Impostr either lea psyops scaremongering toolbag or dnm idiot, you decide.

Impostr made wild assumptions in his mixer denaonymizing post about addresses belonging to agora, lbc, and particularly btcfog. Perhaps at some point many hops away coin touched the hot wallets of one of these services but lets assume these addresses do in fact in some way directly correlate to these services (they dont). Once youve proven that these addresses are associated you have to prove that they are controlled by the same entity, whoevers trying to mix their coin, this is where all the blockchain analyis breaks down, for instance if i send coin from address 93029jffji0jf0wejfef to d939j209jd0wejd0wejf, did i just send it to my penpal over in india?

or maybe i sent it to ISIS to fund the islamic state, or maybe im just moving my own money around between wallets. How are you going to know who controls what addresses.....oh wait youre not, guess thats why blockchain analysis only goes so far as moving coins out of coinbase where they do know you control an address, to whatever addresses they can associate with the hotwallet of some watched service. In the same vien to defeat coinbases ban-by-association feature you move coin to some neutral services and then onto your mixer/dnm/gamblingsite/terroristfundraiser, they cant prove or even know that you didnt buy a pair of socks and then the sock maker bought some fake rolex watches and the fake rolex watchmaker gambled it all away.**

Alright??? Its not rocket science. BUT lets say you are superNSAleetBlockchainAnalyzer and have hacked every computer on earth to see who controls what, and you have your coin and send it through a mixer, then you throw your computer away, travel to another country buy a new computer create a new wallet login from some random coffee shop and withdraw to that, not even nsasuperspy can determine you own the new computer, all thats left for them is to figure out if mixer withdraw address A be linked to the previously traced mixer deposit address B. This is where the crux of Impostr's claim lies that he was able to backpeddle through a mixer by tracing the amounts over a short peroid of time.

If i sent 1.239123912039 coins through a mixer, both fog and blender will then break that number up into a multiude of smaller amounts (in addition to whatever amounts i broke it up into when depositing). WHy do they do this? Because it makes it possible to match-pair correlating amounts. Let me get this straight, mixers dont just take everyones coins and shake them around in a bag and give them back to you, they take amounts, break them into differening and then switch those amounts out to give to different people. This makes it quick and easier and anonymousier to mix coins, where otherwisewaiting on enough people that have 1.23992391923123 coins to mix with would only produce a anonymity set of 2 and take forever to match.

Alot of what a mixer does is off-chain, meaning you cant trace point A to point B because there was also point CDEFG that didnt happen on the blockchain, this is how exchanges work too but for different reasons. So for anyone who look through the blockchain at a mixers supposed addresses and say any of them correlate is well, stupid. This is also why you must trust your mixer because its exactly this off-chain movement of coins that makes its anonymous and if known can deanonymize you. Its also why you shouldnt use an exchange to mix coins because exchanges themselves arent anonymous (perhaps to you but not law enforcement), so in fact what you are paying 1-3% for is not the act of mixing but trust you place in the operators remaining secure and anonymous.


Comments


[8 Points] iLoveDNM:

Holy shit man. If you're going to call someone an idiot make your post readable. At least use paragraphs and correct spelling. This post reads like the ramblings of a meth addict suffering a psychotic break.


[2 Points] None:

I believe analysis to be true...however until the block chain reads:

John Doe sent $300 to Jane Smith for 4g of Cocaine at this physical address, it will remain cursory evidence and nothing that can be used to arrest someone.


[1 Points] ShulginsCat:

So.. tell me if I'm paraphrasing this correctly:

While impost_r did in fact show how a transaction to Agora can be traced back to an LBC bitcoin address, that isn't by itself indisputable evidence, because:

  1. We don't know that the Agora purchase was illegal, if any was even made. Moving coins to a DNM isn't a crime.
  2. We don't know that there weren't additional humans in between the LBC purchase and the tumbler, or between the tumbler and Agora.
  3. Because of 1+2, we cannot prove that there was any knowledge of a crime by the owner of the initial bitcoin address.

Sounds right ?


[1 Points] IDpwni:

Their twitter icon is Blake Benthall so obviously they have to be LE!