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"Despite the huge profit we earn, we are closing our activity. [...] But we never had any government or legal pressure [...]" Sure? I think most would find thi

by dvcc 9y ago

"Despite the huge profit we earn, we are closing our activity. [...] But we never had any government or legal pressure [...]" Sure? I think most would find this hard to believe. That was such an odd way to start the announcement.

nerdponx 9y ago
Hi all! Despite the huge profit we earn, we are closing our activity. Let me explain why. I'm bitcoin enthusiast since 2011. When we started this service I was convinced that any Bitcoin user has a natural right to privacy. I was totally wrong. Now I grasped that Bitcoin is transparent non-anonymous system by design. Blockchain is a great open book. I believe that Bitcoin will have a great future without dark market transactions. You may use Dash or Zerocoin if you want to buy some weed. Not Bitcoin. I hope our decision will help to make Bitcoin ecosystem more clean and transparent. I hope our competitors will hear our message and will close their services too. Very soon this kind of activity will be considered as illegal in most of countries. Cheers, Bitmixer.IO If you take what he says at face value, it's that he's no longer interested in supporting Bitcoin because it didn't live up to his privacy expectations. Edit: commenters below are right and I was wrong. He's really saying that he no longer feels like the Bitmixer service is needed because he no longer believes that Bitcoin should be anonymous.
- taneq 9y ago
  That sounds more like he no longer believes that privacy is a good goal for legitimate cryptocurrencies and is stopping the service as an ideological stand against using bitcoin for anonymous transactions.
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  I read it slightly differently. He said "I was convinced of a right to privacy" and "I was wrong". This is someone who has either seen (or perhaps been shown) the sort of thing that is enabled when you give criminals a way to exchange value anonymously. And found that he did not want to be the agent enabling that sort of thing. If an officer came to you and said, "Here is a photo of a 12 year old girl who was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. The payments were all in bitcoin and we would have caught the criminals involved if they had not used your service to hide their transactions." I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone who would look at that situation and decide to turn off their service and forego any more profit to keep from being a part of that pipeline.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Well a: he could work with LE if he felt this was some strong moral point, and b: LE saying that is definitely lying. There are other services, and there's now more solid ways (e.g. Monero) to hide cryptocurrency. So it's super unlikely it was just his service providing a totally unique thing and without bitmixer.io oh no criminals would just give up and return their sex slaves. What about people writing secure messaging services? "This terrorist attack would have been prevented if it wasn't for your encryption!"
    - Ivoirians 9y ago
      No one said law enforcement literally went to him and tried to convince him it was a bad idea. And if they did, he still made the decision himself, right? Unless we're subscribing to the theory that he was compelled to shut down. I would personally refuse to work on a secure messaging service because the thought of making a product that will be used by awful people to do awful things would actually be offputting. If that's less of a concern to you than having secure communication, whatever, go nuts. Not everyone is a gung-ho privacy advocate though.
  - literallycancer 9y ago
    >If an officer came to you and said, "Here is a photo of a 12 year old girl who was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. The payments were all in bitcoin and we would have caught the criminals involved if they had not used your service to hide their transactions." They'd just use cash. The argument against anonymous transactions and tumblers is the same as the argument against cash. Besides, this kind of emotional blackmail is the reason people avoid talking to the police.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      You can't send cash over the internet. That's what Bitcoin enables.
      - grenoire 9y ago
        You just use WU. May be even more anonymous than bitcoins if you bribe the agents well enough.
- Casseres 9y ago
  > You may use Dash or Zerocoin if you want to buy some weed. Not Bitcoin. Sounds like when TrueCrypt shut down and they recommended Microsoft's BitLocker.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Yeah why not recommend Monero, another cryptonight coin, which has way more traction and is actually used on some "illegal" sites? And has hardforked a few times to continually improve privacy?
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    There is a hidden message on the new sourceforge TrueCrypt site. The first line of the site is this: "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues" If you take just the first letter of each word, except the word "WARNING": "Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues" you get this: "uti nsa im cu si" It's Latin that roughly means: "Unless I want to use the NSA" So, the full message seems to be this: "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues, unless I want to use the NSA" Which is English that roughly means: "Don't use TrueCrypt because it is under the control of the NSA" https://www.grahamcluley.com/truecrypt-hidden-message/ https://www.grahamcluley.com/truecrypt-hidden-message/
    - stirlo 9y ago
      Sure, but do you also know where Elvis is and who shot JFK?
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      "im cu si" isn't any Latin that I've ever seen. At the very least, it's not classical.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    The story of truecrypt and Paul Le Roux is one of the, if not the, most fascinating stories in technology there has ever been. https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind

