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?
the main purpose of mixing is to cut the "link" between the old coins and the new coins. if you have ever checked one of the bitcoin txs that a mixer like bitmixer sends you can see that it is not possible to find the source.
so a simple swap can never be the same way because it is only one address between the two with one single tx of same size which can be easily tracked.