I see some people talk about mixing bitcoins...why dont people just swap bitcoin? EG, Say I have 10BTC and I'll swap one of mine, for one of yours. I give you a wallet address to pay, you pay it, and provide a new address for your coin, which I then pay with one of mine.
Is that not a good way to make your bitcoins a little harder to track?
Swapping it doesn't really work because both people just literally swap the same amount, and nothing really changes. It can still be tracked and the swap would still presumably go to the same address, making it more obvious that the person still has "x" amount of Bitcoin, just with a different string. Mixers can send smaller amount over a period of time to a different address while also mixing up the strings and making it harder to follow, and it can make your address look like a completely different one.
Hypothetically swapping would work, but it's harder to do that than it sounds.