I'm curious myself if there were any formal requests or warnings received
We've received no warnings or requests to change policy from law enforcement regarding mixers.
It will help to know if the stand of the forum is that mixers are injurious to the public like darknet
I would prefer to allow them. I don't view using them as unethical, and I don't care about reputation. But this kind of thing is far from the core mission of bitcointalk.org, and the costs far outweigh the benefits.
It wouldn't be illegal to continue allowing mixers here. That's why we're able to offer a 1-month grace period. But allowing them has become too risky/problematic, and it's only going to get worse. Imagine 5% of all active forum users being sanctioned due to being paid directly by mixers, or all participants in a big signature campaign being targets of a search warrant, or our service providers suddenly banning us due to being "associated" with mixers, etc. I think that the crypto community is near the start of a multi-year squeezing campaign against mixers; similar to the cannabis industry in the US, or Operation Choke Point, or what happened with Backpage, or the deplatforming of Parler.
non-KYC exchanger converts your BTC to XMR
That's allowed unless the site is also a mixer due to eg. allowing BTC->BTC "exchanges" or advertising BTC->XMR->BTC exchanges as a way of mixing coins.
Theymos, I understand this decision had to be taken to save the forum from alot of accusations in aiding fraudulent activity in the future but what next are we going to ban?
I don't anticipate the need for major new restrictions in the next couple of years, but it could indeed happen. Maybe Bitcoin will be banned in the US someday, and then I'll have to either shut down bitcointalk.org or find a way of moving it to some remaining territory of freedom in the world. That's the problem with centralized forums. I wish that more work was being done on creating decentralized, uncensorable, but also
usable forums. I would love nothing more than to be able to shut down bitcointalk.org due to some decentralized solution making it obsolete. Find me a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working on this, and I'll donate to it.
To be clear: not all .onion sites qualify as darknet, right?
Correct. And something can also be darknet without having a .onion. By "darket" I mean something that wouldn't be able to exist for long outside of the shadows because it's being suppressed by the state.
How about old avatars? Many inactive and even banned users still have an avatar from a Bitcoin mixer.
It's not a priority, but I might blank them at some point.
Since that doesn't have any real links to mixers, it may be OK. Probably we'll leave it alone at the start and see how it looks after a few months.