Strategic mistake. But we are not law enforcement to say having them here could be better to keep an eye on them all in one place instead of having them go elsewhere scattered.
I’m neutral on this. Tough call, to be sure, but some of us gave theymos like $20 a long time ago and expected him to run the forums in perpetuity. And he has indeed kept the lights on around here.
The best argument for banning mixers though is because if the government can stop a mixer, then you have risk if you promote/permit them.
Let this be an impetus for creating decentralized privacy solutions that can not be stopped.
That indicates more CoinJoin apps and more community-operated coordinators to be set up in Wasabi, and probably even start utilizing the Lightning Network as an off-chain privacy layer on top of Bitcoin to be used alone or in combination with CoinJoin apps.
Examples of things that are not banned mixers include exchangers (unless they have a mixing function), CoinJoin-supporting non-custodial wallets, and Monero.
Plus I noticed that "decentralized privacy solutions" is the subject-matter of the topic, and I'm merely curious. Did the community's reaction towards Wasabi's decision to hire the service of a chain analytics company helped set off theymos' decision to ban all centralized mixers? Or was it already on the table before Sinbad was taken down?
I wonder if there is a need to explicitly create the list of allowed and disallowed things. Because I guess the biggest issue will be with those users, who will not be 100% sure, if something is allowed or not. And then, some of them may be disappointed, that a certain mixer is allowed ("Why you allowed it theymos, it is a mixer!") or not ("Why you rejected it theymos, it is just a CoinJoin!"). But, I also guess that kind of list could also cause more harm than good, so I don't know, how to handle it properly, and I am happy, that I am not responsible for making such decisions.
Edit: I wonder if it is a good idea or not, but I will share it anyway. It is not needed to share the list of banned things in plaintext. It is possible to write a program, that will check, if user input is acceptable or not. And then, it is possible to create a message, for example: "Your signature mentions a mixer, and this is not allowed" or "Your post mentions a mixer". Then, people will know for sure, without any need of asking "Can I advertize X?". Because then, the word "X" will be included in the blacklist, or in the whitelist. And something like that will be needed anyway, to check if users follow the rules.
Would it help mixers if they use the services of a blockchain analysis company to filter out "tainted" inputs from entering their liquidity pool? That would have an argument that a service isn't part of the "darknet", no?