Dear Theymos,

This is a letter to you, urging a medium for the recent Ban on mixers, and presenting a solution that has been proposed and voted on already for 11 months.

We can all agree that centralized mixers can never be pure, that is out of ever the operators control. This point is clearly understood in the recent decision to ban custodial mixers on the forum on basically all front, in order to remove liability and to keep this forum safe from persecution. However, the result this will have on innocent users will be significant.

One benefit of allowing advertising of these campaigns that will become clear from the ban forward, is the force of good practice on services by holding reputation as collateral in exchange for advertising. Services can not steal from users or do so on an isolated level, they could not be unfair to users in a subtle way, and they must do as it is promised and no less or else the service will immediately face a negative attention from the entire community. Aside from the economic benefits it provided to users through signature campaigns, the advertising of mixers (and other services) brings oversight to services and keeps forum users safe, at the cost of the service rather than community volunteering.

As of this ban, the goal of privacy through a centralized mixer will become increasingly risky, and without advertising causing the eyes of many to monitor and ensure mixer legitimacy, the mixing industry will become a very dangerous place for anyone to be a part of. Humans are creatures of habit, until habits are forced to change. For those who don't know other solutions to help achievr on chain privacy, it is likely that they will still seek out mixers and it is likely that the reduced liability will lead to scams and loss of Bitcoins to the mixing industry. With no names of serviced being allowed in the forum, it will be virtually impossible to report these scams effectively in the scam accusations board.

The complete removal of these tools is a big attack on Bitcoin privacy, and it presents risks to privacy and safety going forward instead of banning without a medium solution, a medium should be found before January 1 if the privacy of users on this forum are of care to the administration of this forum...and thanks to the work of your community, the medium is already in front of you, theymos.

Over the months of 2023, the community have thoroughly discussed the addition of a cyber security and privacy board on the forum. Following discussion, community members who were passionate about this request additionally cast written, reasoned votes in an unofficial community vote

The results of these polls proved that the majority of the active community have achieved two consensus votes to add a board that is focused on Cybersecurity and Privacy

The results of the forum poll in the discussion thread yielded 66 yes votes (91.7%) vs. 6 no votes (8.3%)
The results of the unofficial community vote yielded 26 written yes votes (96.2%) vs 1 written no vote (3.8%)

The community is very much in favor of this board for a variety of reasons discussed. 3 of these reasons are:
- Cybersecurity is an integral topic to support the security of Bitcoin storage.
- System security is layer 0 to the storage of Bitcoin (layer 1, if you will)
- Privacy is a fundamental human right, as Bitcoin has propagated since day 1. Discussion about privacy is integral, especially since privacy can no longer be achieved by paying a service fee (due to mixers being banned)

The discussion of Cybersecurity and Privacy can usher a new wave of legitimate discussion that will empower individuals with the ability to be and feel safe within the bitcoin ecosystem, within this bitcoin community and on the internet, in the face of an increasingly unsafe digital world. The board will help reduce growing vulnerabilities to theft, spying and targeting through discussion about defence from the aforementioned.

With this board, you will be providing not just what the forum should already have, a fair medium between the censorship of mixing services, and will prove to us all that you care for the communities safety of their assets, and privacy of their forum, bitcoin and internet usage.

Please do not leave us in the dark any longer, and provide the community with one of two of the following outcomes to this request before the mixer ban takes effect on January 1, 2024:

1. Provide a reasoned response as to why the community can not have this board despite clear consensus that this is what the community wants.

2. Add the Cyber security and Privacy board in the Other category of the forum:

It has been discussed to have the main board as the discussion board, news, questions, general topics, etc. with a child board purposed specifically to be a knowledgebase, including compiled community contributed information that can help to achieve either cybersecurity and/or privacy. It has also been discussed to make news a separate child board, rather than mixing it into the main board. Do as you wish with this information, alongside the wealth of information in the discussion topic.

Respectfully, a response as to which outcome the community can expect before the mixer ban becomes active on January 1, 2024.

Thank you.