Re: Mixers and their reason to exist in the bitcoin ecosystem
So by me saying that bitcoin is traceable you deduct that I'm an NSA supporter? 
You're the one who's making the claim that privacy erosion is sometimes beneficial.
On a more serious note though, have you considered that passing your coins through a centralized "mixer" service isn't a real privacy enhancement?
I know. I'm a proponent of decentralized mixing, like Monero. I didn't argue about that.
Mixers are risky, trust based and to a large extent negate the whole point of bitcoin's existence.
It's part of bitcoin's functionality however that transactions are public. We knew this since day 1.
Quote
We need a way for the payee to know that the previous owners did not sign any earlier
transactions. For our purposes, the earliest transaction is the one that counts, so we don't care
about later attempts to double-spend. The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to
be aware of all transactions. In the mint based model, the mint was aware of all transactions and
decided which arrived first. To accomplish this without a trusted party, transactions must be
publicly announced
Source: Satoshi's bitcoin.pdftransactions. For our purposes, the earliest transaction is the one that counts, so we don't care
about later attempts to double-spend. The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to
be aware of all transactions. In the mint based model, the mint was aware of all transactions and
decided which arrived first. To accomplish this without a trusted party, transactions must be
publicly announced
Passing bitcoins through a so called mixing service introduces risks and likely doesn't even solve the issue of traceability that well. Because the reasons someone might want to use a mixer is disassociation coins from certain activities. Even through many false positives though, coins through mixers might even be easier to detect as "suspicious" to those looking. And the only reason I'm examining from this approach is because when talking about the disadvantages of using mixers, I believe that one has to also address the thought process of a likely user of such services.