Bitcoin regardless of how anonymous people believe it to be, leaves a trail to follow wherever it goes, a digital footprint which shows to whom or where any particular Bitcoin transaction is going; and that’s where a Bitcoin mixer comes to your rescue.
Bitcoin is anonymous, yes, but to what extent? Most Bitcoin exchanges and other buying platforms now require you to provide a proof of identity before you can purchase Bitcoins. (With some exceptions).
Additionally, every single Bitcoin transaction is recorded on the Blockchain, which is the Bitcoin ledger and is publicly visible so when you purchase Bitcoins and transfer them to other addresses/wallets, these transfers are completely visible and transparent.
Hence who buys Bitcoins, and where are the Bitcoins sent is no secret. That’s where the Bitcoin laundry services we’re talking about come in handy.
What is a Bitcoin Mixer?
As the name may have already suggested, a Bitcoin mixer or Bitcoin tumbler as it’s commonly called “mixes” your Bitcoins in a pool of random coins, and then sends you a clean set of coins.
That’s the reason Bitcoin mixers are also called Bitcoin laundry services, they help you break the link between your initial purchase/acquisition to the final destination where the coins are sent.
Here’s how they function- You buy Bitcoins from source A, send the Bitcoins to a Bitcoin mixer, the mixer adds your Bitcoins to its own reserve, and sends you a fresh set of Bitcoins from its own reserve which have no link to your previous transactions.
Also, the fresh coins you receive are created by mixing many different parts of other Bitcoins from many different transactions together and hence not only the fresh set of coins can’t be linked to you, they can’t be linked to anyone or any transaction.
Another use of a Bitcoin mixing service is that it lets you send Bitcoins from one address to many addresses at once, in a single click.
How Do We Choose These Bitcoin Mixers?
There are over a couple hundred Bitcoin laundry sites in the industry, so how do we make our pick and label one as better than the other and why should you trust our listing? Well, we consider the following factors to judge these Bitcoin mixers:
- Level of anonymity: How anonymous and privacy-respecting the platform is.
- Reputation: A Company’s already established reputation and trust.
- Fee: The amount of fee required (if any) for mixes and the users’ control, or the lack of it on the fee.
- of Additional Addresses: These are the number of addresses you can set for your Bitcoins to be received at, your coins are not sent to one address but are broken down and sent separately to each specified address further fortifying your anonymity.
- Advanced features: Support for advanced features such as Delayed output, mixing code etc. Delayed output is the feature which lets you receive your Bitcoins not instantly, but after a time gap which you can set, this again is a feature which de-links your input of the coins, and their output.
- Minimum/Maximum amounts: Any mixer which requires a very high minimum deposit in order to mix your coins won’t probably be a good option, which we do consider while selecting these.
- Confirmation Required: The number of confirmations required by the platform before they mix your coins, the lower this is the faster the overall process will be.
- No Logs Policy: If the Bitcoin mixer keeps logs, and if it does then for how long.
I believe that covers nearly every feature a Bitcoin mixer may comprise of, or we need concern ourselves with isn’t it?
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Bitcoin Laundry
Website: bitcoin-laundry
If you need a Bitcoin mixer with low deposit limits, acceptable fee, user-control on Percentage distribution and extensive additional address support, Bitcoin Laundry is something you should take a peek at.
It lets users clean as low as 0.0005BTC and the highest I’ve ever seen was 40+BTC which establishes their large-enough BTC reserves. Every set of unclean coins can be sent out to as many as 10 additional addresses for an extra 0.00008BTC/address. Complete user-control is granted for percentage distribution.
The fee too is just 0.1% of the total transaction, although it’s stable and not random or user-controlled. Users get to set time-delays for their transactions as well, with the instant transactions requiring just 1-2 confirmations, while delayed requirements may range from 5-25 confirmations.
Boasts a no logs policy after a 7-day retention period, or let’s users manually delete logs whenever they wish to in just a single click.
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Blender io
Website: blender
- User Experience Rating – 5/5
- Transaction Fee – 0.5% to 2.5% + 0.0001 BTC/extra Address
- Minimum Deposit – 0.001 BTC
- Customizable Fee – Yes
- Additional Addresses – 8 Support
- Confirmations Required – 3 Confirmation
- No Logs Policy – Yes
- Max Time Delay – 24 Hours
- Registration Required – No
The reason I’ve selected Blender.io at the #3 position is because of three primary reasons, the first being its user-controlled fee, secondly additional addresses and third its commendable speed of processing transactions.
