Dean
Latest posts by Dean (see all)

Why you need to learn how to use a bitcoin mixer

Bitcoin is not as private as many people seem to think it is. During its early days the original digital currency gained a reputation as being an ‘anonymous’ payment system, sort of like an electronic version of cash. This was largely due to its use on deep web market places frequented by criminals.

But Bitcoin really isn’t anonymous. In actual fact, for most people most of the time, it may well be significantly less private than conventional payment methods such as bank debit cards or credit cards. Everything that you do on the Bitcoin network: every payment you send or receive, is recorded on a public database that anybody can view any time they want.

When you use a traditional electronic payment method the company who provides it can see everything you do, and they may provide that data to government agencies and perhaps others, depending on their policies and your stated preferences. But all of your private financial information is hidden from the view of the general public.

Of course you don’t need to provide personal details to use a Bitcoin wallet that you have downloaded to your own computer. This makes it ‘pseudonymous’ – your addresses are effectively a pseudonym that you use instead of your real name. But even this level of privacy is only superficial; if you are a regular user of the network it is not particularly difficult for malicious adversaries, from hackers and thieves to government or corporate spies, to associate your Bitcoin addresses with your real world identity and then be able to view exactly how much wealth you have and precisely what you are doing with it.

The most common method to improve your levels of financial privacy protection is to use a ‘mixer’ (also sometimes called a ‘tumbler’)

How bitcoin mixers work

Without going into excessively complex technical details, mixers work by literally mixing up your payment with lots of other payments from other users. This makes it very difficult if not impossible for any observer to be able to work out who is actually sending money to whom.

An observer who knows your addresses will therefore still be able to see that you have sent or received a certain amount of money. But if you are using a mixer then they will not be able to tell who you have made a payment to.

When to use a bitcoin mixer

Mixers must be used by the personal sending money, as the payment is sent through the mixer and then on to its destination. It may be possible to receive coins through a mixer, but quirks imposed by may popular services such as expiring addresses or the need to send precise amounts to the addresses provided can make this difficult.

But it is also true that in order to get the best possible privacy many mixers will want to send multiple payments to different addresses – and if you are sending money to somebody else that can also make things awkward. In this case it may be easier to mix your coins beforehand and then send a normal payment.

Here are some common examples of uses of mixers that you might like to consider:

  • Withdrawing coins from an exchange service where you must provide information about your real identity to a wallet on your computer or phone. This helps to reduce the possibility of your wallet being associated with your real world identity.
  • Withdrawing coins from a peer-to-peer market website to your private wallet.
  • Sending coins between two wallets or addresses you control – for example from a temporary receiving address created for a specific payment to your regular wallet.

A beginner’s guide to using Best Mixer

Actually using a Bitcoin mixer is not difficult, but can be intimidating for new users who don’t know where to go and don’t understand terminology.

In order to help you here is a step by step guide suitable for use by complete beginner’s to show you how to use one of the best and most popular mixing services.

Step 1

For the best possible privacy it is good practice to use the TOR network to connect to the mixing service. If you have TOR installed on your computer then you can use this link: Bitcoin Mixer (TOR). If you are not using TOR then you can also access the same service using this regular website link: Bitcoin Mixer.

Step 2

Open the wallet you would like to send your coins from, and make sure that you know the address you want to send coins to.

Ideally, it is best to have multiple addresses to send the coins to. You can send to a single address and this will still protect your privacy, but in order to protect yourself against the most determined adversaries it is better to use multiple addresses. You can use more than one address from the same wallet service if you like.

Step 3

Select the cryptocurrency you would like to mix.

Step 4

If you are performing multiple mixes you can use a special code to ensure you don’t get your own coins from the first mix back in the second one, but beginners can ignore this.

Step 5

Select a delay – this will make your mix take longer but will increase the level of difficulty for anybody trying to break your privacy and track your coins. Its is probably best to use a slightly different setting each time you use the service.

Step 6

Click to start.

Step 7

Send payment to the address provided and wait to receive your coins at the address(es) you provided.