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>>The process is called tumbling, and it's primarily how bitcoin tax evaders use it now to get around the "public" ledger. No, because they don't work, and eve

>>The process is called tumbling, and it's primarily how bitcoin tax evaders use it now to get around the "public" ledger. No, because they don't work, and even if they did successfully split up $1,000+ transactions, you can still analyse the public ledger to figure out where it all came from. Edit: the proponents of such services also ignore the fact that anyone could be behind the tumbling services, governments included.

Natanael_L 11y ago
Bitcoin don't have individual coins. Each transaction is like taking several pieces of gold and melting them together and splitting them up in new pieces. Mixing multiple transactions from multiple people do not reveal what came from where - you only know sending addresses, receiving addresses and amounts - but no links between which senders are tied to which recievers. Instead of having a bunch of individual historical lines for each "coin" and each person there's a big web of unknown addresses, with only a few known original senders and maybe a few known recievers. Coinjoin lets strangers securely pool together their coins and get the same amount of coins out to several new addresses of yours, except that now nobody knows which addresses belong together and which coins belongs to which sender.
dsmithatx 11y ago
Whoever is downvoting tumble commments is WRONG. Go read the bitcoin forums and note the people who have stolen large amounts of bitcoins after tumbling they are gone and have never been traced. Tumbling is highly effective if done properly. You need many inputs other than just your own. Then you take the outputs and you don't combine them. You can spend them via psuedo transactions with scripts, use them to store coins, tumble them some more, sell them for cash. Since all inputs are combined there is no real way to no which outputs are from who inputted them if you're smart, disciplined, and it's done properly.
- makomk 11y ago
  Generally, the large bitcoin thefts never get traced because the trail of bitcoin transactions leads to an exchange and then you can't follow them any more without the co-operation of the exchange.
  - aaron_m04 11y ago
    Exchanges themselves are a kind of tumbler.
celticninja 11y ago
This is incorrect. If you have $1000 in bitcoin and send it to a tumbler in say 5 transactions of $200 each, and you specify that each of those transactions should send the output as 2 different transactions of $100 each, to different addresses, then there is no way to defintively link those addresses back up (unless the person sends all those coins back to the same address and even then it would take a lot of work to match them up again). I think you think that someone sends $1000 btc to a new addres, then $500 btc to address 1, $500 to address 2, does this a few times and then sends all the coins to address 56, which then holds $1000. This would be possible to trace but would be time consuming to do. The method I mention above would safely unlink any coins in the final addresses from the $1000 you started with.
- alasano 11y ago
  Bitcoin itself is a chore to anonymize properly AND to feel 100% safe after doing it. I know some people like Monero (crypto note ring signature based, not Satoshi base) but as far as using bitcoin base code, Dash (formerly darkcoin) has the best coin join like solution. It's a decentralized, passive (done before any real transaction), denominated mixing with up to 16 rounds. Obtaining less than a 1% chance of unmasking a SINGLE transaction in their model would cost millions of $. I don't bitcoin is going anywhere but the flexibility some of these altcoins have is amazing for development. Dash (digital+cash) btw, wants to fix every problem with bitcoin. They have anonimity, incentivized full nodes which share the block reward, instant transactions (5 of 6 confirmations within a few seconds) and more recently a model to fund development of the currency directly on the blockchain. Developers propose projects which are voted on and the blockchain itself sets aside the budget.

Natanael_L 11y ago

Bitcoin don't have individual coins. Each transaction is like taking several pieces of gold and melting them together and splitting them up in new pieces. Mixing multiple transactions from multiple people do not reveal what came from where - you only know sending addresses, receiving addresses and amounts - but no links between which senders are tied to which recievers. Instead of having a bunch of individual historical lines for each "coin" and each person there's a big web of unknown addresses, with only a few known original senders and maybe a few known recievers. Coinjoin lets strangers securely pool together their coins and get the same amount of coins out to several new addresses of yours, except that now nobody knows which addresses belong together and which coins belongs to which sender.

dsmithatx 11y ago

Whoever is downvoting tumble commments is WRONG. Go read the bitcoin forums and note the people who have stolen large amounts of bitcoins after tumbling they are gone and have never been traced. Tumbling is highly effective if done properly. You need many inputs other than just your own. Then you take the outputs and you don't combine them. You can spend them via psuedo transactions with scripts, use them to store coins, tumble them some more, sell them for cash. Since all inputs are combined there is no real way to no which outputs are from who inputted them if you're smart, disciplined, and it's done properly.

makomk 11y ago
Generally, the large bitcoin thefts never get traced because the trail of bitcoin transactions leads to an exchange and then you can't follow them any more without the co-operation of the exchange.
- aaron_m04 11y ago
  Exchanges themselves are a kind of tumbler.

celticninja 11y ago

This is incorrect. If you have $1000 in bitcoin and send it to a tumbler in say 5 transactions of $200 each, and you specify that each of those transactions should send the output as 2 different transactions of $100 each, to different addresses, then there is no way to defintively link those addresses back up (unless the person sends all those coins back to the same address and even then it would take a lot of work to match them up again). I think you think that someone sends $1000 btc to a new addres, then $500 btc to address 1, $500 to address 2, does this a few times and then sends all the coins to address 56, which then holds $1000. This would be possible to trace but would be time consuming to do. The method I mention above would safely unlink any coins in the final addresses from the $1000 you started with.

alasano 11y ago
Bitcoin itself is a chore to anonymize properly AND to feel 100% safe after doing it. I know some people like Monero (crypto note ring signature based, not Satoshi base) but as far as using bitcoin base code, Dash (formerly darkcoin) has the best coin join like solution. It's a decentralized, passive (done before any real transaction), denominated mixing with up to 16 rounds. Obtaining less than a 1% chance of unmasking a SINGLE transaction in their model would cost millions of $. I don't bitcoin is going anywhere but the flexibility some of these altcoins have is amazing for development. Dash (digital+cash) btw, wants to fix every problem with bitcoin. They have anonimity, incentivized full nodes which share the block reward, instant transactions (5 of 6 confirmations within a few seconds) and more recently a model to fund development of the currency directly on the blockchain. Developers propose projects which are voted on and the blockchain itself sets aside the budget.