BitcoinTalk.org to Ban Link Sharing and Promotion of Custodial No-KYC Mixers

• "Bitcointalk.org aims to allow about as much freedom as is reasonably possible. But this is not a darknet forum, and with mixers looking "grayer and grayer", it's no longer reasonably possible to allow linking to mixers."
• "Even though "a cryptocurrency mixing service is not necessarily illegal," a clear pattern has emerged where mixers pop up, last for a little while, and then get taken down by law enforcement once they get too big."

"Allowing mixers to be posted on bitcointalk.org before they seemingly-inevitably get declared illegal and seized is not sustainable. Therefore, linking to mixers will no longer be allowed, just the same as linking to darknet sites is already not allowed."

• "It will continue to be OK to discuss mixers in a general sort of way. Just don't direct people to mixers: don't link to a mixer, don't link to a directory with links to mixers, don't tell people to "Google ASDFmixer", don't link to a mixer's telegram, etc."

Definition of a mixer

Something is considered a mixer if it meets all of these requirements:

1. It has a feature advertised for taking property, improving its privacy somehow, and then returning roughly the same type of property.
   1.  Even though you can sometimes use non-mixers to mix coins by depositing and then withdrawing, this doesn't make it a mixer because this is an incidental use of the service; the service isn't advertised as privacy-enhancing.
   2.  If a site is not primarily a mixer but has a mixer function, such as a mixer function on a gambling website, then the whole site is considered a mixer.
   3. If the site takes coins, gives you a possibly-transferrable IOU, and will convert this IOU back into mixed coins much later, then the temporary conversion into a different type of property does not prevent it from being considered a mixer.
   4.  If the site internally converts your deposit into other things as part of its mixing, but ultimately the point of the product is to get your original type of property back, then that's a mixer, not an exchanger.
2. It is possible for the mixer to steal property passing through it. Assume that the sender does everything as correctly as possible. Also assume that no miners/verifiers on the base-layer cryptocurrency are evil. But assume that every other actor involved is evil (everyone able to vote in a DAO, every coordination server, every counterparty, every member of a multisig, etc.). Ignore short-term software bugs which are expected to be quickly fixed.

3. The service does not collect KYC-type info from all users.

Starting Jan 1, 2024, BitcoinTalk.org will do the following:

• Existing mixer announcement topics (and a few topics that have no value without mixer-links) will be locked and archived.
• Going forward, directing people to mixers in new posts/edits will be totally disallowed, and doing so could lead to a ban. Many mixer URLs will be wordfiltered-out, and if you bypass the wordfilter, then that'll definitely be ban-worthy.
• Any remaining mixer signatures (etc.) may be deleted. Anyone persisting in advertising mixers will be banned.
• In most cases, old posts will not be deleted. Nobody should be banned for old posts.

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