Bitcoin mixers have been around since the early days of crypto, with many coming and going over the years. There are plenty of reasons why people would want to use them. On the one hand, there’s some dishonest reasons people would want to, but on the other hand there are also plenty of legitimate ones. While many people think that using bitcoin is anonymous, it isn’t as anonymous as people think when other parties start investigating their transaction history using some of the modern blockchain analysis tools that are out there.
So from a privacy point of view, given that the blockchain by its very nature is a public list of every transaction that’s ever been made since the genesis block, all it takes is for a person or system to trawl back through transaction histories to piece together a picture of someone’s transactions. For instance, many hardware wallets let you set up multiple addresses, or change addresses, but when you make a subsequent transaction, it’ll pool together the bitcoin from multiple wallets into one transaction. So say if you have a dozen crypto addresses but deposit them onto an exchange or any other system that requires KYC, you’re exposing all of these addresses to the recipient.
Also, there are plenty of countries around the world not exactly enamoured with cryptocurrencies, so having a transaction linked to a person could open them up to various types of risks. So this is where bitcoin mixers can serve a legitimate purpose to break the link between one set of transactions or wallets, and a new set to reinforce the privacy of someone’s crypto holdings.
So enter BitMix.biz Bitcoin Mixer. This is an anonymous bitcoin, litecoin and dash mixing service which offers people a method of regaining the privacy of their coins. I recently conducted a test of the service to see how it works. The system doesn’t record logs, and order logs are only kept for 72 hours (although can be deleted sooner than this manually) and doesn’t require registration although isn’t available to US, Dutch or German citizens or visitors. It also offers a TOR service.
You start off by selecting your cryptocurrency, and you’re given a couple of options. A basic mixing of one transaction in (which can be from multiple sources) to one address has a minimum of 0.0025 bitcoin (anything less than this is seen as a donation, so ensure that you transact more than this before mining fees). You can select a delay in sending the transaction back to you, either instantly or within 72 hours, and then you can pay a fee for using the mixer. The minimum is 0.4% and the maximum is 4% plus a flat rate of 0.0003 bitcoin per address you’re sending to. Between the two of these, you’re given a mixing strength. Higher means that your mixed coins will come from more legitimate sources (ie from traders, exchanges etc), whereas a lower fee presumably means that the coins might have a somewhat mixed or dubious history. But the choice is up to you.
There is also an option to randomize the fee of the mixed coin transaction, as well as the number of outputs which further makes analysis more difficult, although the minimum for this is 0.1 bitcoin (or 1 dash or 1 litecoin). There is also a “letter of guarantee” which is a signed message showing that the address your sending to is generated by the platform, which you can verify using any bitcoin wallet that supports it.
In my case, I tried a single transaction to a single address, and set a delay of just over 22 hours to get it back. Once I had configured my settings, I was shown a bitcoin address to send funds to. I sent the transaction, and then the tx reference showed up. Once this confirmed (in my case, 1 confirmation, but up to 6 depending on the size of the transaction), it then triggered a countdown and then when the time came around, it triggered another transaction. This confirmed in my case about 2 hours after this, and they’d paid a pretty high fee (~64 satoshi/byte) which meant it got included in a block pretty quickly.
I ran a couple of tests using some online tools to see if there was a link between my inputs and outputs, and it wasn’t able to link them. The system (after you create your first transaction) also gives you a code, so if you enter this in subsequent transactions, it won’t send you mixed coins from those you deposited. One thing to note is that the coins you send can and likely will at some point be sent to someone else as mixed coins further down the line.
For those of you with bigger amounts of bitcoin you want to mix, or who want increased privacy, you can also get (in addition to the randomization of fee and outputs) your coins split between multiple wallets, and choose the proportion of bitcoin you want sent to each one. Again, there’s a minimum of 0.0025 bitcoin per output address to deposit and the % fee and flat fee are also per output address. So if you wanted your coins split between three wallets, you’d need to deposit 0.0075 after miner fee, and there would be 3x the % you choose, and 3x the 0.0003 flat rate as the fee.
So all in all, the system was relatively straightforward to use, and in my case acted exactly as described. In terms of additional things it can do, they have an API (with reduced fees), which allows other systems to use to offer a mixing service to their own users. So if you need a bitcoin mixer to ensure the privacy of your bitcoin, dash or litecoin, BitMix did the job in this test.
Promoted post – However, this look at article was conducted using our own funds to give an honest reflection of how it works.
