As @findingnemo already wrote, atomic swaps are an exchange technology, not a mixing technology.
However, I think they could even be used on the Bitcoin blockchain alone to mix coins without having to go through an altcoin. I only still haven't seen a "platform" for that.

Basically, an atomic swap connects two sets of 2 transactions by a secret known only to the participants. It's an HTLC, very similar to those used in Lightning. So I technically don't see a problem to build a platform for BTC <-> BTC atomic swaps. However, the factor time may it make more convenient, above all for criminals, to go through some blockchain with lower block intervals, so they can make several transactions there and hide their traces even more.

Atomic swaps have two shortcomings regarding centralized mixers: 1) they can be canceled by one of the parties and 2) they take more time due to the timelocks involved (normally a few hours if Bitcoin is involved, in the case of altcoin-altcoin swaps 15-60 minutes depending on the block times).

So, in the current situation where atomic swaps have low liquidity, it would take a long time to mix especially large quantities of funds, because you must find an exchange partner, then hope that this partner does not cancel, and if he cancels, then do the whole process again. So for large amounts you would take several hours. But: Once you're through, you are almost undetectable (with the exception that your exchange partner heard something about illict origin of your funds, but that is very unlikely, and to be sure you can do one swap more).

Basically it's a virtuous cycle: once the liquidity grows on atomic swaps, more traders will be available, and that not only increases the anonymity set, but also the chance to mix funds fastly. But we're still not there.

It's also not sure if atomic swaps can be made as easy to use as a current centralized mixer. I guess it is technically possible, but current platforms aren't that easy to use.

In general I agree. I don't think that all governments of major countries are totally against Bitcoin, but in many ruling parties there are large anti-crypto movements, and of course these sectors try to convince the governments to use the excuse of crime to tighten regulation further.

Of course it's relatively easy to build a mixer, but if the crackdown deepens, it will become more difficult for them to 1) find a provider for the website, 2) find a domain, 3) advertise the service, 4) take all the legal risk to be online for a couple of months. Of course you could say that these are simply cost factors and they could take higher fees, but that will make decentralized methods with atomic swaps and CoinJoins becoming more attractive.

I don't get why they think they can stop it. When has the government managed to stop something that people stood behind? They banned alcohol and people continued to drink. They banned drugs, most teenagers admit to having used drugs at least once. They banned torrents, you can still download whatever you want within minutes from torrent sites like 1337x. China banned bitcoin, now China approved bitcoin ETF... It's all one big comedy. THey made a big deal out of banning Tornado Cash when nobody even used that thing. It was just a PR stunt for the government. They act like they give a shit about our welfare and safety, we act like we give a shit about their laws...

The whole essence of censorships and privacy evasion from the governments isn't about curbing any form of crime whatsoever... That's what they've been using to cover up their tracks and, act like they don't have any personal vendetta against Bitcoin itself.
You see, since every transaction isn't necessarily traceable, they're beginning to tire! The fear that people might HODL so much and that Bitcoin could enrich people in a way that they're richer than the government themselves, which already negates and thwarts their whole effort in fighting against inflation is reallll!!
Secondly, they're just bossy and greedy. Having a feeling that their obnoxious taxes should be extended into the crypto world is the lamest thing they'd ever think of.
This is just their usual sentiment old boy!

My view of mixers is that it is a double-edged sword that has no good solution. I agree that banning or cracking down on mixers is a futile endeavour, but it doesn't mean that whatever the government is doing is wrong, nor is it right.

The day that your mixers cooperates with the government is a critical failure of what mixers is trying to do. Your mixers should provide a single function of mixing your coins, and removing the links between the previous coins and the current coins. If they have any say otherwise, lets say they want to freeze your coins because it seems to be from a dubious origin, then it becomes non-fungible and your privacy is impacted. Mixers, nor any party for that matter should never freezing their customer's funds and should only carry out its purpose only. Censorship and funds seizure goes against the ethos of Bitcoin. I personally would not want any mixers who is dealing with my funds to be able to freeze it for no good reason, nor have any form of cooperation with any authorities; it becomes a rabbit hole for, let's say if they cooperate to track down political dissents, sensitive individuals, capital control, etc. Even if the mixers doesn't want to cooperate, there is no choice because they are a registered entity within their jurisdiction.

Government cracks down on mixers because they shoot at anything that is tainted with illicit activities. From a government perspective, it is rightfully so; mixers are always off-shore and out of their jurisdiction. If they have an opportunity to do something, you bet that they will close it down. Having them closed doesn't mean that it is bad, it just exposes the fact that centralized mixers are not infallible and we should be moving off to alternatives which cannot be tracked nor influenced by authorities.

I think this is a legit point of view. However, in my opinion, there is a large area beween total non-cooperation up to total cooperation (e.g. let's think about a "KYC mixer") a mixer can do. And I would be comfortable with a mixer who cooperates in some ways as long as they don't compromise the users' privacy, if this would be a condition for the mixer to become legal in a country.

The fungibility problem is indeed a difficult one. I would accept a very short, temporary loss of fungibility of a certain set of coins if the services have clear rules to retain funds in some situations. I would for example accept the following rule in a mixer's ToS: if someone deposits the coins on the mixer, and there is a direct and clear link to funds which were recently (e.g. in the last 24 hours) stolen, without other funds mixed in, then coins can be retained. But a mixer freezing even coins of hacks commited months ago would not have my approval.