Although starting with the user-experience, it’s one of the cleanest user interfaces I’ve ever seen, it’s spacious, has all the right buttons at the right places and is easy to understand.
It doesn’t need any registration or any other personal information which is a great privacy-relief. All that’s required compulsorily is the receiver’s Bitcoin address.
Although optionally, it lets you add additional addresses as well, this again is something which gives it somewhat of an edge because unlike other platforms which offer not more than 5 addresses at best, Blender.io offers as many as 8.
The time-delay feature too is present, and has been maxed out, meaning it lets you set as many as 24 time-delays, one for each hour from 1 hour, to 24; while other platforms again do not offer as many delays.
The fee as mentioned earlier is user-controlled, meaning users can decide the amount of fee they wish to pay, although the lowest fee is 0.5% while the highest you can pay is 2.5%.
Apart from this there’s also a 0.0001 BTC fee / additional address that you use, which in my experience is as cheap as it gets with any platform I’ve ever used.
It needs 3 confirmations before your coins are mixed. As for the minimum amount, you need to mix atleast 0.001 BTC and there’s no specific maximum amount rather it depends on the Bitcoin reserve of Blender.io at the time of your mixing.
It also has the “mixing code” feature which provides you with a code, a kind of proof or link to your sent coins to be mixed, so that the next time you send other coins, you don’t get your own coins sent earlier as the output.
And finally, they’ve a strict No-logs policy, meaning they do not store any logs, for any duration of time which is the ultimate privacy assurance that any of us needs.
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Bitcoin Mixer
Website: bitcoinmixer
- User Experience Rating – 4/5
- Transaction Fee – 1% + 0.000001 BTC
- Minimum Deposit – 0.0002 BTC
- Additional Addresses – 5
- No Logs Policy – Yes
- Registration Required – No
- Time Delays – Yes
- User-Controlled Fund Distribution – Yes
We rated the User-Experience 4/5 simply because it lacks sliders, which some other mixers may offer. Nonetheless, the UI is still extremely simple, easy to use as well as understand.
The transaction fee is a static 1% of the total deposit, along with an additional 0.000001 BTC for each additional address. A total of 5 output addresses are supported.
The smallest accepted deposit is 0.0002 BTC. Only 1 confirmation is required for mixes smaller than 20 BTC. Mixes >20BTC require 6 confirmations.
Does offer a No Logs policy, with 7-day retention of the logs. After which they’re automatically and permanently deleted. Users can also delete logs manually after each mix.
Fund-distribution is user-controlled, time-delays too can be controlled manually and choices can be made from “Instant” payouts, to a delay of 24 hours.
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SmartMixer
Website: smartmixer
One
of the most user-controlled and absolutely the maximum-currency supporting mixer till date. Users control the exact fee, the time-delays (even for each individual address) and the fund-distribution to each address.
As far as currencies go, it allows the mixing of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and also is soon set to start accepting Ethereum.
The Interface is outright the best I’ve ever seen. It’s completely colour-coded, and sliders make controlling every aspect of the mix extremely easy.
The fee has a minimum 1% and a maximum 5% limit. 8 additional addresses/mix are supported. Each additional address, for any currency has its own price. 0.00045529 BTC, 0.01072904 LTC, and 0.00273174 BCH are the prices for each coin respectively.
An Advanced 3-pool coin reserve offers extreme anonymity when it comes to the new, clean coins each user receives. Also offers “SmartCode” which acts both as its “Mixing ID” and “discount coupon” for returning customers.
No registration of any kind required. No personal information ever asked. Logs are kept for 24 hours, although can be deleted manually earlier. Also offers Tor access for added anonymity. Has a low minimum-deposit requirement, equivalent to 0.001 BTC for Bitcoin.
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CryptoMixer
Website: cryptomixer
- User Experience Rating – 4/5
- Transaction Fee – 0.5% to 3% + 0.0005BTC/extra Address
- Minimum Deposit – 0.001 BTC
- Fee Control – YES
- Additional Addresses – 10 Support
- Confirmations Required – 1 Confirmation
- No Logs Policy – Yes
- Registration Required – No
Cryptomixer markets itself as the “High Volume Bitcoin Mixer” and even though most of its other features are nothing superfluous and are at par with other mixers, there aren’t many rivals able to beat its volume.
Again starting with the user-interface, it’s in many regards as clean and easy to use as Blender.io; although it uses “text-links” unlike the drag-down menus of Blender.io which may not be as clean as the latter’s.
