instead of increasing it.

Ofcourse, a mixer can actually be a honeypot setup by a 3 letter agency, but if you trust the mixer, it's much more anonymous than an exchange.

So, Mixers provide service of shuffling bitcoins or provide addresses loaded with bitcoins along with private keys. In short, they provide service so to create anonymity between sender's and receiver's address so that no one can trace the transaction.
My question is why not use Exchanges? When we deposit funds on exchange, bitcoins get deposited on exchange's cold wallet. But when we withdraw funds, withdraw gets processed from exchange's hot wallet. So in short, it is very easy to do anonymous transfer by depositing funds on exchange and withdrawing to other addresses. Why to pay 1-3% fees on Mixers when it could be done for much less on Exchanges. Exchanges like Binance charge just 0.0005 BTC to process withdrawals.