6. Interestingly, ChipMixer released with a "pay what you want" model, which is uncommon for mixers. Users were not charged a mandatory fee for mixing and instead could donate to the website. As any tech entrepreneur will tell you, donations are usually not a viable business model.
Tech entrepreneurs that don't run mixers and open-source projects, probably? Because stuff such as ChipMixer, Bitcoin Core, Electrum, Linux etc. are funded voluntarily.
7. The story starts getting suspicious when you look at ChipMixer's expenditure. With zero revenue, ChipMixer paid out several large alpha tester bounties, bought ad space on the forum, and ran a large signature campaign, with expenses in the tens or hundreds of bitcoins.
Does that imply they're the feds, though? Here's a better guess: the individual behind ChipMixer owns loads of bitcoin and can't have enough privacy otherwise. Think about it for a moment. If you had about 10,000 BTC, which you couldn't hide on-chain alone, what would be better than setting up a mixer and have yourself obfuscated among other coins, owned by other individuals with the same goal?