Also, it seems to use quite a few “sliders” to adjust the fee and other settings which look and feel cool, but I’d still prefer the simplistic drag-downs, although that’s a completely personal perspective.
It too is a privacy-respecting Bitcoin mixer and doesn’t need any login or registration for you to mix your coins. The Bitcoin address where you wish to receive your coins are all that’s needed.
Additional Addresses are where it beats nearly all other Bitcoin mixers on this list, it allows for as many as 10 additional addresses for each mix, which is the most number of addresses that I’ve ever seen a Bitcoin mixing service support.
It does offer time-delays, and it’s set using sliders which aren’t as user-friendly as that of Blender.io but they do get the job done.
Again, “Percentage distribution slider” allows you to set the percentage of your total coins to be sent to any specific address so you control which address receives how much of your total funds.
The service fee too is user-controlled, and can be changed using sliders (they do love sliders, don’t they?) Alike Blender.io their minimum fee too which can be paid is 0.5% while the highest being 3% with an additional 0.0005 BTC/address.
The fee/extra address is slightly higher than what Blender.io or most other platforms charge. Although it does have this additional “Discount” feature for the fee which keeps reducing your fee for next mixes as you go on mixing higher and higher amounts regularly.
It too provides for a “Cryptomixer code” (Mixing key) which prevents you from receiving your own coins for future transactions, and this code is what gets you the fee discount we just talked about.
When it comes to confirmations too they’re more accommodating than their competitors and need only 1 confirmation for your Bitcoins to be mixed! Although the confirmation slightly varies for larger amounts, for e.g. 25+ BTC need 3 confirmations, 250+ BTC need 4 and 1000 BTC need 5 confirmations.
As for the minimum mixing limit, it’s set at 0.001 BTC while there’s no preset maximum limit and considering their tagline and previous proofs of owning over 2000 BTC I’d say they’re pretty loaded and can mix quite huge volumes.
Their “Letter of Guarantee” is an exclusive feature which helps you verify the deposit addresses generated to be legit.
And finally, they too have a no logs policy although some logs are retained initially, but wiped out completely at preset routines.
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SmartMix
Website: smartmix
- User Experience Rating – 5/5
- Transaction Fee – 0.5% + 0.0001BTC/extra Address
- Minimum Deposit – 0.001 BTC
- Fee Control – No
- Additional Addresses – 5 Support
- Confirmations Required – Between 5 and 24.
- No Logs Policy – Yes
- Registration Required – No
SmartMix could very well be the first choice when it comes to a trustworthy Bitcoin mixer pertaining to its privacy policies and all other happy features.
For starters its user interface is clean too but differs from other mixers in the sense that unlike having all the options and settings on one page, it brings them up one after another on the next screens.
It too doesn’t need registration or any personal identity proof documents in order to mix your Bitcoins.
The one feature it seems to miss is user-controlled time-delays, it basically has two modes, the “Fast” and the “Delayed”, on the fast mode outputs are processed when your transaction has 2 confirmations which is acceptable.
Then there is the delayed mode, which processes payments after your transaction has between 5-24 confirmations (it varies for every transaction), the problem is this delay isn’t controlled by “hours” or by the users and rather is dependent upon the confirmations.
It supports a total of 5 additional address, which isn’t as many as supported by CryptoMixer or Blender.io but in most cases it’s enough. Although again, the delay for each of these addresses can’t be specified by the users and is automated, but there is a delay all the same and you get to set the percentage distribution as well.
The minimum amount which can be sent to Smartmix Bitcoin mixer for mixing is 0.001BTC (the same as Blender.io or Cryptomixer) while the maximum varies but in my personal experience has never been less than 15BTC.
It too offers a Mixing key just like the two other platforms we talked about and this key can be used to check the status of your mix at a later time, or to get in touch with the support team, as there’s no registration involved this key proves your ownership to the coins.
The fee required is 0.5% (fixed) along with an additional 0.0001BTC/address which I must mention is 0.0004BTC less than what Cryptomixer charges/address.
Finally, it has a 7-day no log policy, meaning logs are indeed kept which include nothing personal but the transaction details and are auto-removed permanently after 7days.
So, in a nutshell Smartmix.io has all the features such as Additional addresses and time-delays, but it just doesn’t let the users control or specify them, which can be looked at from another perspective of making it simpler for the users, where users don’t have to worry about anything else apart from sending in Bitcoins and getting them cleaned.
