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by mirimir 3236 days ago
What's the connection between the AlphaBay takedown and Bitcoin mixers? According to the complaint, suspected AlphaBay co-founder Alexandre Cazes allegedly "included his personal email address in one of the site's welcome messages".[0] That could be parallel construction, I admit. But still, why conclude anything about mixers?

0) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xa7mz/europol-he...
1 comments
contingencies 3236 days ago
One of the AlphaBay alleged charges was money laundering because they built in a mixer.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaBay#Timeline for a summary.

After they went down, another major mixer, BitMixer, apparently saw this as a significant legal change to the status quo and announced they were shutting down by choice, shuffling users off elsewhere.

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mirimir 3236 days ago
OK. But for BitMixer, that's a failure of conviction or nerve or whatever, or maybe a change of heart. And whatever it's about, there aren't any implications about the feasibility of darknet mixers, markets, etc. Except, I suppose, if owners have made foolish assumptions about their privacy and security.
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