I think, over time all mixers are going to be shut down by various government entities. Even if they are doing nothing illegitimate, for some reason everybody in law enforcement sees them as illegitimate.
There were times I thought this, too (especially after BitMixer and Blender were taking down). But I got some hope when I read the proposed regulation for crypto-asset transfers in the EU. They acknowledge clearly that there are legitimate uses of mixers here:
(34d) The use of mixing and tumbling services should only be allowed in circumstances where it can be shown that the use of such services is necessary to overcome legitimate concerns, such as for privacy reasons.
Source:
Draft legislation 2021/0241 (COD)It is implied that this means no general prohibition of mixing, however, that crypto asset service providers, when registering a transaction coming from a mixer and the transaction being suspicious, "should" collect additional data and/or a justification of the mixing "practice".
Of course this is only a draft proposal in
one of the major economic regions, but it could indicate a "pragmatic" stance regarding mixers becoming more commonplace. It is also possible that mixing services themselves could be regulated eventually, i.e. for example determining maximum non-KYC amounts and otherwise some form of KYC (which would of course be difficult to be implemented by the current mixers like Sinbad, Whirlwind etc.).
Of course if it is suspected that a mixing operator has cooperated with criminals or acted with a high degree of negligence (i.e. not performing at least basic chain analysis for funds linked to major hacks/thefts/ransomware attacks), then further seizures are to be expected.