Alternative to tumbling?

Instead of tumbling I've been making a bunch of electrum wallets, and sending a random amount of bitcoins at random intervals between them. Is this as safe as tumbling? As far as I understood paid tumbling services do excactly that, maybe just a few more times than I am.


Comments


[3 Points] None:

[deleted]


[3 Points] sapiophile:

No, it is not as safe. All your inputs will eventually lead to all of your outputs, and it's trivial for anyone looking at the blockchain to determine with high confidence that the coins have been only under your control the entire time.

The important thing that tumblers do is mix your coins with those of other people, so that there is real plausible deniability between the inputs and outputs. It is simply not possible to achieve similar security without having other people's coins to mix with.

A few weeks ago, there was a great blockchain visualization graphic submitted to /r/Bitcoin that I tried to dig up to explain this. It showed bitcoin transactions as dot-and-line visuals. The most prominent feature of that image was a single chain of transactions that looked like a snake, twisting and winding its way through a field of other, much smaller bouquets of transactions. The snake was a sequence of transactions that went directly from input to output, over and over - it was immediately recognizable. And it wouldn't matter if the amounts were randomized, as the final outputs would eventually converge.

So no, it's not as secure; not nearly. And in some ways, making a long chain of multiple transfers might actually make such transactions more suspicious.

HOWEVER, one must determine if, despite the fact that it's not as secure, it is secure enough for your threat model. It's my opinion that for many of the users of this subreddit, it probably is. A simple transfer among one or two intermediate wallets that are wholly under your control, such as between two separately-created Electrum wallets on Tails, is a decent measure of providing plausible deniability, though I would not say actual privacy.

It's all about your own threat model and security requirements. But I would say that you don't get much benefit from spending all the time to chain together more than two wallets or so.

Also, keep in mind that latency is an important part of this whole equation. If the coins move between three wallets, all within the same hour, that provides a strong indication that the coins never left your control. An important point of achieving privacy and deniability in a system like this is significant and randomized delays between observable actions. This is also true of tumblers, in some respects, and it is even true of mixnets like Tor itself. More latency = more privacy. If you can stretch such operations out over multiple days, even better.

So, consider that, and if you have any further questions, I'll be glad to try and help.


[2 Points] Theeconomist1:

No, tumblers do more than what you are doing. You aren't breaking the chain at all moving it to various wallets. A tumbler will break that link completely. When you tumble coins you'll get a set of coin whose chain is completely different. It would be like if person A and person B each bough coins. Then they swap the private keys of the coins so that they have each other's coin. Now you have coin that doesn't trace back to anything you did to acquire your coin. It's not the greatest example at all but it's early. Lol.

You can use gambling web sites to tumble coins. Even LBC effectively tumbles your coin


[1 Points] None:

not tumbling Never used a tumbler , ever is it worth it??


[1 Points] OutlawAdmin:

Outlaw's mixer is easy to use, and only has a fee of 1% ;)


[1 Points] tailsjoin:

Take a look at /r/joinmarket for you tumbling alternative, check my wiki for some details: http://github.com/tailsjoin/tailsjoin/wiki


[1 Points] gramsadmin:

Preface

I own Helix and Helix light bitcoin cleaner(tumbler)
If you buy or sell your bitcoins anonymously such as as on a anonymous localbitcoin account or with someone in person, There is no reason you would need to tumble because the bitcoins are never linked to you.

Taint analysis

Bitcoin tumbling breaks the bitcoin taint analysis. What is Taint analysis? It the record of which wallets have sent bitcoins to and from each other. So if a user send coins from wallet A to wallet B to wallet C to wallet D. Then you look at the taint analysis of wallet D, it will show that Wallet D is linked to Wallet A by some percent. The higher the percent the more closely the wallets are link and the more likely the owner of wallet A sent or received coins from wallet D. If wallet A happens to be a coinbase account link to a real identity and wallet D is a darknet market wallet, a tumbler in between those will make it so that wallet A doesn't even show up in the taint analysis of wallet D. This means there is no way they are linked.

How do you check the taint?

In this example a user buys bitcoins on coinbase send to a tumbler and tells the tumbler to send to a market address
Coinbase(wallet A) -> Tumbler (wallet B) -> Market (wallet C)

You can also get to the taint page with this blockchain.info/taint/{the bitcoins address to check}

Do you have to tumble your coins?

Short answer is YES
I run a tumbler so I am a little biased, but It depends on how much you are sending to or from a market and how much you care about opsec. Here are a few reasons why you should tumble

It is better to be safe than sorry no matter which tumbler or tumbling method you use.
Again I am biased because I own a tumbler

How can they tell which wallets are linked to markets?

Most markets use "Hot Wallets", they put all their fees in these wallets. LE just needs to check the taints on these wallets to find all the addresses a market uses. There is even a site that does it already walletexplorer dot com If you go there you can see all the market addresses they are tracking.

Can't they just find the tumblers the same way?

Yes most tumblers they can. Helix is different and doesn't use a hot wallet. In fact helix never uses a wallet more than once. So even if they did tag a helix wallet it would never be used again so it wouldn't matter. You can check walletexplorer dot com and see helix and grams is not being tracked.

Can't tumblers be found by looking for multiple transactions every minute?

This is an old method of tumbling which most tumblers don't use anymore. I can't speak for all of them but Helix has 2 pools of bitcoins, Dirt and Clean. Users send their bitcoins to the dirty pool and receive bitcoins from the clean pool so there is very few transactions. Coins are never sent from the dirty pool to the clean pool so the clean bitcoins have no link or 0% taint to the dirty ones.

Is there free methods of tumbling?

Yes there are ways to tumble your bitcoins for free or almost free. One method is creating anonymous account on crypto exchanges and buying another crypto currency(litecoin) and then selling the litecoins for new clean bitcoins. Doing it this way you will save the 2.5% but use a lot more of your time and might lose money if the price fluctuates during the process.

Using a tumbler to tumble your coins is like paying a mechanic to change your oil. You can change your oil yourself and save some money but you will have to get dirty and it will take a lot of your time. If you use a mechanic you pay more than doing it yourself, but you know it gets done right and quickly without you having to spend any of your time. You could not change your oil at all (like not tumbling) and might be fine but who wants to risk that.


[1 Points] VayneTumbleMax:

Thanks for all the responses guys! I'll look into using btc-e.com, though I'm only in possession of <500$ of btc.