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Good luck FinCEN, you've now just forced mixers to go dark. There's no killing them.
by loourr 6y ago
Good luck FinCEN, you've now just forced mixers to go dark. There's no killing them.
- bufferoverflow 6y agoThey don't even have to go dark. There are fully autonomous decentralized mixers like CashFusion running on Bitcoin Cash.
- stevespang 6y agoAgreed. Offshore even.
- gamblor956 6y agoThey don't need to kill the mixers. In fact, forcing them to go dark makes it much easier to accomplish FinCEN's end goal. Once mixers are go dark "dark," the presumption is that anyone using their services is doing so with the intent of avoiding money laundering laws, which will drive away the few legitimate users they had, reducing their usefulness as mixers because tainted coins will simply be mixed with other tainted coins.
- colinmhayes 6y agoThere were never legitimate users of mixers.
- gamblor956 6y agoI generally agree, as all of the legitimate uses I could think of would be more easily accomplished without the use of mixers (or even cryptocurrency), but their may be use cases I hadn't thought of.
- akimball 6y agoLike avoiding extortion, kidnapping, robbery.
- _-___________-_ 6y agoMore easily, but less safely. Using a mixer or CoinJoin or similar for normal, legal payments allows you to pay people without revealing how much Bitcoin you own.
- gamblor956 6y agoFor normal, legal payments, cash/credit card is much easier and you also don't reveal how much money you own. On top of that, with credit card you get a significant number of protections. Like I said, there are no legitimate use cases I could think of for cryptocurrency where cryptocurrency is easier than using normal methods of payment.
- _-___________-_ 6y agoSure. The point was just that if you are already using crypto for whatever reason then there are legitimate reasons to use CoinJoin.
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- jtsiskin 6y agoThere are if you assume there are legitimate uses for Bitcoin. Without mixers, your entire transaction history and balance is public. It would be like broadcasting your bank account to the world. If I was paying my friend some Bitcoin I would want to mix it first otherwise they would know exactly how much I own.
- RandomBacon 6y agoYou should be aware that some (if not all) blockchain analysis software gives a higher risk score to coins that have come from a mixer.
- knorker 6y agoOnly a fool would use a mixer for legitimate purposes. Money laundering laws make it so that mixers don't actually "clean" the money. But legally they do make the clean money dirty. By mixing your clean money with dirty money, you end up with only dirty money. So why would you anti-clean legally obtained money?
- ddevault 6y agoTo spend it on illegal things.
- knorker 6y agoRight. I agree that it naturally follows that the only two reasons to use mixers is if: 1. You have committed a crime (dirty money) 2. You are about to commit a crime (buy illegal stuff) Sometimes both. In other words, like I said "Only a fool would use a mixer for legitimate purposes".
- RandomBacon 6y agoYou are essentially correct. Many (if not all) blockchain analysis companies give a higher risk score to coins that have come from a mixer aka they are "dirty".
- knorker 6y agoI don't just mean practically. I mean legally. Cryptocurrency advocates often ignore this. They think they are solving bureaucracy with math. They think that whatever they can do technically with smart contracts and money transfers is legal. They think they found a loophole in AML and KYC laws. They have not. It's the old ignorance of "I'm a good engineer, so the legal issues must be a minor detail I can just solve with code". They seem to think that the legal roadblocks were put in place by accident of history. But no, they are actually codifying almost entirely society's intention. Perfectly? No. But infinitely better than what cryptocurrencies are trying to do.
- akerl_ 6y agoThat’s why generally speaking you don’t launder money by just soliciting input, shuffling some bits around, and then providing output. You launder money by operating a tangential legitimate enterprise. So, to pick the humorous example: you open a laundromat called Bill’s Cleaning, and then ostensibly you have expenses and profits related to laundering clothes, but you pad your books with fake wash/dry cycles to cover your illicit in/out flows.
- baobabKoodaa 6y agoMixing tainted coins with other tainted coins will still be useful for criminals who want to hide the origin of their money. Without mixing, a prosecutor may be able to link the coins to a specific crime. I mean, let's not pretend that output from Bitcoin mixers ever was "clean money" in the first place. If you buy a house or whatever, the government is going to ask where you got the money, and they're not going to be satisfied with "You'll never find out, because I used a 100% legal Bitcoin mixer to hide the origin of my money".
- ivalm 6y agoOf course there is, simply make it a crime to use coins that at any point in their history touched a mixing service.