Quote from: d5000 on Today at 06:00:39 PM

My stance on this discussion (dunno if someone will read it after more than 15 pages Wink

):

We should first think about why mixing services are there, and why they do not only provide "legitimate" use caes, but why it should be considered a human right to use them. The blockchain is completely public. Everybody with some blockchain analysis skills can link your addresses to merchants or employers and thus know what you buy and where you work. That's something not possible with the banking system, as long as the logs of the banks aren't hacked, and without mixers you would need advanced techniques to preserve your privacy in the same way. (For sure, you could "mix" your coins on a KYCed exchange too for this purpose, but if you only need the exchange for that purpose, it would mean you take the risk your documents may be hacked and used for identity theft. You could also CoinJoin or P2P altcoin exchanges but that's already an "advanced" technique).

And even if mixers can be used in money laundering schemes, mixing is not the core part of money laundering. It can be used to hide a particular trace, but you can't convert mixed coins into "clean" money without using advanced techniques like founding a company (or collaborating with one) which receives the mixed coins and converts them into "legitimate" money. This means, while you can cash out small and medium quantities to fiat (via P2P, for example) you won't be able to buy a house with that money if you need to provide a proof of funds like it's common in many countries.

I can however understand the decision to not allow mixer ads anymore. Ads can give the public outside of the community the impression that there is a link between the forum and mixers. If a particular mixer is actually used with the collaboration of their owners in money laundering schemes, and advertises here (without knowledge of the community of course), then for the government agencies it may give the impression that this behavior is tolerated in the forum, even if this isn't the case. So I can understand the perspective of the forum admin to ban them.

So my proposal is actually simple: talking and also linking to mixers, as long as they aren't seized (and thus be considered illegal) should be allowed, but for mixer ads, I could understand a ban.

Doesn't mean I'm happy with that, I think there should be ways to advertise mixing services which are legal in the country they operate, and for example provide their company address. Don't know if many of these services exist though.

Quote from: garlonicon on Today at 10:34:42 AM

I wonder, how Lightning Network is classified. Is it a mixer or not?

LN "as a whole" doesn't fit the requirements. You always need two channels to use LN as a mixer, and "sending to yourself" is not necessarily what's advertised (does Phoenix Wallet advertise this service as a core part of their software?). The funny thing is that if you use it with one channel only, it could be seen as the opposite of a mixer, as for "the blockchain" (i.e. non-Lightning-aware software) when you close the channel you simply move the same coins you entered, but their "economic value" may come from a completely different source (which includes of course criminal activities).

exactly this. i had a mason fix my front porch. I paid him 2 checks one for 2000 usd the second for 1000 usd.

does he get to see that my checking account has 10 million (wish it did). my remaining blance stays hidden.

the world governments are morons. they used sinbad to catch huge vast 50% illegal mixing. and they shut it down. fine okay if it did that but this means they can use more mixers to catch more illegal coin action.

so they should encourage mixers and give bitcointalk the ability to advertise mixers like a mofo.

then contact the mixers to find crooks.

we did the governments of the world a favor by attracting 50% illegal activity (their words not mine)

to sinbad.

I think if sinbad has 5000 confiscated coins every sinbad ad should be reward 10% of the take.

if it wasn't for us the evil doers would not have been caught.