Quote from: abide on May 19, 2012, 11:21 pmThanks vlad. I get the point about anonymising procurement of the bitcoins in the first place, and if I'd known about your services before taking the exchange route I may very well have taken you up on the offer, and likely will in the future. My question remains with the two quotes I posted, and sorry if I've misread the situation and you were just replying to Duckman, so I repeat: a) what are the issues with accessing instawallet via tor?b) is it unsatisfactory sending coins from an exchange or wallet created in tor -> bitcoinfog? Should somebody be sufficiently interested to investigate the blockchain, how would it be possible for them to establish, and furthermore, prove, that the coins were sent to a tumbling service (bearing in mind a new address is used for each deposit), rather than something entirely more innocent?Hi abide,a) There are no known issues that I know off however there was a recent case of a Tor hidden service masquerading as Instawallet. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50013.0) - also you need to be able to keep a copy of the Instwallet URL in order to retrieve your coins so make sure you add it to your book marks if you use the Tor Browser - you won't be able to browse through your history to recover the link if you fail to do this.b) Firstly a little 101 c/o the Bitcoin Fog website on how their mixer works:QuoteA link could be made if you would get paid from the same address that you have deposited bitcoins to. This is not the case with Bitcoin Fog. The money you deposit actually stay on the random initial address we generate for you. Only when our main account is running low, do we transfer the money from your deposit address to the main pool. That way, you may get a payout from the pool, while your original money is still sitting on the random initial account, not linked to your payout anywhere in the block chain. Since it is just a bitcoin address like any other, there is no way to even see that you have deposited money to Bitcoin Fog, and not to a random account you have generated yourself. (Until the pool runs low and transfers your original money.)Even if you waited long enough time for your money to be transferred to the pool, there is still no reliable way to see that it was your original transfer that is the source of your payout, since it is mixed with other users' transfers.Another thing to consider is the amount of your withdrawal. If you transfer 1.382 to us, and the next day you withdraw ~1.38 bitcoins to another account, those amounts will be visible in the block chain, and unless there were 10 other people that day that also withdrew just 1.38 bitcoins, the link between your deposit and your withdrawal will be pretty obvious. You will still have plausible deniability, since nobody else has access to our servers and can actually prove that those bitcoins came from your account, but the link will be found nevertheless.This is why you should ideally never withdraw the same amount as you have deposited. We are already helping you to do this by transferring your money to you in multiple randomized payouts at randomized times (and optionally to different addresses), but to be sure you should withdraw to multiple addresses and different amounts than the one you have deposited. Also make sure to change your deposit address every now and then to further anonymize your payments.So in short there's no way to tell through analysis of the block chain alone that the address to which you've sent your coins was BitcoinFog's or one you made up (yes this is possible! more on that later). It is also possible to send Bitcoins through Bitcoinfog or another mixing service a number of times or (as I recommend) withdrawing random amounts to multiple wallets over a longer period of time, all of which will make it much more difficult to trace the flow of your funds.Having said this, transferring a similar amount to your original deposit into a single wallet later on and then extracting it from the Block chain e.g by withdrawal to your bank account could mean that it's possible to surmise the coins are yours (insofar as coins can be said to be "yours" or "mine").As I explained in the example above, breaking the chain of causation in itself doesn't necessarily mean it will be impossible to suggest you've done something illicit - in the case of someone who has received a package in the mail and is trying to plead ignorance, the proof that you purchased Bitcoins in itself may well be enough to sway a jury who might otherwise have given you the benefit of the doubt.So the short answer is that while using a mixing service properly may stop someone from proving a direct transfer of funds from you to someone else via the Bitcoin block chain, the real risk lies in proving you bought said Bitcoins in the first place. As such I'd recommend using cash or selling digital goods / products in exchange for Bitcoins - I am not just saying this to profit from your custom as I think you're in the US(?) - it's just a matter of leaving no loose ends.V.