Flip that around the other way: you are identified having received a transaction at the end of a chain from some crime with serious consequences. Do you want to have to prove to their satisfaction that you had no knowledge of this and aren’t part of some cartel’s money laundering operation? Can you keep doing that each time you use a mixer or does that start to look like a pattern where they stop believing you? Is there anything in your life that is innocent but could be strung together by an ambitious investigator? (e.g. your roommate’s boyfriend is Colombian, now you’re both getting questions and I hope he’s not self-employed)
It’s that grind which is fatal for mixers, not unlike Tor exit nodes. Nobody _needs_ to use them except money launderers but they depend on benign traffic for concealment. Even most privacy-minded people are going to hesitate if it taints their ability to make transactions with regulated businesses and the less innocent traffic there is, the more likely it is that using one will attract scrutiny, accelerating that feedback loop since most people don’t want to deal with the risk even if they are totally innocent.
The other level to consider: this mentions DPRK. That means all of the intelligence agencies could be involved and that increases the odds that a mixer is compromised or even run by them as a honeypot. Think about how you can decide whether to trust one, and whether the odds are that you’re signing up for additional privacy invasion like the people who’ve used certain messaging systems or VPNs.
It’s that grind which is fatal for mixers, not unlike Tor exit nodes. Nobody _needs_ to use them except money launderers but they depend on benign traffic for concealment. Even most privacy-minded people are going to hesitate if it taints their ability to make transactions with regulated businesses and the less innocent traffic there is, the more likely it is that using one will attract scrutiny, accelerating that feedback loop since most people don’t want to deal with the risk even if they are totally innocent.
The other level to consider: this mentions DPRK. That means all of the intelligence agencies could be involved and that increases the odds that a mixer is compromised or even run by them as a honeypot. Think about how you can decide whether to trust one, and whether the odds are that you’re signing up for additional privacy invasion like the people who’ve used certain messaging systems or VPNs.