What's the point then, of using a mixer, when your funds can be traced so easily? Do its methods of mixing really work, or could it be that this is intended functionality for someone to get the short end of the stick?
The use of a mixer, as far as I understand it, is to hide the source of your coins, or rather, to break the chain that connects the sources of the coins to the destination. The point of using a mixer was never to hide the trail of your coins to the mixer.
It's a real challenge these days to find a mixer that doesn't talk about privacy and anonymity.
Some even talk about exchanges tracking you:
In difficult times like these, when even the smallest online shops or cryptocurrency exchanges are tracking all your transactions, you shouldn't forget about privacy, since privacy is an inalienable right of every person.
The above is from a mixer's promotional materials. Tell me if THAT doesn't seem like the mixer is directly encouraging the user to interact between exchange and mixer.
What kind of anonymity and privacy that might be, that associates your KYC'd exchange account to criminally tainted coins, I don't know.
But surely mixers would like us to believe that they stand for privacy.