As you probably know, Bitcoin is an incredibly secure way to transfer payments. It's security lies in the fact that everything is done in a way that everyone can see and keep a record of what is going on.
If I hand you cash, you can claim that I never actually gave you the money. With Bitcoin, the transaction is logged into a public ledger that anyone can see (Go look at Blockchain.info and type in a Bitcoin address).
If I send PersonA a Bitcoin and he sends PersonB that same Bitcoin, you can follow the whole history of that Bitcoin and see what accounts it has been through. Accounts are just the BTC addresses so they're not actually tied to any one person, however, with large enough quantities of Bitcoin going through the same account, it can be a way for someone (Say your local law enforcement) to establish a pattern of payments and maybe connect that address to a particular person.
Tumbling coins is a way to disassociate yourself from a particular coin. For example, personA got a bitcoin from selling drugs online. PersonB got a bitcoin from online gambling. They both send their coins to CoinTumblingService (We'll call him CTS). CTS gives personA the bitcoin that personB sent in and personB gets the bitcoin that personA sent in. Now, with major coin tumbling services, there's hundreds of people sending coins in at any given time. This makes it very hard for someone to track the Bitcoin being sent because it's mixed up with hundreds of other transactions.
tl;dr : Coin tumbling is a way to hide the original source of bitcoins for whatever reason you may want to do so. It's a crucial part of legitimizing drug income for merchants (You don't want your primary BTC address to have deposits for tens of thousands of dollars from the Silk Road main wallet go straight to Coinbase, linked to your bank and personal info).
If you're buying drugs online, coin tumbling might be something to look into if you're hyper paranoid, but cops aren't going to build a case off the blockchain to grab you for buying a few grams of coke online. It's a bigger deal for merchants than buyers.
[1 Points] samwhiskey:
You don't have too
[0 Points] bobandmargaret:
It's a way to give someone 3% or so of your BTC for basically jack shit.
As you probably know, Bitcoin is an incredibly secure way to transfer payments. It's security lies in the fact that everything is done in a way that everyone can see and keep a record of what is going on. If I hand you cash, you can claim that I never actually gave you the money. With Bitcoin, the transaction is logged into a public ledger that anyone can see (Go look at Blockchain.info and type in a Bitcoin address).
If I send PersonA a Bitcoin and he sends PersonB that same Bitcoin, you can follow the whole history of that Bitcoin and see what accounts it has been through. Accounts are just the BTC addresses so they're not actually tied to any one person, however, with large enough quantities of Bitcoin going through the same account, it can be a way for someone (Say your local law enforcement) to establish a pattern of payments and maybe connect that address to a particular person.
Tumbling coins is a way to disassociate yourself from a particular coin. For example, personA got a bitcoin from selling drugs online. PersonB got a bitcoin from online gambling. They both send their coins to CoinTumblingService (We'll call him CTS). CTS gives personA the bitcoin that personB sent in and personB gets the bitcoin that personA sent in. Now, with major coin tumbling services, there's hundreds of people sending coins in at any given time. This makes it very hard for someone to track the Bitcoin being sent because it's mixed up with hundreds of other transactions.
tl;dr : Coin tumbling is a way to hide the original source of bitcoins for whatever reason you may want to do so. It's a crucial part of legitimizing drug income for merchants (You don't want your primary BTC address to have deposits for tens of thousands of dollars from the Silk Road main wallet go straight to Coinbase, linked to your bank and personal info).
If you're buying drugs online, coin tumbling might be something to look into if you're hyper paranoid, but cops aren't going to build a case off the blockchain to grab you for buying a few grams of coke online. It's a bigger deal for merchants than buyers.