Crypto Mixer is a service that helps users anonymously transfer funds from one wallet to another. This helps them preserve their privacy, reduce the risk of stolen funds, and maintain financial security.
But there is a dark side to mixers, too. These services are a popular tool for criminals looking to launder money. For example, in December 2013, a mixer called Bitcoin Fog was used to funnel 96000 BTC from a marketplace to other accounts. This is why many countries restrict their use or ban them entirely.
Crypto mixers work by pooling and pseudo-randomly shuffle the cryptocurrencies deposited by users. They then withdraw the resulting coins to new addresses under their control, minus a fee for the service. Many of these mixers offer additional features to obfuscate the process and make it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to track down the original source of the funds.
There are both centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency mixers available. Centralized mixers, such as Unijoin, connect their servers with a large number of other mixers and share the transaction records between them. This obfuscates the links between the incoming and outgoing bitcoins, but the mixer itself still has a record that ties the transactions together.
Decentralized mixers, on the other hand, use protocols like CoinJoin to fully obscure the outgoing bitcoins from the incoming ones. This allows them to keep the original identity of the deposited bitcoins in most cases, but they can’t reveal their exact origin. Crypto Mixer