Long-running BTC mixer Bitcoin Blender voluntarily ceases operations

One of the longest running Bitcoin Core (BTC) mixers has come to its end. Bitcoin Blender announced to its users that it would cease operations, advising them to withdraw any balances they had on the site.

The service was founded in 2014; back when crypto wasn’t “cool”. Since then, it has consistently been one of the most trusted crypto tumblers in the market. However, at the end of last week, the service bowed out as reported by Bleeping Computer.

Mixing cryptos is a process in which a tumbler, such as Bitcoin Blender, breaks down the cryptos so as to hide their ownership. With many cryptos not being completely anonymous, it’s the only way that offers some level of anonymity. The mixer gets a percentage of the coins mixed, usually between 1% and 3%.

After five years of operations, the site announced its exit with a very short message: “Bitcoin Blender is shutting down. Please withdraw.” It offered no explanation whatsoever on its decision.

The announcement came just before its Tor-hidden servers went down. The servers were where it stored the cryptos. This gave the users time to withdraw their cryptos. The mixer also posted the same short message on a Bitcoin Talk forum.

The reaction from its users, and the entire community as well, was swift. Some applauded the exit strategy by the mixer, which went out on its own terms. This hasn’t been the case for some of its competitors, with law enforcement closing down a number of mixing companies.

For one user, it was quite a close call. He wrote: “Jesus, after just losing $3500 to Empire I just had a customer send me $2000 to a bitblender address. Fortunately I got it off right before they posted the message. Moving around coin is getting so hard! Everywhere you turn you are about to lose coin.”

Previously quite popular, crypto mixers are quickly either quitting or being forced out of the market. A week ago, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) shut down BestMixer.io. The mixer was hugely popular, but according to the FIOD, it was an instrument for money laundering.

BiestMixer had been around for only one year. In that time, it had facilitated the mixing of 27,000 BTC, translating to over $200 million. The investigators claimed that most of the funds were from criminal groups.