[OPSEC] Coinbase account closed even with 'personal tumbling'

In the past I have always transferred my BTC from Coinbase to a personal wallet, then a tumbling service like Helix, and then to a market deposit address. Last month I forwent the tumbling service, and instead transferred between more than six electrum addresses before the market deposit address. Today I log into Coinbase to see that my account has been closed.

What gives? I thought only one intermediary address was necessary.

tl;dr - (500 >> 7) & (7 ≈ 1 ≈ 0)


Comments


[8 Points] sapiophile:

transferred between more than six electrum addresses before the market deposit address.

Dang, well, unfortuantely, there's essentially zero benefit to doing that, and definitely nonzero harm.

Check this image out: https://i.imgur.com/P63M12P.png

That's a visual still from an animated representation of live Bitcoin transactions. More info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ejcoj/looks_like_somebody_is_corralling_transactions/

What's the first thing you see in that image? That big, long, winding line of coin, moving from address to address, but never actually being spent. It sticks out like a sore thumb among all the other transactions happening on the blockchain - the little bouquets you see in the rest of the image.

Moving your full balance from one address to another is not "tumbling." Tumbling or mixing can only occur by mixing with coins that you don't control. However, it is possible to achieve some obfuscation and deniability, even without tumbling, by transferring between wallets that you DO control.

The key with any of this is don't be unusual, in any way. Moving a full wallet's balance over and over is definitely unusual. Just look at that image.

If you're going to do wallet-to-wallet coin obfuscation thing, there's a couple principles you've got to keep in mind:

  1. Don't overdo it. One or two intermediate wallets is enough to establish deniability, and longer chains than that will just make you unusual, while not making your coins any more difficult to track.

  2. Completely isolate your wallets from one another. That means use the Electrum included with Tails, and it means don't access two different wallets in the same Electrum session. Close the program and delete the ~/.electrum/walletbullshitfileswhatevertheyrecalled before re-opening it to access a different wallet, ideally after waiting at least fifteen or twenty minutes. This is because whatever Electrum server(s) you're connected to will otherwise be able to see, very plainly, that those two wallets are controlled by the same person. That's part of the danger of "light" wallets like Electrum, and it's why they must be used very carefully.

  3. Randomize the amounts and use different receiving addresses within each wallet. Randomize the times that you send various amounts, too, if you have the patience. The more delays you can afford to introduce, the more private it becomes - big bonus points for drawing it out over multiple days. When it comes to anonymity, latency is your friend.

  4. Look into other methods of gaining actual transaction privacy if you're dissatisfied with tumblers. /r/JoinMarket is an interesting new method that's very cheap (edit: and kind of broken, be careful - see https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket/issues/156 ). You could use an online exchange like BitFinex or BTC-e, or a crypto gambling site like PrimeDice (or whatever the hell's around in that scene, these days - but watch for scams). When CoinShuffle finally gets implemented, pay some attention to that.

  5. etc.

Any questions, feel free to ask.


[5 Points] young_k:

yea, thats not tumbling bro.

Bouncing them around 6 times, pretty much looks like you bounced them around 6 times, and they arent that stupid.


[1 Points] 2005C:

What was the reason they gave for closing your acct? How much bitcoin were you buying weekly/monthly, what do you think triggered it?


[1 Points] druggieslut:

Sounds like coinbase is closing peoples accounts simply for using bitcoins lately