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Internet's Largest Bitcoin Mixer Shuts Down Realizing Bitcoin is Not Anonymous

posted by martyb on Wednesday August 02 2017, @05:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the shake-it-up-baby dept.

Fnord666 writes:

BitMixer, the world's most popular Bitcoin mixing service has announced last weekend it was shutting down operations effective immediately.

Bitcoin mixing is a process of taking money from one account and breaking it into hundreds or thousands of smaller transactions to transfer it to another account.

For years, it was believed that Bitcoin mixing is a safe way to transfer funds anonymously from one account to another, mainly because there was no technology to track all the transactions and reveal the destination account.

In a statement, the BitMixer owners said they were shutting down the service after realizing that Bitcoin was a "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," the BitMixer team wrote.

"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," the team also wrote, issuing a warning for fellow Bitcoin mixers.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/internets-largest-bitcoin-mixer-shuts-down-realizing-bitcoin-is-not-anonymous/

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Wednesday August 02 2017, @08:11PM

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 02 2017, @08:11PM (#548094)
    Simple answer: Money laundering. Mixers provide a way to "clean" bitcoins obtained via illegal means by trying to obfuscate their origins. Now, I'm sure you or someone will come up with some technical reason why this can't possibly be considered money laundring, but before you reply ask yourself: Will it fly in a court with the full force of a US District Attorney or similar law enforcement official from another country prosecuting it?
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