by dvcc 9y ago

nerdponx 9y ago

Hi all! Despite the huge profit we earn, we are closing our activity. Let me explain why. I'm bitcoin enthusiast since 2011. When we started this service I was convinced that any Bitcoin user has a natural right to privacy. I was totally wrong. Now I grasped that Bitcoin is transparent non-anonymous system by design. Blockchain is a great open book. I believe that Bitcoin will have a great future without dark market transactions. You may use Dash or Zerocoin if you want to buy some weed. Not Bitcoin. I hope our decision will help to make Bitcoin ecosystem more clean and transparent. I hope our competitors will hear our message and will close their services too. Very soon this kind of activity will be considered as illegal in most of countries. Cheers, Bitmixer.IO If you take what he says at face value, it's that he's no longer interested in supporting Bitcoin because it didn't live up to his privacy expectations. Edit: commenters below are right and I was wrong. He's really saying that he no longer feels like the Bitmixer service is needed because he no longer believes that Bitcoin should be anonymous.

taneq 9y ago
That sounds more like he no longer believes that privacy is a good goal for legitimate cryptocurrencies and is stopping the service as an ideological stand against using bitcoin for anonymous transactions.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
I read it slightly differently. He said "I was convinced of a right to privacy" and "I was wrong". This is someone who has either seen (or perhaps been shown) the sort of thing that is enabled when you give criminals a way to exchange value anonymously. And found that he did not want to be the agent enabling that sort of thing. If an officer came to you and said, "Here is a photo of a 12 year old girl who was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. The payments were all in bitcoin and we would have caught the criminals involved if they had not used your service to hide their transactions." I have a tremendous amount of respect for anyone who would look at that situation and decide to turn off their service and forego any more profit to keep from being a part of that pipeline.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Well a: he could work with LE if he felt this was some strong moral point, and b: LE saying that is definitely lying. There are other services, and there's now more solid ways (e.g. Monero) to hide cryptocurrency. So it's super unlikely it was just his service providing a totally unique thing and without bitmixer.io oh no criminals would just give up and return their sex slaves. What about people writing secure messaging services? "This terrorist attack would have been prevented if it wasn't for your encryption!"
  - Ivoirians 9y ago
    No one said law enforcement literally went to him and tried to convince him it was a bad idea. And if they did, he still made the decision himself, right? Unless we're subscribing to the theory that he was compelled to shut down. I would personally refuse to work on a secure messaging service because the thought of making a product that will be used by awful people to do awful things would actually be offputting. If that's less of a concern to you than having secure communication, whatever, go nuts. Not everyone is a gung-ho privacy advocate though.
- literallycancer 9y ago
  >If an officer came to you and said, "Here is a photo of a 12 year old girl who was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. The payments were all in bitcoin and we would have caught the criminals involved if they had not used your service to hide their transactions." They'd just use cash. The argument against anonymous transactions and tumblers is the same as the argument against cash. Besides, this kind of emotional blackmail is the reason people avoid talking to the police.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    You can't send cash over the internet. That's what Bitcoin enables.
    - grenoire 9y ago
      You just use WU. May be even more anonymous than bitcoins if you bribe the agents well enough.
Casseres 9y ago
> You may use Dash or Zerocoin if you want to buy some weed. Not Bitcoin. Sounds like when TrueCrypt shut down and they recommended Microsoft's BitLocker.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Yeah why not recommend Monero, another cryptonight coin, which has way more traction and is actually used on some "illegal" sites? And has hardforked a few times to continually improve privacy?
- thinkloop 9y ago
  There is a hidden message on the new sourceforge TrueCrypt site. The first line of the site is this: "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues" If you take just the first letter of each word, except the word "WARNING": "Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues" you get this: "uti nsa im cu si" It's Latin that roughly means: "Unless I want to use the NSA" So, the full message seems to be this: "WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues, unless I want to use the NSA" Which is English that roughly means: "Don't use TrueCrypt because it is under the control of the NSA" https://www.grahamcluley.com/truecrypt-hidden-message/ https://www.grahamcluley.com/truecrypt-hidden-message/
  - stirlo 9y ago
    Sure, but do you also know where Elvis is and who shot JFK?
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    "im cu si" isn't any Latin that I've ever seen. At the very least, it's not classical.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  The story of truecrypt and Paul Le Roux is one of the, if not the, most fascinating stories in technology there has ever been. https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind