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Merits 19 from 6 users
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 04/07/2023, 16:52:28 UTC
⭐ Merited by LeGaulois (6) ,BlackHatCoiner (4) ,nioctib_100 (4) ,dkbit98 (3) ,yudi09 (1) ,Rikafip (1)
IMPORTANT UPDATE

The time has come for us to reveal the upcoming changes we've been working on during the past few weeks. We are inching closer towards launching a small closed beta to make sure everything is running properly before pushing the updates live on Whirlwind. Please share your opinions and suggestions in case we missed any details.

When we launched the Anonymity Mining campaign we explained the reasoning behind it is that we want to incentivize usage in order to allow us to add our BTC reserve slowly blended between normal users deposits and grow the Anonymity Set. While this is still a feasible solution to our problem and we could simply wait until we get more traction, we asked ourselves if there is any way we can speed up this process or perhaps grow the Anonymity Set in a different way while achieving the same goal, and here is what we came up with:

1.Allow multiple deposits on the same Note on the Dashboard page. Currently you would need to make a new deposit into another Note and send your balance using Pay to Note, this is a clunky process and we want to get rid of it.
2.Enable Monero and Ethereum deposits and withdrawals. When you enter your private key you will see your Note balance in BTC, XMR and ETH.
3.Enable internal 'bridging' between BTC, XMR and ETH for a fee. You will be able to deposit ETH on your Whirlwind Note, change it internally to BTC and withdraw it to your on-chain address.
4.There will be no 3rd party involved in the bridging process, we will provide the liquidity on all 3 chains and rebalance it when needed.
5.We will use the same setup on XMR and ETH as we do on BTC, meaning multi-sig and the backend-signer architecture.

The Note will now act as your Whirlwind 'wallet' where you can deposit and withdraw Bitcoin, as well as Monero and Ethereum. Pay to Note will be available for all coins, making feeless instant transactions possible on all 3 chains. We will also enable bridging from one to the other for a fee, so you will be able to deposit ETH and withdraw BTC to your on-chain address.

These changes will theoretically make the Anonymity Set unlimited because on top of every BTC withdraw potentially originating from any of the BTC deposits, now it could originate from any of the BTC deposits and any of the ETH or XMR deposits. Besides solving the Anonymity Set issue we should also be able to attract more users because we could target a bigger market with the unique features we're offering.

Decentralization is still on the table and these new changes don't affect our ability to do it in the future, but we believe that for now it's better to focus on delivering the best product possible in the centralized form and then look to decentralize it once we see some traction. Looking forward to your feedback!
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Merits 22 from 6 users
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 04/07/2023, 15:03:10 UTC
⭐ Merited by LoyceV (4) ,Hhampuz (4) ,BlackHatCoiner (4) ,hosseinimr93 (4) ,LeGaulois (3) ,dkbit98 (3)
Perhaps there could and should be a way to pay for an expedited, extra-attention support answer? It could have all the disclaimers necessary like "paying this doesn't guarantee that support will be able to successfully help you," but it'd certainly give some peace of mind to people if they know that if they have to, they can pay for an answer in just a few hours. Probably would help ramp up business a lot even.

This also would help reduce those issues that go back and forth here for a page or two in Bitcointalk, which really fills up the discussion and obviously should be handled privately via support if it can be.
There is no need for any sort of paid or premium support option. We do respond to emails and fix the issues in under 6 hours the majority of the time or at most 24 hours in exceptional cases. We treat everyone the same, our only concern is being fair to everybody which basically translates to making sure the rules are respected. If your case is valid you will receive 100% of your funds, we are not interested in taking any cuts from that no matter the amount or effort we have to put in, that's our responsibility. If on the other hand the case is invalid, then you won't receive anything.

We explained that from our point of view this situation is no different than any other where the user doesn't have access to his private key - you lose it, you lose access to your funds. If you contact us with the same kind of situation you will get a reply saying we cannot help. The balance will remain on the Note and will be available to withdraw if you ever find the private key.

Like we said we will leave this situation for the community to decide
Although I get and partially understand this, it's also a tricky thing to rely on: at some point you should decide those things on your own, and stand by your decision.

Quote
if people agree you should get refunded then you will, if they don't you won't. Simple as that
Let's try a side story: Let's say I made a deposit, saved the Letter of Guarantee, and got the note's private key. I safely stored the private key offline.
Then, my computer got compromised, and someone gained access to my empty wallet and the LoG. That person now has the same information stormbounty has, right? He can sign a message from the address used to deposit, and thus prove that "he" paid the address in the LoG. If that's the case, he should not get the money that belongs to my note to which I have the private key. If I'd come back 2 years later and see the money's gone, you'll get a scam accusation.

Disclaimer: this post includes some assumptions because I still haven't tested your site by myself.



People should really learn to keep the private keys safe. That's all that matters in crypto, if you lose your private key, your money is gone. If it's Bitcoin, it's a donation to everyone. If it's Binance's made-up wrapped Bitcoin, it's a donation to CZ. If it's WWM, it should be waiting for you until the end of time.
We do not want to take the risk of this situation happening, nor do we feel that we need to take that risk. We highly doubt that a potential new user doing his research would be very excited about the possibility of his Note balance being refunded to someone else based on a support request with a guarantee letter or other arbitrary conditions decided privately on a case-by-case basis. If we start refunding left and right based on how we feel about each specific situation on a personal level while changing the rules only for some, there is no way we can expect to be trusted and that is what this business is all about. We're making it very clear that the most important thing is to make sure you save your private key. If for any reason you don't do that you can't blame us for it.

Yet NO REFUND... This is becoming extra criminal
With this attitude you've made it all but impossible for us to do anything in this case.

Even though you recognized you made a mistake, for some reason you continued to blast us with every accusation in the book, from saying it's our fault too that you didn't save the private key, to scamming, engagement farming, worst customer support, worst UX and now you simply expect us to agree with you when it's obvious that all of it is false?

Expecting us to change the rules of the game for you because you made a mistake and screaming scam when we don't do it in under 48 hours is a reaction we cannot understand. We will stop replying to messages regarding this situation, thank you for understanding.

While ww is trying to maintain security but I will never deal with a service that has no mercy like that.

At least pay this member then make an announcement that you won't do this again in the future and it's the first and last time

What you are doing now doesn't make you look tough or thug but stupid
There was a similar situation before and the rules were made clear at that time. This is not about a lack of mercy from our side, we are simply playing by the rules with full transparency and we hold everyone to the same standard. This is the only way we can create trust between ourselves and the community. If you don't want to deal with us because of that it's your choice, but IMO it shows that we care about our users and the overall platform's security and we are proud of that.
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Merits 2 from 1 user
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 29/06/2023, 23:36:21 UTC
⭐ Merited by dkbit98 (2)
I sent the letter on guarantee 5 days ago, they didn’t even reply to ask about the note key, I was simply ignored. Still ignored , I was very polite in all the emails, all forum posts on day 1, 2 and 3. I even called myself stupid and took the blame, despite the hosting issues playing a part , still they didn’t reply till now.
Why would we reply to ask about the note key? If you had it then you wouldn't have to contact us in the first place. Calling us scammers certainly doesn't help the situation either as you've clearly stated yourself that you made a mistake, and besides that the amount in question is literally tens of times smaller than what we're paying for the signature campaign on a weekly basis so it would make no sense at all to try and scam you.

In your emails you're also stating things like 'ill qietly go away just pay me my 200$ back' and accusing us of 'farming engagement' with your situation, which is certainly not true and very upsetting to read.

Like we said we will leave this situation for the community to decide, if people agree you should get refunded then you will, if they don't you won't. Simple as that, we are not planning to tarnish our reputation for anyone or any amount, much less for someone that can't accept responsibility for his own actions and falsely blames everything on someone else while believing he's entitled to special treatment all at the same time.

From our POV not replying to your emails is completely warranted because if we play by the rules you lose your private key - you lose access to your funds so there's no point to discuss anything. We understand that the communities position is that we should reply even in cases like this and we will do that from now on, but we still fail to see how that would help the user in question. Anyways we'll let the others do the judging and if they are on your side post the refund address here and we will send your funds there.

So basically the question is, again: should we refund if the user only has the guarantee letter but not the private key, or should we stick to the rule that if you lose the private key you lose access to your funds?
I (still) haven't tested WWM (sorry, I couldn't resist making up this nickname) myself, so forgive me if I ask something dumb, but: what is the point of a Letter of Guarantee if it can't be used as evidence?
The letter of guarantee is useful if any edge cases happen, for example we had a situation in the past days where someone used RBF to bump their fee for the deposit transaction and the new txid wasn't picked up by the system. Other than these very rare edge cases there shouldn't be any situation where you ever have to contact support as long as you have your Note private key and you followed the deposit steps.

Over the weekend we will present the possible upgrades we can do to the system and hopefully this will prevent any situation like the above happening again besides multiple other advantages.
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Merits 4 from 1 user
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 28/06/2023, 13:16:55 UTC
⭐ Merited by LoyceV (4)
If somehow the community thinks this situation is different and it warrants a refund, then as always we have no problem doing it as long as it doesn't open the door to other types of abuse later on.
I think this scenario is somewhat different if the user can indeed provide the correct letter of guarantee.

In the previous scenario, the only thing the user could provide was a signed message from the address he used to deposit. He was unable to provide a private key or a letter of guarantee. This is insufficient for Whirlwind to draw any conclusions, and I was in complete agreement that this could not be the basis for a refund.

In this scenario, the user has stated he can provide a letter of guarantee. Assuming this letter of guarantee is indeed the correct one, it will have a deposit address inside it. If the user can also sign a message from the address(es) which sent funds to the address contained within the letter of guarantee, I would say that's pretty compelling evidence that the user is telling the truth and does indeed own those funds.

Happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood anything, though.
Sure, but what if the following happens?

What if we refund this user based on the guarantee letter and then we receive another support request from 'someone else' with the same guarantee letter while also having the private key telling us that he doesn't see his balance on Whirlwind anymore and accuses us of scamming? Do we refund that user as well?
We simply ignore the second person?

With the introduction of the ZK based Notes we won't have this issue anymore because the user will be the only person to have access to it, same as now, but the difference is that in the ZK Note case there is no way we can ever do something about it because your deposit will be one of *Anonymity Set value* deposits and we would have no way of knowing if you withdrew already or any other detail. If you lose it, it's on you.

There's a lot of interesting paths we can take with Whirlwind and we will start to discuss about it here in the following days, that was the reason for our lack of activity on the forum. But e-mail support was always working as usual.
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Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 28/06/2023, 11:58:07 UTC
What could be changed for the future would be that you are able to still see/download the note private key after depositing if you still have the tab open like in this case.
So basically the question is: should we refund if the user only has the guarantee letter but not the private key, or should we stick to the rule that if you lose the private key you lose access to your funds?
I would personally believe this user and make the changes mentioned above to prevent something like this from happening again. At that point it would be only the users fault if he doesn't save the private key.
Currently the private key is generated by the user in the frontend on the main page. If we were to show it on the next page as well that would imply we generate it ourselves and store it, that's why we didn't do it.

So this raises another question for the community: Do you think we should show the private key on the deposit page as well if that implies we also have access to it?
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Merits 13 from 5 users
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 28/06/2023, 11:32:57 UTC
⭐ Merited by BlackHatCoiner (4) ,LoyceV (4) ,dkbit98 (3) ,Hhampuz (1) ,Ratimov (1)
IF support doesn't reply after 5 days, can I now call it a scam?
Or is 5 day not enough too??
You did not get a reply because we simply ignore support requests where users forget or don't save their private keys, this was the general consensus when we had the same issue a few weeks ago.

If somehow the community thinks this situation is different and it warrants a refund, then as always we have no problem doing it as long as it doesn't open the door to other types of abuse later on.

Of course, someone can say that you need to be patient, but I used to like this mixer for its efficiency and speed, but now it is turning into something extremely slow and sluggish. I hope all these problems will be solved soon.
Was your issue resolved? If not please DM or send an e-mail to support. We use lots of servers and Tor circuits sometimes break creating delays, if these issues are more common lately we will make some improvements so it doesn't happen anymore, or at least not this often. Also our clearnet version has been DDoSd continuously for more than 10 days now so that's why it throws errors sometimes.

I guess this is just an unlucky situation that @whirlwindmoney is absent currently.
We are not absent, our e-mail response time is usually under 6 hours, and at most 24 hours in exceptional cases. We simply thought that this situation was discussed already and clear for everyone and that's why we did not reply to this specific user.

So basically the question is: should we refund if the user only has the guarantee letter but not the private key, or should we stick to the rule that if you lose the private key you lose access to your funds?

What if we refund this user based on the guarantee letter and then we receive another support request from 'someone else' with the same guarantee letter while also having the private key telling us that he doesn't see his balance on Whirlwind anymore and accuses us of scamming? Do we refund that user as well?

We understand it may be frustrating when unfortunate things like this happen, but like we said the last time we really need to draw a clear line and agree on some 'procedures', otherwise we'll solve this issue today and have another one pop out immediately.
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Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 14/06/2023, 19:53:45 UTC
Hello, apparently whirlwind has been down for a couple of hours.
Is that true also for you?
Hi, not for us at least. Both clearnet and Tor seem to work fine. We will post another message in the next hours with a more in-depth response to all the discussions in the topic and what we've been working on during the past weeks.
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Merits 3 from 1 user
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 21/05/2023, 21:40:39 UTC
⭐ Merited by Hhampuz (3)
Whirlwind is down. Please confirm.
We were doing server upgrades and maintenance. We didn't announce before because we figured it would happen quick enough and since it's Sunday night noone would notice. It will be back up in a bit, I will update this message when it's completed.

Thank you for your understanding and apologies for any inconvenience caused.
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Merits 2 from 1 user
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 18/05/2023, 15:28:05 UTC
⭐ Merited by mikeywith (2)
It's great that foolazz22 raised this question, I know it's not the mixer's fault but what happens when fees are pretty high, in other words, in order to refund him his $15 at least $10 of it will go in fees, on the other hand, setting low fees might make the transaction stuck for a very long period of time.

What I propose instead, if possible, is to give the user enough time to add a second transfer to bring the total of his deposit to 0.001BTC.
If we had to choose between convenience and security we would choose the latter every single time. We considered allowing more than 1 transfer to the same deposit address but ultimately decided against it because we do not want to introduce any possible attack vectors. Right now there are <20 BTC in the multi-sig, but once the balance grows to hundreds we will certainly become a very attractive target for hackers so we simply do not want to take any chances.

The minimum amount is clearly stated so it's the user's responsibility to carefully read all the information and warnings. If the system was decentralized already there would be no refunds in cases like this, or if the user lost the private key. Since that's where Whirlwind is going we believe it's best if we handle support cases same as if the service was already decentralized so users get accustomed to it.

Unless users make mistakes there is simply no way for any 'errors' to happen, so we have no reason to fix something that is not broken, especially if it means that the entire service would become less secure.

I have a concern regarding on my recent action, Is it safe attaching my unique link on support email? Also why does the Guarantee Letter keeps changing whenever I download it. I downloaded it twice and it gives me 2 different Guarantee Letter .txt files. Are both letter valid?
If I assume correctly you used the Clearnet website, and if you did then it's normal. It's the same Guarantee Letter, but the .txt file is named differently because of our extra encryption layer.

@whirlwind.money not that I’m worried about my balance but there’s no reply on my email acknowledging that someone already received it for almost 24hrs when the email sent. What’s the typical duration for a support to handle cases on email?
If the case doesen't involve any manual intervention from our side then the response time is usually under 6 hours, if it does then it's usually 24 hours or more.

Also I’m already the second one here that forgot to download private key when mixing since this is not the norm on mixing. Is it possible to have a simple mixing process just like before that doesn’t need to deposit the balance on note so that we can mix directly without going to the dashboard to mix. I have a plan to use the note for anonymity mining but not using the current funds.
Saving the private key may not be the norm, at least on Bitcoin, because no other service works in the same way. We certainly do not see this as a valid argument for why it would be a good idea to adhere to the current 'norm'. If we were to go down that route then Whirlwind wouldn't be what it is today, and we would simply be just another 'traditional mixer'. Considering we believe those systems are fundamentally flawed and that's the sole reason why Whirlwind even exists, it would be quite hypocritical from our side to back down right now just because 2 users didn't properly read the many warnings displayed on the website. Only at the first step there are 3 warnings displayed, let alone the FAQ:

1. The first step is named 'Generate and Save Note Private Key'
2. Immediately after you click 'Generate' you see this text under the Private Key: Save this note someplace safe. | Losing this note means losing access to your deposited funds.
3. If you hover over the 'info' button you will read this: IMPORTANT! | Make sure you store your Note properly, it is a private key and therefore support can't help if you lose it.

It would be possible to introduce the 'Fast' mode again, but that wouldn't make much sense because as soon as we transition to the zk-SNARK based Note system we would have to scrape it again, and that would only add more confusion.
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Merits 1 from 1 user
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 17/05/2023, 10:59:40 UTC
⭐ Merited by dkbit98 (1)
I can somehow understand that he didn't save note priv key, note public address, and letter of guarantee, but I don't believe he can't remember how much coins he donated, he can just check pervious transactions in his wallet.
You wouldn't be able to tell the selected donation % just by looking at the previous transactions in the wallet. The deposited amount appears the same, but depending on how much you chose to donate the real Note balance will be slightly lower. If you didn't save the LoG and can't check the balance with the Note private key, then you have no way to know for sure what it is.

3. Treat Whirlwind as a network and respect the rules, in this case we will not be able to help in any way and the user would lose access to his funds assuming it's true that indeed he lost the private key
That also means that you should accept any loses in case someone finds a flaw and abuses your system, this is a double edged sword.
Making everything more decentralized sooner would eliminate the need to even talk about this issues.
If someone finds a flaw and abuses the system we would take responsibility for it, it wouldn't be fair otherwise. On the bright side we are convinced this is impossible with the current setup so we are more than happy to respect the rules.

~
Your deposit isn't considered valid by the system because it's under the minimum amount so your funds will be sent back automatically to the address you used to deposit.

~
Please contact our support by e-mail with all the details about your situation and we will see what can be done about it.
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Re: [OPEN]⚡whirlwind.money | Anonymity Mining Campaign | 12% APR | Daily Rewards⚡
by
whirlwindmoney
on 14/05/2023, 21:28:42 UTC
What happens when you don't have any coins left? For example, what if someone deposits 100 BTC (which is extremely unlikely at the moment, but say if) and expects to earn 1 BTC every month? Can you handle it financially? As far as I'm concerned, you have not disclosed the amount of personal stash you have. If you don't want to do that, which is very reasonable for a service like this, then perhaps limiting the amount earned is a wise choice.

So basically what you're trying to do is take loans from every depositor.
We mentioned in the ANN thread that we are expecting to pay up to 6 BTC for this campaign, but we can handle it even if it goes beyond that. Keep in mind that a portion of the multi-sig balance would be our own reserve, so the 'real' amount of rewards paid out is always lower than the amount stated publicly.

We did not disclose the amount in the 'personal stash' not because we don't want to, but because as said from the beginning we intend to use it to permanently increase the multi-sig balance and the Anonymity Set by blending it in with other users deposits. If we were to disclose any of the wallets we intend to use for depositing we would incur extra costs to obfuscate the trail again before doing it and that would be pointless, we'd much rather spend that on Anonymity Mining rewards. You will notice that as soon as deposits start to happen more frequently the balance will drastically increase and it will never come back to the current levels.

'Taking loans' is one way to look at it, but it's not entirely accurate since we do not touch customer deposits, nor do we care about how long they are kept inside Whirlwind. We are only interested in 'artificially' boosting usage for a while until the Anonymity Set is big enough to accomodate large deposits/withdrawals without it being a privacy concern.

From what I read, it is no clear to what extent a seizure or the bankruptcy of the service providers would impact the stakers. A 12% APR is a very promising profitability for a money that is otherwise frozen, but it has nothing to do compared to the loss of the 100% of the capital, if these problems happened.

If I'm wrong and there is no risk associated because Bitcoins are retrievable at any moment no matter what, then I will have to think it twice.
There is risk since it's a centralized service. Your BTC is retrievable at any moment only as long as Whirlwind is running, so you need to trust us if you want to participate in the campaign or simply use it for privacy.
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Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 14/05/2023, 02:12:05 UTC
Thank you everyone for your responses, it's an unfortunate situation but there is nothing we can do without setting dangerous precedents or jeopardizing our integrity and we simply cannot afford to risk any of the 2 outcomes happening. This business is all about trust and the moment it's gone, it's gone for good.

As long as Whirlwind is centralized we will not make any decisions that could be considered questionable in any way, and if we will ever encounter another situation where we're not sure what the best course of action is we will use the same approach and let the community decide what needs to happen and we will respect that consensus regardless of our personal beliefs. We are working towards decentralizing the service so this is how things should work anyways.

With that said, I am interested in hearing from them, maybe they have some "valid" reasons for not doing so? maybe he saved the 3 files and they were empty? what excuse do they have?
We are not sure if the user in question would be willing to confirm this publicly, but he had no excuses. He is aware it's entirely his fault and recognized the mistake, that's the sole reason we even considered helping him out in the first place, it seems like a genuine mistake. We always assume everything we do will become publicly known so we were concerned about how our intervention would be perceived by the community and the responses here proved our worries were not unfounded.

It's important to mention that we will not treat this as a 'donation', if the user in question ever gains access to his private key then he can withdraw without any issues. If you don't donate yourself the Note balance will remain unchanged regardless of how long you keep your BTC inside Whirlwind.

Please make sure you save your Private key and do not deposit unless you have it stored safely. There are 3 warnings about this only at the first step (which is also named 'Generate and Save Note Private Key'), let alone the FAQ, so you should take it seriously.



There seem to be some misunderstandings regarding the Anonymity Mining campaign so I will quote the last message from that thread in full for better visibility, it also contains more general information about Whirlwind so we would recommend reading it:

I'm not quite sure if this will be profitable in the long run. I haven't heard of any mixer that has managed to run for that long.
Not yet? I thought the previous mixers had been around for a long time, for example Chipmixer, they had a very long time. It must have been more than 5 years, right? Furthermore, I think we don't have any problem in withdrawing, they don't talk about our withdrawal limit time.

It was 6 years. Still would not be long enough to break even though (assuming you start today).
You may have misunderstood how the campaign works, it would be insane to ask you to deposit for 6 years or any amount of time really.

Distributions are made every day around 12:10 AM UTC so to be profitable you would need to wait for a maximum of 24 hours if for instance you deposited at 12:20 AM UTC, or only 10 minutes if you deposited at 12:00 AM UTC.

For a 1 BTC deposit your balance would look like this:

Day 1: 1 BTC
Day 2: 1 + (1 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00033333
Day 3: 1.00033333 + (1.00033333 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00066677
Day 4: 1.00066677 + (1.00066677 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00100032
..

You can withdraw your balance at any point, there are no special conditions to participate in the campaign. All Notes are eligible and automatically participate in the campaign, you will receive rewards for as long as your Note is funded.

We hope we will reach the 10,000 Anonymity Set goal as soon as possible. We do not necessarily care about how long you keep your funds inside Whirlwind because by the time the campaign ends we would have added our entire reserve. At that point the multi-sig balance won't be an issue, even if we assume there is no other depositor besides us it should be more than enough to accomodate any amount.

interesting concept, but in the long run how profitable is it on your side because this service has guaranteed rewards for anybody staking going with the  "Anonymity Mining"?
In the short term we will almost surely lose money, but in the grand scheme of things it's irrelevant. A few BTC is a very small price to pay for what we are getting in return through this campaign. After reaching the Anonymity Set goal we expect the business to become very profitable because at that point it wouldn't make much sense for anyone to use another service so it's only a matter of time until Whirlwind's popularity explodes.

Does this mean that over 10k deposits, there will be no more campaign payments? What will be the incentive for people to keep depositing, when the number starts getting close to 10k?
Yes the campaign ends once we reach 10,000 deposits. If you are only looking for rewards then there won't be any incentive to deposit anymore, we are not a staking platform. On the other hand if you're looking for real privacy then you'd get it by simply using the service, and you could get it for free if you don't choose to donate.

I'd be willing to deposit, but there's this thing in the back of my head saying: "What if they have access to these generated private keys? It wouldn't be the first time when the mixing operator lied about something. If whirlwind gets busted somehow, the way they got Tornado, Helix, Chipmixer, will they be able to get my bitcoin?"
We have no reason to keep the Note private keys, if we wanted to steal your funds we could simply drain the multi-sig since that's where the BTC is kept. Currently the service is centralized, so you need to trust us if you want to use it.

From a technical point of view Tornado is the undisputed king and IMO it cannot be compared to anything else. Even though it got sanctioned no user lost any funds and it continues to function to this day, in fact it's unstoppable as long as Ethereum continues to exist.

If it's not obvious already Whirlwind is built on the same model, so it's already 'battle-tested' and we know for a fact it offers the best privacy assuming enough volume goes through it and the Anonymity Set is big enough. Considering this our only remaining important task besides reaching the Anonymity Set goal is to decentralize the service and we are already working on that as we speak.

We will also improve upon Tornado's compliance module and that should be more than enough to avoid giving anyone reasons to target us, more info about this will be released once we finalize the details.

Regarding Whirlwind getting 'busted' firstly there is no reason for this to happen for the foreseeable future, but our response to this concern is worth reading nonetheless:
Rather than asking a few questions about user privacy, I will ask another kind of question.

What preventative measures have you taken to protect yourself from arrest and federal government seizure of website assets (i.e: how do you plan to avoid Cipmixer's fate)?

It sure is a valid question and I understand the concern, I'll share my view on this issue. As I said since before I even launched the service, I am hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.

I could give more technical details about our security, but all I will say for now is that we took the most extreme security precautions possible. Our "hot wallet" is a 3/3 multi-sig with one of the signers being a physical server, so funds are safe. The infrastructure looks like a mini blockchain (with only 3 validators or signers which are all run by us for now), so even if the frontend or backend servers would get hacked, no funds could be stolen since faking guarantee letters using the backend server doesen't do anything as the signers would also have to verify. It's complicated, but like I said before if I'll find willing trusted members to run signers with us I am willing to do it.

Having said all of the above as far as I'm concerned I am not doing anything illegal. I don't encourage illegal activity and will never promote the service on the darknet or for any illegal purposes, I'm a simple provider of privacy services. There are no statistics regarding % of CEX funds coming from illicit sources so we can't compare to what we know about mixers, but my guess is that the number is very similar if not higher for centralized exchanges. There are bad actors in every industry, you can't just shut down all businesses of one type because of a few bad apples. If the service will start to get seriously abused by bad actors and big pressure will be put on us then I'd much rather shut down the service early and honorably than put users funds and privacy at risk, but for now I still believe there has to be a way to run everything legally. This is not because I don't believe Bitcoin is fungible or anything of this sort, but regardless if the service gets seized or sanctioned, the end result is the same as in it can't really be used anymore, so everyone loses. Having great security is a must, but relying on this by itself doesen't generate any value for the long term. I'd much rather try to find a way in which everyone is happy, or at the very least not too unhappy, while users enjoy full privacy. This is what they pay for and nothing less is acceptable
I also want to emphasize that I have not commited any crimes while creating Whirlwind, for example identity theft.

Even though I don't believe I have anything to worry about, I'd still prefer to add more signers to the multi-sig so I don't have full control anymore. This would make it safer for everyone, I really do not like the fact that users have to trust me. For now this is the only option though, and I will not take any steps in this direction unless I am 100% sure it's done in a safe way. The community would also have to agree with the plan before I set it in motion
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Re: [OPEN]⚡whirlwind.money | Anonymity Mining Campaign | 12% APR | Daily Rewards⚡
by
whirlwindmoney
on 14/05/2023, 01:30:34 UTC
⭐ Merited by Rikafip (1) ,Renampun (1)
I'm not quite sure if this will be profitable in the long run. I haven't heard of any mixer that has managed to run for that long.
Not yet? I thought the previous mixers had been around for a long time, for example Chipmixer, they had a very long time. It must have been more than 5 years, right? Furthermore, I think we don't have any problem in withdrawing, they don't talk about our withdrawal limit time.

It was 6 years. Still would not be long enough to break even though (assuming you start today).
You may have misunderstood how the campaign works, it would be insane to ask you to deposit for 6 years or any amount of time really.

Distributions are made every day around 12:10 AM UTC so to be profitable you would need to wait for a maximum of 24 hours if for instance you deposited at 12:20 AM UTC, or only 10 minutes if you deposited at 12:00 AM UTC.

For a 1 BTC deposit your balance would look like this:

Day 1: 1 BTC
Day 2: 1 + (1 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00033333
Day 3: 1.00033333 + (1.00033333 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00066677
Day 4: 1.00066677 + (1.00066677 * 0.01) / 30 = 1.00100032
..

You can withdraw your balance at any point, there are no special conditions to participate in the campaign. All Notes are eligible and automatically participate in the campaign, you will receive rewards for as long as your Note is funded.

We hope we will reach the 10,000 Anonymity Set goal as soon as possible. We do not necessarily care about how long you keep your funds inside Whirlwind because by the time the campaign ends we would have added our entire reserve. At that point the multi-sig balance won't be an issue, even if we assume there is no other depositor besides us it should be more than enough to accomodate any amount.

interesting concept, but in the long run how profitable is it on your side because this service has guaranteed rewards for anybody staking going with the  "Anonymity Mining"?
In the short term we will almost surely lose money, but in the grand scheme of things it's irrelevant. A few BTC is a very small price to pay for what we are getting in return through this campaign. After reaching the Anonymity Set goal we expect the business to become very profitable because at that point it wouldn't make much sense for anyone to use another service so it's only a matter of time until Whirlwind's popularity explodes.

Does this mean that over 10k deposits, there will be no more campaign payments? What will be the incentive for people to keep depositing, when the number starts getting close to 10k?
Yes the campaign ends once we reach 10,000 deposits. If you are only looking for rewards then there won't be any incentive to deposit anymore, we are not a staking platform. On the other hand if you're looking for real privacy then you'd get it by simply using the service, and you could get it for free if you don't choose to donate.

I'd be willing to deposit, but there's this thing in the back of my head saying: "What if they have access to these generated private keys? It wouldn't be the first time when the mixing operator lied about something. If whirlwind gets busted somehow, the way they got Tornado, Helix, Chipmixer, will they be able to get my bitcoin?"
We have no reason to keep the Note private keys, if we wanted to steal your funds we could simply drain the multi-sig since that's where the BTC is kept. Currently the service is centralized, so you need to trust us if you want to use it.

From a technical point of view Tornado is the undisputed king and IMO it cannot be compared to anything else. Even though it got sanctioned no user lost any funds and it continues to function to this day, in fact it's unstoppable as long as Ethereum continues to exist.

If it's not obvious already Whirlwind is built on the same model, so it's already 'battle-tested' and we know for a fact it offers the best privacy assuming enough volume goes through it and the Anonymity Set is big enough. Considering this our only remaining important task besides reaching the Anonymity Set goal is to decentralize the service and we are already working on that as we speak.

We will also improve upon Tornado's compliance module and that should be more than enough to avoid giving anyone reasons to target us, more info about this will be released once we finalize the details.

Regarding Whirlwind getting 'busted' firstly there is no reason for this to happen for the foreseeable future, but our response to this concern is worth reading nonetheless:
Rather than asking a few questions about user privacy, I will ask another kind of question.

What preventative measures have you taken to protect yourself from arrest and federal government seizure of website assets (i.e: how do you plan to avoid Cipmixer's fate)?

It sure is a valid question and I understand the concern, I'll share my view on this issue. As I said since before I even launched the service, I am hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.

I could give more technical details about our security, but all I will say for now is that we took the most extreme security precautions possible. Our "hot wallet" is a 3/3 multi-sig with one of the signers being a physical server, so funds are safe. The infrastructure looks like a mini blockchain (with only 3 validators or signers which are all run by us for now), so even if the frontend or backend servers would get hacked, no funds could be stolen since faking guarantee letters using the backend server doesen't do anything as the signers would also have to verify. It's complicated, but like I said before if I'll find willing trusted members to run signers with us I am willing to do it.

Having said all of the above as far as I'm concerned I am not doing anything illegal. I don't encourage illegal activity and will never promote the service on the darknet or for any illegal purposes, I'm a simple provider of privacy services. There are no statistics regarding % of CEX funds coming from illicit sources so we can't compare to what we know about mixers, but my guess is that the number is very similar if not higher for centralized exchanges. There are bad actors in every industry, you can't just shut down all businesses of one type because of a few bad apples. If the service will start to get seriously abused by bad actors and big pressure will be put on us then I'd much rather shut down the service early and honorably than put users funds and privacy at risk, but for now I still believe there has to be a way to run everything legally. This is not because I don't believe Bitcoin is fungible or anything of this sort, but regardless if the service gets seized or sanctioned, the end result is the same as in it can't really be used anymore, so everyone loses. Having great security is a must, but relying on this by itself doesen't generate any value for the long term. I'd much rather try to find a way in which everyone is happy, or at the very least not too unhappy, while users enjoy full privacy. This is what they pay for and nothing less is acceptable
I also want to emphasize that I have not commited any crimes while creating Whirlwind, for example identity theft.

Even though I don't believe I have anything to worry about, I'd still prefer to add more signers to the multi-sig so I don't have full control anymore. This would make it safer for everyone, I really do not like the fact that users have to trust me. For now this is the only option though, and I will not take any steps in this direction unless I am 100% sure it's done in a safe way. The community would also have to agree with the plan before I set it in motion
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Re: [OPEN]⚡whirlwind.money | Anonymity Mining Campaign | 12% APR | Daily Rewards⚡
by
whirlwindmoney
on 13/05/2023, 01:53:32 UTC
Multi-sig Balance
Maybe you could try using the latest tool from member Bitmover for updating live Multi-sig Balance and Reward distributed (with some tweaking):
https://bitcoindata.science/bitcointalk-api.html
We are updating the second post manually after each distribution (which is also done manually) so not sure if it makes much sense using that tool in this case, but we could display the live balance along with each day's stats so it's easier to follow.

Nothing happens if people don't deposit, same as if we never started this campaign. On the other hand that would mean that there is no interest at all in Whirlwind, even though it's hard to believe that will be the case. All the feedback we received until now from people that tried us out was very positive, especially for the Pay to Note system. We built a novel system and that's almost surely the reason why it takes longer for users to get accustomed to it and understand its advantages, but with time we are sure this will change for the better.
So if I understand correctly you need to have more transactions for this campaign to work, that means it's better to have a 1000 transactions sent with 0.1 BTC than to have 100 BTC sent all at once from one wallet?
1000 x 0.1 BTC is definitely a lot better than 1 x 100 BTC for the stage we are in now, but it's still not ideal.

