{"id":133595,"date":"2026-02-09T08:25:37","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T08:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=133595"},"modified":"2026-02-09T08:25:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T08:25:37","slug":"why-everyone-thinks-anonymous-pools-are-money-laundering-and-why-theyre-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=133595","title":{"rendered":"Why Everyone Thinks Anonymous Pools Are \u201cMoney Laundering\u201d \u2014 and Why They\u2019re Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

When people hear the words \u201cmixer\u201d<\/em> or \u201canonymous pool\u201d<\/em>, they usually imagine the same thing. Someone is \u201claundering\u201d money. Someone is hiding something. Someone is bypassing the\u00a0rules.<\/p>\n

These words automatically carry suspicion\u200a\u2014\u200aeven when we are talking about something as basic as\u00a0privacy.<\/p>\n

The problem is that we are used to looking at finance through the eyes of banks, exchanges, and government systems. In that world, every movement is a record, a log, a permanent history. If there is no history, something must be\u00a0wrong.<\/p>\n

But real life works very differently.<\/p>\n

We transfer value without history all the time. We hand over cash. We give someone a key. We pass a gift to another person\u200a\u2014\u200awithout creating a financial dossier about each other afterward. And no one finds this suspicious.<\/p>\n

Yet in the digital world, we somehow decided that every action must be archived\u00a0forever.<\/p>\n

Why Even Vitalik Needs Anonymity<\/h3>\n

There is a telling fact that is rarely discussed openly. Vitalik Buterin has publicly mentioned<\/a> more than once that he used mixers when sending funds to\u00a0charity.<\/p>\n

Not because the money was \u201cdirty\u201d. Not because he was trying to hide something illegal.<\/p>\n

The reason was much\u00a0simpler.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t want every donation to automatically become a public event\u200a\u2014\u200aa signal for analysts, news headlines, and endless interpretations. He simply didn\u2019t want to be constantly visible.<\/p>\n

This example highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of anonymity.
We often confuse the desire to leave no traces with the desire to hide wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

In reality, it is normal human behavior: not wanting to become a target of attention.<\/p>\n

Vitalik Buterin says that privacy is\u00a0normal<\/p>\n

Why Classical Mixers Create More Problems Than Solutions<\/h3>\n

Classical mixers are built around the idea of\u00a0flows<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

There are many inputs. There are many outputs. Somewhere in the middle, everything gets \u201cmixed\u201d. Formally, this makes analysis harder. But at the same time, it creates new\u00a0risks.<\/p>\n

Entering a mixer and exiting it are both observable events. These events are easy to label, collect into lists, and analyze later. Over time, they become toxic\u200a\u2014\u200anot because something was done wrong, but because participation itself leaves a\u00a0trace.<\/p>\n

Moreover, mixers always rely on timing, amounts, and probabilities.
Wherever there is a flow, patterns eventually emerge.<\/p>\n

That is why today the word \u201cmixer\u201d<\/em> is often perceived not as a privacy tool, but as something risky and problematic.<\/p>\n

An Anonymous Pool Is Not a \u201cLaundry\u201d, but a\u00a0Safe<\/h3>\n

My anonymous pool is built on a completely different logic (One example of this approach is the LAC project<\/a>). It does not try to confuse flows and does not generate \u201cnoise\u201d. There is no concept of mixing at\u00a0all.<\/p>\n

The easiest way to think about it is as a\u00a0safe<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When you send funds into the pool, you are not transferring them to another person. What happens instead is the creation of a receipt<\/strong>\u200a\u2014\u200aa right to withdraw a specific amount from the\u00a0pool.<\/p>\n

This receipt is not tied to an address, a name, or an account<\/strong>. For the system, only one fact exists: funds were deposited, and a valid right to withdraw them\u00a0exists.<\/p>\n

There is no history of \u201cfrom whom to whom\u201d. There is no chain of\u00a0events.<\/p>\n

The Most Important Part: The Transfer Happens Outside the\u00a0System<\/h3>\n

This is where anonymous pools do what classical mixers\u00a0cannot.<\/p>\n

The receipt can be passed to another person in any way. In person. Through a messenger. As a QR code. On a piece of paper. Offline, without the internet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At that moment, nothing happens on the blockchain<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The system does not see the transfer. It does not know who gave the receipt to whom, or why. It cannot reconstruct this event later, because it simply does not exist in the\u00a0logs.<\/p>\n

When someone eventually uses the receipt to withdraw funds from the pool, the system sees only one thing: a valid receipt was presented, and the funds were withdrawn.<\/p>\n

For the protocol, this looks exactly like a safe: the money was inside, then it was taken\u00a0out.<\/p>\n

Why This Is Not Money Laundering<\/h3>\n

Money laundering is an attempt to disguise the origin of funds, bypass sanctions, or hide a criminal\u00a0trail.<\/p>\n

An anonymous pool does not disguise anything.
It simply does not create long-term links that can be analyzed years\u00a0later.<\/p>\n

This is closer to handing over cash or giving someone a key than to any financial scheme.
We don\u2019t call this laundering in the physical\u00a0world.<\/p>\n

We are just not yet used to the idea that privacy in digital systems can exist without total\u00a0logging.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n

An anonymous pool<\/a> is not about escaping rules or operating in the shadows. It is about defining the boundary between what a system has the right to know\u200a\u2014\u200aand what should remain between\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

Vitalik used mixers not because he was doing something illegal, but because he didn\u2019t want to be permanently visible. Ordinary people want the same thing\u200a\u2014\u200ano more and no\u00a0less.<\/p>\n

An anonymous pool is a digital safe: the system sees the money, but it does not see the\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

And perhaps this is exactly what normal digital privacy should look\u00a0like.<\/p>\n

#privacy #blockchain #cryptography #anonymity #fintech #web3 #zero-history<\/p>\n

Why Everyone Thinks Anonymous Pools Are \u201cMoney Laundering\u201d \u2014 and Why They\u2019re Not<\/a> was originally published in Coinmonks<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When people hear the words \u201cmixer\u201d or \u201canonymous pool\u201d, they usually imagine the same thing. Someone is \u201claundering\u201d money. Someone is hiding something. Someone is bypassing the\u00a0rules. These words automatically carry suspicion\u200a\u2014\u200aeven when we are talking about something as basic as\u00a0privacy. The problem is that we are used to looking at finance through the eyes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":133596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}