According to Europol, investigations have shown that many of the mixed crypto currencies on Bestmixer.io were of criminal origin or went to recipients classified as criminals. The service was probably used to launder money and to conceal money flows.
Dutch investigators began collecting information on Bitcoin payments on the platform in June 2018. The Internet security company McAfee helped the authorities. In addition to details of the actual transactions, IP addresses and chat messages were also seized. The authorities seized six servers in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. FIOD and Europol are currently evaluating the data.
Anonymity on the blockchain?
Bestmixer.io was one of the largest mixed services for crypto currencies. The platform enabled customers to anonymise their transactions in the crypto network: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin changed hands and it remained unclear who was behind it.
Basically, all transactions on a blockchain are unchangeable and visible to everyone. This also applies to Bitcoin payments. Every Bitcoin transaction can therefore be traced back, albeit at great expense. Therefore, Bitcoin is not called anonymous, but pseudonymous.
However, a crypto currency mixing service makes it possible to make payments anonymous. To do this, you send your BTC to a Bitcoin mixer such as Bitcoin Laundry, CoinMixer or - until recently - Bestmixer.io. The respective provider divides the coins to be sent into many small quantities and sends them back and forth via a network of addresses with random time intervals. The countless transactions on hundreds or thousands of wallets are practically untraceable and the traces are lost in the sand.
Money laundering using crypto mixing
Understandably, crypto-mixing services are a thorn in the side of the authorities. In crypto circles, many users desire the greatest possible anonymity. Nevertheless, many users who are not only concerned with the protection of their personal data are likely to be romping about on the various mixing platforms. In any case, FIOD and Europol have announced that they will also share their information with other countries in order to declare war on money laundering and the like.