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Everyone already knows mixers are holding illicit coins. It doesn't matter because mixers don't actually "want" anything. They're just code in the ether. You se

Everyone already knows mixers are holding illicit coins. It doesn't matter because mixers don't actually "want" anything. They're just code in the ether. You send your coins to an address along with a receiver address and the smart contract sends coins to the other address. How do courts stop that without shutting down exactly what makes blockchains valuable?

pornel 4y ago
If a bank robber wanted to swap blacklisted $100 bills with you, would you? Would you just swap them at their face value, or at a discount knowing that it gives you a non-zero risk of having negative legal consequences? Mixers will have to change their policies in order to avoid becoming a market for lemons in which everyone loses. I do not expect governments to worry a tiniest bit about destroying value of an anti-government technology.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  mixers are currently a market for lemons. No one uses a mixer on clean crypto. Hasn't been a problem, but I guess the government could start banning exchanges from accepting crypto that has ever been used at a mixer, although eventually won't it all pass through one?
  - oldgradstudent 4y ago
    No need to ban all mixers. Just blacklist any coin downstream of a blacklisted coin. If you intentionally involve yourself in money laundering, you can't really complain about your money being blacklisted. The ledger is public, which makes blacklisting trivial. No legal entity would be able to hold or trade blacklisted coins.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      > Just blacklist any coin downstream of a blacklisted coin. What does this mean? If a single blacklisted coin is put in a mixer then every other coin mixed together is blacklisted? You've just banned mixers. Eventually every single coin will be able to be traced back to a blacklisted wallet, so you've also just effectively banned crypto in the long run. > No legal entity would be able to hold or trade blacklisted coins. Mixers don't have to be entities though. No one owns them, no one is responsible for them. They're just code someone uploaded one day and promptly forgot about.
oldgradstudent 4y ago
> How do courts stop that without shutting down exactly what makes blockchains valuable? So money laundering is what makes blockchains valuable?

pornel 4y ago

If a bank robber wanted to swap blacklisted $100 bills with you, would you? Would you just swap them at their face value, or at a discount knowing that it gives you a non-zero risk of having negative legal consequences? Mixers will have to change their policies in order to avoid becoming a market for lemons in which everyone loses. I do not expect governments to worry a tiniest bit about destroying value of an anti-government technology.

colinmhayes 4y ago
mixers are currently a market for lemons. No one uses a mixer on clean crypto. Hasn't been a problem, but I guess the government could start banning exchanges from accepting crypto that has ever been used at a mixer, although eventually won't it all pass through one?
- oldgradstudent 4y ago
  No need to ban all mixers. Just blacklist any coin downstream of a blacklisted coin. If you intentionally involve yourself in money laundering, you can't really complain about your money being blacklisted. The ledger is public, which makes blacklisting trivial. No legal entity would be able to hold or trade blacklisted coins.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    > Just blacklist any coin downstream of a blacklisted coin. What does this mean? If a single blacklisted coin is put in a mixer then every other coin mixed together is blacklisted? You've just banned mixers. Eventually every single coin will be able to be traced back to a blacklisted wallet, so you've also just effectively banned crypto in the long run. > No legal entity would be able to hold or trade blacklisted coins. Mixers don't have to be entities though. No one owns them, no one is responsible for them. They're just code someone uploaded one day and promptly forgot about.

oldgradstudent 4y ago

> How do courts stop that without shutting down exactly what makes blockchains valuable? So money laundering is what makes blockchains valuable?