Bitcoin Tumbler: What is it & How Does the Mixer Work?

A Bitcoin tumbler is any service that mixes cryptocurrency assets and tokens to obscure their traceable origin.

These mixers have arisen to improve anonymity of transactions, since the currencies provide a public ledger to all transactions.

Typical BTC tumbler tends to give you clean Bitcoin in exchange for a small fee, while the service disconnects links between Bitcoin wallet addresses.

How does a Bitcoin tumbler work?

For instance, suppose I send you a Bitcoin, you send it to Peter, then in turn, he sends the BTC to Mary.

Based on a fact that the blockchain is completely open, anyone who downloads it can find the transaction details.

Furthermore, if we made the transactions on a KYC platform, then the entity carrying out analysis on the chain of transactions can track us down.

Thereby, bursting our real-world identities to track the four of us down.

However, if I first send my BTC to the best Bitcoin tumbler, and we repeat the same transactions, our identities would be obscured.

A BTC tumbler routes transactions to different addresses – splitting them into small tokens, which are reassembled to varying times before forwarding them to a recipient.

Consequently, the link between two parties engaged in a transaction is broken, because there’s no chain between incoming tokens to outgoing tokens.

How to use a Bitcoin mixer

To use a Bitcoin tumbler, you’ll need as follows:

A tor browser or tor-enabled interface
A reliable crypto wallet with BTC for mixing
Transition wallets.

Step 1

Connect to a tor browser and create a cryptocurrency burner wallet (new transition wallet) from a wallet-provider of your choice.

Step 2

Fund your transition wallet (not in any way connected to you) with your market wallet holding your Bitcoins.

The reason why you need your transition wallet is that sending your crypto directly to a tumbling service looks suspicious.

Step 3

Create a second transition wallet, which is your third and final wallet.

Step 4

To mix your Bitcoins, this entails sending your cryptocurrency from your first transition wallet to the mixing address.

The mixing service will require you to set various parameters, including an address where you will receive the new Bitcoins, amount you wish to mix, and duration in which the mixing should last.

Step 5

Send payment to the address provided (your second transition wallet). After you can spend or send the amount, you wish.

Frequently Asked Questions

If privacy is one of the utmost priorities, while transacting with Bitcoins, then using a tumbling service should be a necessity for you.

You can leverage on a Bitcoin tumbler to erase the origin of your BTC tokens and enjoy anonymous transactions.

However, as aforementioned, you should be extra-cautious of the tumbler you choose to avoid entrusting scammers with your coins.

Currently, i cannot say which of the services online can be classified as the best cryptocurrency tumbling service or mixer out there, as I haven’t made use of them yet.

Subsequently, I will try out some of crypto mixing services in the nearest future to find out which of them is the best to use in tumbling your BTC transaction without glitches.

Just like any other SAAS that run on the internet, Bitcoin tumbling can be plagued by a number of risks.

For instance, most law enforcement agencies work against Bitcoin tumbling services.

The view that they facilitate transactions of criminal funds, which is a notion that is not entirely correct as most tumblers are used for lawful activities.

Notable, before settling for a tumbler, always ascertain the legitimacy of its operations to avoid losing your hard-earned coins to scammers.

There are no explicit laws that ban the process, so feel free to use a Bitcoin tumbler to increase your privacy.

Tumbling your cryptocurrency to remove the transaction history is not illegal.

However, there is no fact denying that Bitcoin tumbling is a useful tool if someone wants to cash out ill-gotten cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin tumbling services have strong associations with illegal activities and are carry the tag as money laundering services for cryptocurrencies.

The European Union also took a view on cryptocurrency mixing services.

In mid-2019, the Dutch Financial Crime Investigative Service seized the website of popular Bitcoin mixing service, Bestmixer.io.

Working with Europol, the authorities seized six services based in Luxembourg and Netherlands.

Europol alleges that most of the cryptocurrency passing through Bestmixer has “a criminal origin or destination.”

Before its takedown, Bestmixer tumbled around 27,000 Bitcoins.

Tumbling Bitcoins is not explicitly illegal, and nor should it be.

The very real risk, however, is that your cryptocurrency is lumped in with other users tumbling their dirty laundry, so you could lose your Bitcoin in the case of a police seizure.

Most popular cryptocurrencies are not completely anonymous, and someone can trace Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions to specific crypto wallets.

If the wallet user relates the address to a specific account containing identifiable information (like a name, bank account, ID card etc.), the user is no longer anonymous.

Remember, the network is completely open, and anyone can use a blockchain explorer to pore through transactions and wallet addresses etc.

Most Bitcoin users don’t like that idea, and some people use Bitcoin tumbler to mix their crypto-coin, hopefully erasing its history in the process.

Law enforcement agencies like FBI, is now catching up and beginning to assign real identities to crypto transactions.

The answer is “YES” the police can track transactions.

Today, law enforcement agencies do use software to trace even unconfirmed BTC transactions, which give them leads they need to follow the money trail.

A Bitcoin transaction cannot be reversed, as it can only be refunded by the person receiving the funds.

In conclusion

The need to tumble your Bitcoin depends on your take on anonymity, as the cryptocurrency is pseudo-anonymous.

If you want more privacy, using a Bitcoin mixer service is one necessary option available for you.

Alternatively, you should be using Virtual Private Networks and an anonymous crypto wallets to do your transactions.

There are also several privacy coins with extensive integrated privacy and anonymity features you can transact instead.

What is a Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Tumbler?