For a total volume of 100 BTC the best case scenario would look like this: 100 x 0.1 BTC | 20 x 0.5 BTC | 20 x 1 BTC | 6 x 5 BTC | 3 x 10 BTC

The more varied the deposited amounts are and the more transactions happen, the better it is since it will make it much harder for anyone to track where outputs originate from.

Imagine we got to the 10,000 Anonymity Set goal and the deposited amounts look like this: 2000 x 0.1 BTC | 2000 x 0.5 BTC | 2000 x 1 BTC | 2000 x 5 BTC | 1000 x 10 BTC | 1000 x 50 BTC

Now you want to find out where a 0.5 BTC or 1 BTC or 5 BTC output might originate from, where do you even start? It could originate from one or multiple deposits out of the entire 10,000, or it could simply be a Pay to Note transfer, how could you know? Even if you have access to the most advanced analytics software in existence it's impossible to figure it out unless you have outside information. This is why it's crucial to grow the Anonymity Set as fast as possible, if we manage to succeed in doing this then nothing comes close to the privacy you're getting when using Whirlwind. The Anonymity Mining campaign's role is to help us get there faster by basically paying for these deposits to happen.
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Merits 9 from 3 users
Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 12/05/2023, 16:01:50 UTC
⭐ Merited by LoyceV (4) ,LeGaulois (3) ,dkbit98 (2)
We received an unfortunate support inquiry and after discussing with the user in question we asked for his permission to post on bitcointalk and let the community decide how this matter should be resolved. He agreed as long as we do not reveal his transaction so here we are.

We are posting this in the ANN thread because we can't stress enough how important it is to find a general consensus on what should happen in this situation since it could have long-lasting implications for the future and we want to treat everyone fairly and show full transparency.

We will respect the community's decision, whatever it will be. To be clear we are not accusing anyone of ill intentions, we will lay out the facts and we kindly ask everyone to voice out their opinion.

The user contacted us and this is the information given to us:
1. He didn't save the Note Private Key
2. He didn't save the Note Public Address
3. He didn't save the Letter of Guarantee
4. He doesen't remember the exact donation % used
5. He can sign a message from the address used to deposit on Whirlwind



From our point of view the situation looks like this:
The user signing a message from the deposit address is definitely helpful, but that by itself doesen't prove anything other than the fact that indeed he made a deposit

As said before our databases (backend + 3 signers) only hold the Notes Public Addresses and their respective balances. We do not store any timestamps, information about deposits/pay to note/withdraws. We used this approach to keep Notes private even if a database breach happens at some point.

In this specific situation this is a huge problem because we ourselves have no way of linking a deposit to a Note, so unless we receive the Letter of Guarantee it's just a guessing game at best and we need to trust the user's word as we have nothing else to work with. We also have no way of verifying if the Note balance was partially or completely spent already because we do not know which one it is.

We checked the databases and there is more than 1 Note with a very similar balance, we calculated using what the user recalled was his donation % used and the numbers do not match exactly. This indicates that either he doesen't remember the % correctly or we are lied to, again there is no way for us to verify. In fact another possibility is that he spent his Note already, and none of the ones we see in the database are his.

The system is built in such a way that our manual intervention shouldn't ever be needed unless the user himself makes a mistake. Considering that at some point we will decentralize the service and there will be more signers manual intervention will only become harder to do so we need to agree on some sort of 'standard procedure'. It's important to mention that if the user ever finds his private key he will be able to withdraw without issues, the funds will remain on the multi-sig. (provided we don't identify the Note, delete it from the database and do a manual refund)

For us this is a lose-lose situation no matter what we choose to do since 'solving' it in any way would imply that we are not abiding by our own rules which are clearly states everywhere.(save your private key or you lose access to your funds, and in order to contact support you need to provide the LoG).

We have the following options, if anyone sees a better solution please let us know:
1. Refund him from our reserve and risk setting a dangerous precedent while also risking taking the hit ourselves in case we were lied to. (The Note would remain valid because we wouldn't know which one to delete)

2. Temporarily disable all Notes with similar balances and wait for the other Note holders to contact us to reenable them. If after some time 1 Note remains unchanged and we didn't receive any inquiries about it we would assume it belongs to this users and refund him. We would still risk taking the hit ourselves because the remaining Note holder may just not pay attention to the situation and not inquire about it only until after we've refunded. This is another dangerous precedent which we would like to avoid at all costs.

3. Treat Whirlwind as a network and respect the rules, in this case we will not be able to help in any way and the user would lose access to his funds assuming it's true that indeed he lost the private key



Regardless of what the outcome will be this should serve as an important lesson for everyone to never deposit before making sure you saved your Note Private Key. If you have access to it you won't encounter any issues.

Looking forward to your opinions.
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Merits 1 from 1 user
Re: [OPEN]⚡whirlwind.money | Anonymity Mining Campaign | 12% APR | Daily Rewards⚡
by
whirlwindmoney
on 12/05/2023, 02:00:20 UTC
⭐ Merited by dkbit98 (1)
Is it a fixed amount every day, that 0.03333... BTC or it will depend on the amount of bitcoins that passed through your service on a certain day? Also, is this 1% or 0.0003333 for 1BTC the guaranteed amount or it can also vary depending on the use of the service and total bitcoins in your stake "pool"?
The 1% monthly return is the minimum we guarantee for as long as the campaign will last, we adjust the distributed amount every day to reflect this considering the multi-sig balance changes. With the current balance of around 11BTC our costs are about 0.11BTC a month.

In order to reward early depositors we were considering setting a 'floor' for the total rewards paid out at 0.5BTC a month, meaning that with the current balance a depositor would receive 4.5% monthly return. This figure would go down continuously until it comes back to the usual 1% when the balance hits 50BTC and will continue like that until our Anonymity Set goal is reached.

