I hope everybody here knows about BitcoinFog, Shared Send, and other mixers. And uses them for random transactions now and then to give the rest of us plausible deniability.
JoinMarket is a good solution that works on Bitcoin today.
Monero is a good altcoin which will automatically mix your coins using crypto. I believe it is more powerful than JM but requires using an altcoin.
Zcash offers unmatched anonymity powered by fancy new crypto (less tested, less certainty on the security, but much more powerful). Still under development, but I'm guessing will be more ready in August.
Assuming no mixer reputation, they allow a party to steal your coins. Note that breaking a large transaction into small pieces allows you to determine a sort of short-term reputation while only risking one piece at a time.
My standard first two steps used to be SharedCoin->BitcoinFog, for example.
People do the same thing with real money and go to jail.
A PC name for money launderers. If you need a money launderer, you should rethink what you're doing.
Sure, like torrents aren't necessarily about ip theft.
Do you have any evidence that suggests that all users of mixers obtained their Bitcoin illegally?
This HN post is a criticism of the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. Mixers can improve the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. I don't see how your comment adds to this discussion, unless you think financial privacy is a crime - in which case your statement applies equally to cash transactions.
And why would I require that? I haven't accused all bitcoin users of anything.
> This HN post is a criticism of the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. Mixers can improve the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. I don't see how your comment adds to this discussion, unless you think financial privacy is a crime - in which case your statement applies equally to cash transactions.
The law thinks financial privacy is a crime, thus KYC laws, and as such it's on topic for any discussion of bitcoin privacy since said discussion should include the issue that you fix social problems with engineering. You can't break the law "because the protocol just works that way".
Make more sense?
As the name implies, this law only applies to (financial) businesses and their customers. Most Bitcoin transactions are P2P and hence there is no business/customer relationship and hence there is no KYC law applicable.
That's a bit of a nonsense statement. It's a P2P payment network so you have no way of knowing if most of the transactions going across it are between businesses and customers or person to person. Quite simply that's a claim you can't back up.
By the way, that is a valid opinion to have - it's just that not everyone agrees that it optimal in the long run for all personal information to be auditable by a government in real time.
Sure, your bank would probably want to inquire about the source of the cash if you were to bring a briefcase of cash to the branch for a deposit. But that would be private information sharing "channel" between you and your bank - both the source of your funds and the fact that you have them in your account is reasonably private compared to a wide open ledger sitting out there with all of the txs from day one.
I'm pretty sure I didn't say that, so no.
On the Bitcoin network all transactions are public and can be linked to an individual. Without mixers it quite possible that the details of all of your financial transactions will be public.
> Are you saying you're 100% comfortable sharing the details of all financial transactions you're a part of with "the world"?
and
> using a Bitcoin mixer is equivalent to money laundering.
Are not equivalent statements.
> Without mixers it quite possible that the details of all of your financial transactions will be public.
Not true since you've forgotten the other option available to me; I don't have to use Bitcoin; you've presented a false dichotomy. I can simply choose not to use Bitcoin, consider mixing money laundering (that is after all its express intent, hiding the source of money), and still keep my financial transactions non public as they are today.