Mixing coins is a popular way to hide transactions on the blockchain. These services are a necessary tool for anyone who wants to avoid being tracked by criminals on the DarkNet.
Unfortunately, mixers are also being used by criminals to launder illicit funds. They’ve drawn scrutiny from prosecutors and have been linked to illegal narcotics trafficking and money laundering activities.
1. Anonymity
With blockchain-based cryptocurrencies being increasingly used for illicit activities and drawing regulatory scrutiny, users seek tools to enhance the anonymity of these transactions. This is where crypto mixers (also known as tumblers) come in, although the services are not without risk. With some centralized mixers saving private user data, the service could expose users to future attacks, potentially compromising their privacy and anonymity.
Crypto mixers work by pooling a number of users’ tainted coins into one account and then sending out clean, new cryptocurrency to their individual wallets in amounts proportional to the size of their original deposits. This effectively obfuscates the transaction trail and makes it difficult for investigators to track criminal activity.
However, despite the claims made by some mixers, this obfuscation is not foolproof and has already been thwarted by criminals in several high-profile cases. For example, in 2022, the US Department of Justice was able to track the origins of Bitcoin sent from the DarkSide ransomware gang to a mixer before being distributed to victims.
Nonetheless, crypto mixers do help to improve the basic fungibility of digital assets as they eliminate the ability to trace coins back to their source. Moreover, decentralized mixers offer a better level of anonymity as the mixing process is controlled by the users themselves instead of an e-wallet platform that might be exposed to malicious hacking activities.
2. Security
Whether it’s purchases, donations or p2p payments, every transaction made in Bitcoin is recorded on the blockchain — a public ledger that can be traced back to its original source. While this transparency is a major boon for security, it can compromise anonymity when users want to remain anonymous while making these transactions.
A bitcoin mixer helps to solve this problem by obscuring the origins of crypto transactions. A mixer works by combining numerous Bitcoin payments into one single transaction and then sending the new, mixed coins to the address of the user. This makes it much more difficult to determine who sent what to whom, and by how much.
The primary purpose of a mixer is to ensure the privacy and security of its users. To achieve this, a mixer should be resilient to malicious attacks and the company that operates it must not save any information that could potentially link its users’ output addresses to their input ones. A good mixer should also mix funds from a number of sources that come from different parts of the world.
Cryptocurrency mixers are a valuable tool for any cryptocurrency enthusiast that wants to remain anonymous while making transactions. However, they can be a temptation for cybercriminals looking to launder stolen crypto or make ransom payments without getting caught. This is why it’s important for cryptocurrency users to conduct thorough due diligence when choosing a mixer service and always check the security and trustworthiness of their chosen platform.
3. Convenience
Crypto mixers are a convenience for those who want to increase the privacy of their crypto transactions, but don’t have access to a bitcoin tumbler. These services allow users to send their coins to a third party to mix them with other users’ coins in order to obscure the origin of each UTXO on the blockchain. This process is known as ‘tumbling’, and it allows users to avoid the heuristic-based clustering algorithms used by law enforcement agencies to track and trace cryptocurrency transfers.
As the popularity of these services continues to rise, it’s worth considering the legal implications that might come along with them. While there are certainly legitimate use cases for these services, they also have a tendency to attract the attention of regulators and other authorities who have historically linked them with money laundering and criminal activities.
With this in mind, it’s important for individuals and institutions to conduct thorough due diligence on the mixers that they use. This includes investigating their business models, who they are partnering with, and the potential regulatory and compliance risks associated with each.
Centralized mixers typically involve depositing coins into a single wallet address and paying a service fee to have them mixed with the coins of other users. Once the mixing process is complete, the funds are returned to the original depositor’s wallet.
4. Speed
Crypto mixers offer a valuable service to those seeking to avoid the prying eyes of regulators and other potential adversaries. But as these services proliferate and enter the mainstream financial conversation investors and developers will want to understand how they work, and whether or not they are safe to use.
Bitcoin, like most other cryptocurrencies, runs on the blockchain, which is a public ledger of all transactions that occur in the system. This can expose real-world identities to snoopers who know how to read the blockchain or who have access to tools that can identify a given cryptocurrency address.
Mixers, also called tumblers, are services that help obscure the origin and recipient of a crypto transaction by combining the coins of multiple people in a series of small transactions. When the mixer’s service is complete, the recipient receives their original cryptocurrency back to their wallet along with a small fee paid to the mixer for their service.
Unijoin is a popular Bitcoin mixer that promises to “improve the basic nature of exchanges by making it impossible for external observers to associate your coin’s source with its final destination on an exchange.” The company offers free mixing for all users, and charges a small fee for its services for those who are particularly concerned about security and speed.
Mixero, Samourai Wallet, Coinomize, and Whir are other well-known Bitcoin mixers that focus on security and user experience. All of these services rely on the blockchain to mix coins, but some have added features that enhance privacy. For example, Samourai Wallet is an entire Bitcoin wallet that is committed to privacy and includes features such as ring signatures and zerolinking.