It is very paramount that we consider our privacy together with the security of our assets, if we are to consider this vital information you've just provided fro this thread, we need to have a rethink on this regard because mixing services are truly facing serious regulations from government and other related internal challenges, this isn't a call for us not to know what to do or know about other necessary advantage we could take from it, privacy and security should be both considered and achieved by every bitcoiners.


I will go with the best recommendation with the use of coinjoin either through joinmarket or whirlpool but as for wasabi, i think there's a recent compromise in terms of privacy using it just as it was found with a linkage related to that in ledger whereby privacy is nit in its maximum achievement using them.

Great post dear OP, Really useful I wanted to add that we can also use Trezor's new Hardware wallet to get benefit from the Coinjoin feature but con is that coinjoin feature is provided by wasabi wallet cooperation. Which means Trezor HW is also making some actions against anonymity as ledger did.

Really!! I mean one thing I knew about them is they are not a good option due to centralization which obviously means we should avoid it but I think your statement make sense. Because centralization means they have people behind there infrastructure to do things like a middlemen.(metaphorically saying).

Option 3 is also secure.

I checked the orderbook, and there are over 700 BTC in liquidity. The default coordinator from Wasabi uses less than that, but I get your concern. Total bitcoin from inputs and total inputs should be what defines the anonymity set. I'm also not aware of what's the total bitcoin in Samurai's liquidity. I'll remove it as "best" for the time being.

I was paying about $4 to $6 for 9 inputs when the fees weren't high. I had once paid over $10. We should take into consideration that it's been months since the mempool was nearly empty.

Well, I want to keep this free of personal complains and as much objective and on-the-point as possible. What the default coordinator does with the money it makes isn't important for the coinjoin user, but for the integrity of their business. If treating the currency as non-fungible for a pro-fungibility claimed company isn't making the splash, then the cooperation with analysis company won't either.

Good to know, thanks. Liquidity noted into OP and JoinMarket removed as best in terms of anonymity set.

But what ultimately matters when remixing is the new coins that come in. If you do a coinjoin with all inputs remixed, then it won't make a difference. Also, it makes yourself more untraceable to be in a coinjoin with 100 inputs, than in one with 5, so the number of inputs used surely matters.

I've always had mixing in my mind as a picture of a person lost in crowd. The more the people, the less likely to find that one.

What's important here is to break down what's user's best courses to accomplish mixing. Even if funding blockchain surveillance is completely contradictory to being proclaimed a pro-privacy service, that doesn't change their coinjoin process. Just as if Samurai announced that they're funding the Ukrainian war, it wouldn't change the effectiveness of the coinjoin. It'd ruin their reputation, and people would stop using it; not because of effectiveness, but ethical concerns.

Great thread buddy, I would love if you could have created some infographics to make it easier to understand instead of reading the whole post, I still appreciate the post though.
Most of the Mixer services work good for months and once they hit a jackpot, a big order worth millions, they simply shutdown their services. I would prefer those which are trusted in the community.

Absolutely agree, but my point is the size of the total liquidity pool is not that relevant because nobody is mixing with every other output in the pool. Whether the total liquidity is 5 BTC or 500,000 BTC, it doesn't make a difference if I only coinjoin with 0.5 BTC of it.

So let's say JoinMarket has ~700 BTC in liquidity and Whirlpool has ~8,500. I have 0.5 BTC to coinjoin in each one. For JoinMarket, I perform a single coinjoin with 19 other participants. For Whirlpool, I perform a single coinjoin with 4 other participants. At this point, my anonymity set is greater for the JoinMarket, even though Whirlpool has the greater overall liquidity. But then I leave my coinjoined output in Whirlpool and it gets another 5 free remixes. Now my Whirlpool anonymity set is exponentially larger than my JoinMarket one, especially once you consider the forward looking anonymity set and all the free remixes that every other output I have coinjoined alongside is also getting.

I guess the essence of what I'm saying is that liquidity is not the same as anonymity set. It is difficult to say which out of JoinMarket and Whirlpool provides the best anonymity set, because it depends entirely on how you use them.

It absolutely does. Any sane user of a privacy service does not want the fee they pay being handed to blockchain analysis to spy on their inputs and potentially censor those inputs based on their findings. This is antithetical to the entire concept of privacy.

I'm struggling to imagine how I could do that without seeming affiliated to a service.

Well, no. Just as with centralized exchanges, services which subsequently tumble your bitcoin wouldn't fall in the "Mixer services" category, in my opinion. If you want to go a la mixer, then use a mixer. Internet services listed are specifically created for that purpose. Don't exchange gamble coins thinking that the outcome will be the same.

I removed anonymity set from both Joinmarket and Whirlpool. It's misleading and not important to begin with; both are very effective. From that point on, it depends on how many remixes you'll do.

It is, indeed. I have added - "Funds blockchain analysis company and requests permission from them when user does coinjoin.". I don't believe there's anything more to say.

Added both.

Brilliant post. Let me just say that JoinMarket has a nice GUI (Jam) and is really easy to use. You can run it on your own node too.

If a 'honeypot' is a site or service that covertly passes your personal data on to governments, is a company that does it openly an 'overt honeypot'?  Or is there a better name for it?  Wasabi are giving your details to blockchain analysis firms and those companies are likely passing the details over to law enforcement or other government agencies.