Thanks for that, although I still don't have all the knowledge needed to properly make an informed decision, I now have a great place to start my research.  Here, have a merit!

there are still legal issues and developers are not legal experts. when they throw around the word "fungible" they act as if having a fungible currency is some get out of jail fre card. its not.

let me explain
imagine your a basic protestor and want to reeceive anonymous donations so you can buy placards.
imagin you fear prosecution because insighting a protst in a country was a 30day jailterm and being put on a anarcist watchlist for rest of life
but separetely(ill get tio it later) bing paid to murder somone is life in prison

..
ok now then things like coinjoin need a central co-ordinator that receives funds from multiple people wanting to hide thier actions and redistributes it to multiple people wanting to hide their actions

in short. all the funds coinjoin play with are dogdy for multiple possible crimes

so you (A) want donations from pro-protest donators(a)
so someone else(B) is a hitman getting paid by a person that wants someone dead(b)
without coinjoin transactions look like
(a)->(A)
(b)->(B)

with coinjoin
(a)->(B)
(b)->(A)

so ok no on can see that you are getting paid to be a protestor. but what you dont realise is you received funds from someone that wants someon else killed.

why is this a problem.
well fiat(dollars/pounds) are fungible. yet people get their funds frozen, siezed, investigated. and people do go to jail on evidence like showing they received money to kill someone. same with any currency.

again what you dont realise is trying to hide a petty 30day crime could end up with you getting locked up for life for a bigger crime. such as murder or even for just money laundering by just wanting to be anonymous. sometimes its not the petty crime ur trying to hide that hurts you, but the cover up that ends up hurting you more.

coinjoin main stash of funds are not clean funds. so you have no idea what you could b getting yourself involved in. and if arrested its not a simple 'i dunno' that would be accepted it would be 'you recieved it, you spent it, that makes you an accessory of multiple crimes linked to the funds you received.'and ontop of that we also noticed you then used the funds to protest so lets add that crime ontop too

this is why many exchanges. without even investigating exactly what crime fund origins came from. if the funds show a pattern of being related to a money launder/mixer service. the funds are blacklisted.

here is one big funny thought to think about.
gmax helps develop coinjoin.
gmax also helps develop business tools for crypto and is paid by barry silbert (has portfolio of owning exchanges)

which the exchanges do blacklist mixers
these wallets that take in funds and mix and redistribute want innocent people who just want a cup of coffee to use them. not because a mixer is not a crime. not because there is no law. but its so that those receiving coins to do crimes receive clean coins from innocent people. .. the problem with that is innocent people just wanting to buy a lambo end up getting arrested for being linked to money laundering and paying a hitman even if they had no knowledge that their funds taint went to a hitman

fungible does not mean criminals cant get arrested, fungable does not mean innocent people cant be framed for a crime they did not commit. and mixers mean your atleast going to get in trouble for money laundering.
or at very best. if your not prosecuted for a crime you didnt commit. your still going to have to explain why cops knocked at your door, cuffed you and interviewed you about your innocent lambo and how it was funded.
sometimes just bing questioned by cops or just being put on bail while they decide if theres enough evidence scope to take you to court is more shameful then wanting to hide that you bought a lambo

In my own opinion using WASABI will mean more privacy on your behalf. According to the creator of wasabi, I have read in his tweet that wasabi provides more privacy since according to him the bitcoin blockchain is lacking in privacy. But this privacy is not free, when we use wasabi in exchange for privacy we pay additional transaction fees. In the end is more about making money for wasabi. So I guess if we are just a small holders and we dont engage on illegal activities we dont need wasabi. Instead of earning more we will be paying more.

The problem is that this 'problem' rests with the third parties these coins might interact with and I doubt their policies are clear or fully formed and they might have them dictated to them by governments. It's still early days and everyone's current activities may come to bite them on the botty a long time down the line.

Ideally we'll reach a point where the need for third parties is way lower than it is now but until then either minimise contact with them, assume the worst or pile in now when things aren't set in stone.

Thanks for the replies.  The argument is fairly clear and it looks like I'll avoid coin joins for now until things get clearer.  There's a lot of hype/support from regarded persons in the community if this has recourse potential.  I'd not be happy to learn later that I had been trading coins I worked and paid dollars for, for stolen coins. 

not exactly. once outputs are multiple hops from the exchange, then at best, blockchain analysis can give some degree of confidence regarding identity. nobody can prove anything about those latter transactions just by looking at the blockchain, especially if a user knows how to avoid cluster analysis. the coins may easily have passed through multiple hands. in fact, bitcoin can theoretically be used as a physical bearer instrument, so coins could even be passed around through multiple parties without transacting on the blockchain.


the person would need to prove the origin sans blockchain analysis. typically, that's how it would be done anyway---a person pointing at a bunch of public addresses on a blockchain explorer isn't proof of anything anyway.

bank statements, receipts, trading records, service withdrawal records, etc


nobody can speak to that, unfortunately. the FATF travel rule is unprecedented and some exchanges have reacted by de-listing privacy coins. we could see obfuscated transactions like coinjoins (and also centralized activity like traditional mixing) receive increased scrutiny from exchanges as VASPs become increasingly regulated.

I have yet to hear of a case of mixed coins being rejected from anywhere, though of course many of them refuse to tell you why you're getting the boot.

So far it's all been from identifiable sources that break the terms and conditions of wherever the coins end up. The first place that does do it is going to attract a very large dollop of ire.

isn't that counter productive?
using such service but want to proof your holding to authority afterwards?
anyway, you can just simply show the connection between the origin and the final balance
all connecting transaction ids and give proof that you have indirect/direct control on both addresses
and by doing so, you lose all your privacy and the principal benefit of coinjoin use

I think the best time to use CoinJoin is when you don't need it right at this moment, but preparing for a future transaction that you'd want to separate from the rest of your other transactions.

That would mean, you have to keep a certain amount of balance in your wallet available for use, and you don't necessarily buy BTC from an exchange to use soon.

In this instance, and I'll provide an example, say you accumulated or bought or mined or otherwise acquire some 100 coins. You intend to buy something or pay for a service later which would cost maybe 1 coin.

So that service does not know which exchange you bought your coins from, or it's history, and how it's linked to any other coins you have, you decide to CoinJoin the original 100 coins, either with Wasabi or JoinMarket or any number of other participants, maybe worth a few thousand coins, then have those separated into different addresses when sent back to you, maybe 50 addresses, each one having maybe about 2 coins each.

Furthermore, you decide to hop them a few more times just to separate them from the CoinJoin transaction.

By the time you do your planned transaction with any merchant, or whoever you're going to pay, all they will see is that it come from one of your wallet addresses that had 2 coins, and before that it came from another address, and before that it came from "somewhere" and they wouldn't care that far back anymore.

At most, they'd know where your change went, but most likely they would not care at all what happens to it. They only care that they were paid.

This is how it should be with most transactions. Eventually, the chain analysis will stop since they can't trace stuff back anymore, although I've heard it, they only really check 3 hops away from the deposit or payment address they give you, just to make to make sure it doesn't come from any known bad or evil addresses.

Now if you did everything I said above, and your CoinJoin is also a stealth CoinJoin that isn't noticeably or obviously a CoinJoin, that would be even better.