So, it mean, monthly interest amount is fixed and it is not cumulative, no compound interest, only 1% per month is the maximum reward for participants.
In fact, the APR at 12% is higher than what we can get at the moment if we compare with banks. But, have you ever thought about applying compound interest? Although it is not very feasible Cheesy

By the way, it looks like the image is faulty? I can't see its details
The rewards are compounding, every day you receive 1%/30 of your total Note balance and that includes Anonymity Mining distributions.

Fixed the images thank you for pointing that out

What is going to happen if not enough people send Bitcoin for this Anonymity Mining Campaign, and is there any way someone could track how much BTC is deposited in total?
Everyone can track how much BTC is currently in the multi-sig since it's public: https://mempool.space/address/bc1qf8h5k6sash8007vpesymxkw2xsg5d0r3j4l5vmcrwpz2pqu66fjstzgd3r

Nothing happens if people don't deposit, same as if we never started this campaign. On the other hand that would mean that there is no interest at all in Whirlwind, even though it's hard to believe that will be the case. All the feedback we received until now from people that tried us out was very positive, especially for the Pay to Note system. We built a novel system and that's almost surely the reason why it takes longer for users to get accustomed to it and understand its advantages, but with time we are sure this will change for the better.

This is a good idea you have shared OP. I am curious to know more about this. Do whirlwind have their own mining farm or they are affiliated to another mining farm let us know because from what I see, whirlwind are mixers and I believe they are doing just fine with that investment. How come So soon it is a mining farm with a 12% APR daily yield rewards. Is it not worth explaining so we could know?
We've been transparent about the fact that we pay these rewards ourselves from our reserve. There are no partnerships with any other projects and it's important to make it clear that this campaign is temporary, Whirlwind is not a staking platform and it will never be. The point of this campaign is to grow the Anonymity Set and this is only needed at the beginning of the service, the stage we are in now.

I am also curious when there are not enough people who deposited into the pool, but One things is sure that this staking service acts as add more security into the mixing itself but correct me if I am wrong.
Yes it does, by having a larger Anonymity Set every current or future user benefits from a higher level of privacy when using Whirlwind. If it's still not clear why this is the case please ask and we will explain again.

Who is going to hold the privkey? Of course, it's whirlwind if I'm not missing anything. I don't think a lot of people will be interested because of the above reason. It's the same as centralized exchange staking though the APR is high here if I'm correct.
You mean any funded note. Does it include the previous funded note? I have created note for the signature campaign fund. Is it eligible for the above reward?
If yes, please tell me how to exclude my note from this campaign.
What do you mean by who is going to hold the private key? Only users have access to their Note private key, we do not have that information.

If you have a funded Note, including if you received the signature campaign payment on it, then you are automatically participating in the campaign and are receiving daily rewards based on its balance. If you want to exclude yourself from this campaign the only way to do so is to withdraw your balance to your on-chain address, otherwise rewards will keep accumulating.

Also keep in mind that if it makes economic sense for you (daily reward covers the network fee for another deposit), you could withdraw the entire balance right after receiving the daily reward and then deposit it again right before the next daily reward is distributed. This way you would keep your risk at a minimum, but if you think we will steal your funds then there is no argument for depositing in the first place.
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Re: [OPEN]⚡whirlwind.money | Anonymity Mining Campaign | 12% APR | Daily Rewards⚡
by
whirlwindmoney
on 11/05/2023, 13:45:49 UTC
If I understand correctly, the explanation is simple: all one has to do is deposit and hold it on their balance, and the reward will be calculated based on their period of holding.

My question is, since it's nothing like staking, if one
decides to deposit today and can't be patient enough to wait for a full month, how will the reward be calculated? Will there be no reward for such a depositor?

Will there be any form of fee deduction or what so ever? I can't see any information regarding fees here. I know if one wants to withdraw back to an address fee needs to be charged to cover up the transaction, that's the not fee am asking of. 
It's quite similar to a staking system, rewards are distributed daily to your Note so you don't have to wait for a full month to access them.

For example if you have a Note with a balance of 1BTC you will receive 0.00033333BTC every day added to your balance, so 0.01BTC a month in total. After a day your Note balance would be 1.00033333BTC and so on until you withdraw. You could deposit today, wait for a day, withdraw and you would still get to keep the rewards for that day.

At the moment there are no fees on Whirlwind, not even for on-chain withdraws. Unless you choose to donate voluntarily it's completely free to use and all fees are on us. We will update the FAQ in the second post with more information
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Re: [OPEN]⚡whirlwind.money | Anonymity Mining Campaign | 12% APR | Daily Rewards⚡
by
whirlwindmoney
on 11/05/2023, 12:00:22 UTC
Reserved for FAQ and updates
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Merits 11 from 5 users
Topic OP
[OPEN]⚡whirlwind.money | Anonymity Mining Campaign | 12% APR | Daily Rewards⚡
by
whirlwindmoney
on 11/05/2023, 11:59:57 UTC
⭐ Merited by klarki (5) ,fillippone (3) ,PX-Z (1) ,Hhampuz (1) ,macson (1)




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Re: [ANN] Whirlwind.money | ⚡No Fee⚡ | Ultimate Privacy | Anonymity Mining 12% APR🔥
by
whirlwindmoney
on 11/05/2023, 11:53:40 UTC
The BTC has landed in my wallet, thanks for your concern, but I don't know why the transaction take this long before confirmation.
Is it because I decided to send it to an exchange wallet in order to avoid the network congestion then?
All good, the transaction was broadcasted since yesterday but probably network fees increased before it was confirmed and only came back down today, that's why it took longer to reach your exchange wallet.

Next time I suggest you look the withdraw address up in an explorer to check yourself if the transaction was broadcasted or not.

We also highly recommended that you first withdraw from Whirlwind to one of your own addresses and only afterwards send where you want to. This way even if the withdraw from our multi-sig gets stuck like it happened this time you can still spend the UTXO with a higher fee and that will confirm the transaction faster.