Privacy-oriented Wasabi Wallet undoubtedly remains the darling of criminals. However, Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has found out that their share of all transactions turns out to be rather insignificant.
Prioritizing anonymity
Chainalysis has found out that the main impetus for using coin mixing services in the likes of Wasabi is the desire to protect personal privacy, not to cover their tracks. Bitcoin is, in fact, only pseudo-anonymous, which means that your transactions can still get traced. The wallet enforces 100 anonymity set in comparison to Monero’s 2-10.
Speaking of nefarious deeds, 8.1 percent of all mixed coins were pilfered from other users while only 2.1 percent of transactions were linked to dark web marketplaces.
Still, the study did conclude that mixed coins represent the lion’s share of all mixed coins.
Is this a bait?
With that being said, the popularity of coin mixing is on the rise with Wasabi Wallet boasting a $90 mln worth of mixed BTC in August (a far cry from $10 mln in February).
This is bad news for Chainalysis. The Blockchain unicorn is infamous for helping law enforcement agencies to monitor illicit activities, but they are at a loss when it comes to tracking mixed coins.
A common misconception is that one can trace the path of funds through a service,” said explained Hannah Curtis, senior product manager of data at Chainalysis.
However, one Twitter user doesn’t buy the concession, claiming that there could be a weakness that the firm would be willing to exploit.
> claim that while they can identify mixing transactions, they are unable to follow individual coins.
— RainDogDance (@RainDogDance) August 27, 2019
That's probably what I'd publicly claim too, if I were Chainalysis😬
They're incentivized to encourage users to keep using it, if there's a weakness they are able to exploit.
