I can't be the only one.
After chipmixer was shut down, a ton of other mixers started operating at a very close proximity time-wise.
Is that fishy or am I paranoid?
It can't be that one sided I think.
Before Chipmixer we had bitmixer. Bitmixer was really the biggest bitcoin mixer but their owner decided to shut down this money-making website because many people were arrested in 2016-17 and many darknets were seized, he would probably be the next. Bitmixer shut down their service and then many people created mixer websites, many used the shut down of bitmixer to start a new business and many mixers came up on market. Chipmixer was only invented two months earlier before bitmixer announced shutdown of their service. Chipmixer started signature campaign similar to bitmixer.io and slightly increased their payrate soon. Then soon bitmixer announced a shutdown but chipmixer continued. Despite a huge rise of bitcoin's price, chipmixer kept their original bitcoin payrates and hired even more people. Chipmixer hired one of the best, trustworthy and famous bitcointalk users, promoted service through them and become one of the biggest mixer.
Btw not many mixers started operating after chipmixer was shut down. Many mixers that you see advertised on this forum started this business before chipmixer's shutdown, not after their shutdown.
This really does make you think, WHY? Why would a service allegedly moving billions worth in proceeds need to advertise here, and so aggressively even, especially when their customer base seems to be set in stone from day one?
Every mixer become famous from this forum. There is no better place other than this forum for crypto enthusiasts. This is the forum where satoshi was posting himself, isn't that enough?
I have a simple theory on why that might be happening. By looking at what generated the largest volumes in these mixers, I conclude that no bitcointalk user could be possibly be in need to launder billions in hacked funds, and would never be in dire need to launder cash associated with violent crime like drugs or fraud at this magnitude.
Instead, an illusion of privacy was promoted to clearnet users (that's us here in bitcointalk), while in fact our "cleaner" funds were used to bail out real criminals and terrorists. Because to a mixer, a clean bitcoin, is worth more than market value, so they were willing to overpay for it in the form of advertising. Come to think of it, the recent bust of Sinbad served as a reminder that mixers are in fact very traceable.
Why do you think that bitcointalk users wouldn't generate large volume? Every early adopter comes from this forum, every business rose from this forum, how can you say that?
These mixers weren't using our clean coins to feed darknet users. You can check that recent mixers focus on offering you offering coins that will pass AML test with high score. Mixers focus on making you untraceable and protecting your privacy.