This is true but that is also something a centralized mixer couldn't change. If tainted coins enter a mixer, the mixer's owner will need to sell them to another user which will then end up with the tainted coins. For atomic swaps the problem is immediately visible, but for mixers exactly the same applies. I don't know exactly how mixers operate in such cases, but I guess that they will try to move the coins around for some time using different strategies like CoinJoins until the link to the tainted address becomes very blurred and then only sell the coins again. Users of atomic swaps can try a similar strategy. In general I think CoinJoins are also an important part of the "decentralized privacy" puzzle, atomic swaps alone are probably not enough.

Any mixer that complies with law enforcement defeats the purpose as to why people use mixers. As long as a mixer cooperates with law enforcement, there is no way you can be certain that users' privacy isn't going to be compromised, and surely it going to grow from a small form of cooperation to a total one, so it is a no.
I do not agree, no one would want to deposit coins into a mixer that could treat their bitcoins as non fungible, no matter how clear the rules are and even if the loss of fungibility is only temporary. The bitcoin community have always stood against privacy services that treat BTC as non-fungible, i.e. Wasabi and zkSNACKs, they faced a lot of 'attack' from the BTC community the moment they started offering selective privacy and blacklisting certain utxo's from their CoinJoin.

Unfortunately, coming under regulations means KYC is necessary, for the current regulations. This is to ensure absolutely 0 illicit transactions are going through. There is no way whatsoever that any country will come up with a middle-ground because there would still be illicit transactions going through, and that is unacceptable for any authorities. Samourai was actually charged with money laundering, instead of being an unregistered money transmitter. As mentioned, the authorities would set a bar so high, that it would appear that they are valuing your privacy but is in effect having full knowledge and control of your privacy. None of us should trust them with their words, we should've learned the lesson by now.

I disagree with the point about the status quo. Having privacy means that you should be able to use basic tools to protect your own, you should be able to use Tor and ensure that there is no privacy leakage during the mixing process. What I imagine legal mixers to be like would be having your coins mixed, but the tracing of the transactions to be readily available to the authorities and their ability to halt and identify any users at will.

If there is ever a regulated mixer, I doubt the community would use it. The community is fine without having a government honeypot mixer.

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To further expand on this point:
- From the government perspective, their argument for shutting down mixers are always because of money laundering or the evidence of money laundering. It is unlike exchanges where they are required to have a license to operate. In a similar vein, exchanges are granted the license because they can prove that their platform has the ability to track, freeze and report suspicious transactions because of the stringent KYC/AML policies. This is unlike the concept of mixers where users are supposed to be anonymous, and privacy should be guaranteed. Any subpoenas will take too long to serve and that logically mixers would find that most of them should be challenged before freezing coins, or handing over information -> See Protonmail for example. Hence, this would probably never happen and doesn't fit what the community would want to see in a mixer.

- An ideal solution that I can see for a mixer to exist and legalized is that the mixer should be able to conduct KYC/AML on their users, flag suspicious transactions to the authorities, and be ordered to turn over data at will. This essentially functions like a bank, but that is the final "goal" of the government to defeat and make money laundering harder. The argument within the thread mostly points to the ideal solution being that privacy conscious users should be knowledgeable enough to use decentralized mixers, which are sufficient to break the link and that centralized mixers being both legalized and trustable to be a far fetched dream.
Has it ever been established that ChipMixer stored logs? I don't recall them doing so, other than the fact that they retained the keys, which doesn't lead to the loss of privacy since it's quite obvious on-chain just that the connection is difficult to establish. All the more reason why I don't trust centralized mixers.
I don't think both should be acceptable, or we are setting the bar too low and giving up too much of our rights. Delaying or freezing the funds would be unfair for the users, Bitcoin is fungible and for the mixer to be the judge of whether your funds are clean or not is not acceptable at all. This would be akin to exchange arbitrarily freezing funds of their users. This is not something that I can get behind.

If mixers were to freeze or delay funds, then they would probably collect whatever data you have to prove either your innocence or if you're guilty. Either doesn't bode well for Bitcoin.
For the sake of discussion, I'm interested in knowing the neutral governments that supports their citizens to retain their own privacy. Generally, national security laws covers that part and doesn't need justification to obtain user data as long as it poses an inherent threat to the government.

Totally agree with this, it's weird that authorities have been doing all of this thing ever since and a lot of studies have already proven that prevention of something is much better than outright intervention and prohibition. This is the same thing that's happening during the prohibition era in USA, they banned alcohol and then the people got craftier with how they will smuggle or make alcohol, same with drug smuggling, the more money that's involve, rest assured that people will innovate in terms of getting the most out of whatever that thing they're using/selling/buying to make money.

The same principle with prison, weapons are crafted based on what's available to them and you would be surprised to see what the inmates make but I digress, when the authorities completes the crackdown on this mixers and privacy tools, there's going to be that one developer that will create an innovation and revolutionize privacy tools in crypto space, once that happens, it will cascade into more and more people learning about that new tool and that new tool is going to be replicated, improved, and upgraded then it's another race with the authorities again, it's a never ending cycle of prohibition and innovation to avoid prohibition.

I (as a guest) took a peek using Tor Browser at the more incompetent criminals on the public darknet boards - most of them don't even have a clue about bitcoin mixers. I doubt they could tell the difference between a legit mixer and a fake.

They are at least well-informed enough to use Monero though.


This is the more likely thing they would do. Put it on the clearnet so that everyone can access it, without giving away any information about who is running it.

Isn't Joinmarket.net one of the possible solutions?


They already pay a 5% fee to mixers for the service, I don't see what will stop them from directly selling Bitcoin minus such a percentage. They will surely have interested buyers.
I think it is a matter of time before some kind of offshore zone appears for this kind of services.