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When you use a mixer, there’s a delay between when you put your money in and when it comes back out. The mixing service randomly splits up the transaction into
by shajznnckfke 6y ago
When you use a mixer, there’s a delay between when you put your money in and when it comes back out. The mixing service randomly splits up the transaction into batches and sends them out at different times. So even if you know that somebody sent to a mixer (perhaps as an investigator you could find out mixer addresses by sending lots of transactions to the mixer service yourself), you wouldn’t be able to associate those inputs with any particular output.
If the mixer has a lot of users, at best you could determine that the your target is among the entire set of people who used the mixer this hour/day. Although if the mixer was compromised, you’d have everything. That does seem like a substantial risk. It’s kind of like deciding to trust your vpn. You could mitigate that risk by using multiple mixers.
- el_nahual 6y agoWouldn't using multiple mixers increase the risk? You only need to be traced once.
- shajznnckfke 6y agoI would not split your transaction between mixers, but instead mix your entire amount through one, then mix all of the outputs through others. Use multiple mixers in series, not in parallel. Compromising one mixer there would associate the inputs and outputs of that step but wouldn’t associate your initial input with your final output. You’d also want to conceal your ip at every step so you don’t get compromised that way either.
- walrus01 6y agoWould there not be a huge danger that a mixer operator, if they received $4m+ of BTC in one big transfer, could simply shut down immediately and pull what's known as an 'exit scam'? They would be in possession of the BTC and could themselves then launder it through other mixers. Perhaps they might do this if the saw keeping the entire 4m as much more lucrative than many years of taking the percentage skimmed off the top from a number of smaller transactions, and just going into "retirement".
- shajznnckfke 6y agoYou’d only want to use a mixer where your transaction represents a small fraction of the total volume (otherwise it doesn’t provide much anonymity). An exit scam isn’t so appealing in that case. If a mixer charges a 1% fee, with an average delay of 1 hour, the ongoing fee earns more than a one-time exit scam of all transactions in flight after just four or five days. It takes time to establish a reputable mixer and scale up, so your wouldn’t ruin it just to get under a week of profit early. Maybe they’d choose to do the exit scam if a really anomalous huge sum showed up, which is so large they can’t mix it effectively anyway. I don’t know if $4M is a lot by those standards.
- walrus01 6y agoMaybe I'm woefully out of touch on the scale of the BTC flowing through mixers on a daily and weekly basis, but if they can earn more than 4M USD in a year by just skimming off the 1%, that's a lot of BTC moving...
- bananaface 6y agoIn that case, you split your initial sum and run through multiple sequential series in parallel. You produce more crackable sequences, but you still need to crack an entire sequence to trace the owner.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago>you could find out mixer addresses Why would the mixer need to reuse addresses when you could create a brand new one each time.
- shajznnckfke 6y agoInvestigators could be sending many small transactions into the mixer all the time. Depending on the transaction volume and how the mixer works, they could identify most of the mixer’s transactions this way. This would allow them to show that somebody sent money to or received money from the mixer.