Using a bitcoin tumbler is a must

In the cryptocurrency world, there are a few hard and fast rules. Amongst them:

1. Never share your private keys with anyone.
2. Triple check your wallet address before sending or receiving BTC.
3. Verify you’re on the correct exchange website before inputting details.

Because of recent advances authorities, private agencies, and hackers have made in uncovering your online identity, we’re suggesting you add a fourth rule to that list:

Always use a bitcoin mixer.

While the first three rules are likely familiar to many, the fourth is probably new for some. We can hear you asking, “what is a bitcoin mixer?”

Not only is it a simple tool to use, but once you understand the function of mixing your BTC, you’ll probably wish you had known about it sooner.

In a nutshell, it’s a tool used to make bitcoin anonymous. Your BTC goes into the mixer, and untraceable bitcoins come out into your new wallet address.

If you’d like another easy visualization, think of a tumbler. You put in a few different ingredients, then tumble everything up. The result is a drink that mixes everything together, making it difficult to tell what the drink’s origins are.

That’s prompted some bitcoin mixers like Tumbler.io to take the analogy and create a service out of it. However, the beauty of a bitcoin tumbler is that it makes sure that you don’t receive any of your original coins back.

Go anonymous on the blockchain

The last point about not receiving your original coins back is crucial. You see, blockchains are not anonymous. Anyone can track your transactions and eventually figure out who you are and how much you’re worth. They can also see everyone you have ever had transactions with.

A lot of people like to say, “well, I’ve never done anything wrong, so why should it matter to me if people know who I transacted with?” That’s a point of view with a major fallacy.

Even if you haven’t done anything wrong, someone you transacted with might have. Once authorities who are seeking that person out find their wallet, they’ll track the bitcoins until arriving at your wallet. In this way, you can have your entire wallet contents confiscated by authorities – or worse – be made complicit with the bad actor.

So, to be extra careful, it is crucial to make your crypto presence anonymous by using a bitcoin tumbler.

How a bitcoin tumbler works

The beauty of anonymizing your BTC using a tumbler is that it is straightforward, foolproof, and made simple by startups like Tumbler.io.

1. On the Tumbler.io landing page, input the wallet address where you want your new BTC to go. Select a mixing delay if you need one (a delay between transactions to the wallet).
2. If this is your first time, no need to worry about a mixing code. If you have a mixing code from a previous tumbling session, input it here. A mixing code ensures that you never receive the same coins back.
3. Once you submit the order, you’ll receive a one-time unique BTC deposit address where you will have a limited amount of time to send your BTC.
4. After sending, the bitcoin tumbler will attach your old BTC to the end of its mix, and send you new BTC from the beginning of its mix made up of coins belonging to others.
5. The tumbler sends this freshly scrambled mixture of BTC in the form of fresh new coins directly to the wallet address you specified at the start of the process.
6. Check your new wallet, you’ve got fresh bitcoin!

Pretty simple, right? Now, what to do with that fresh new bitcoin…

How to use anonymous BTC

Some people get the impression that once they have freshly tumbled BTC in their hands, they need to be extra discreet. That couldn’t be further from the case.

All a bitcoin tumbler does is give you the freedom to use bitcoin the way Satoshi Nakamoto intended – free of worry regarding the watchful eyes of authorities, bankers, and hackers. Nakamoto had a vision in which everyone was the master of their own financial destiny. Tumbling your bitcoin helps return to that vision.

So, once you have freshly mixed BTC, just use it as you normally would. Want to make a payment or trade with it? Go right ahead. Want to HODL it in your wallet for the next 50 years? That sounds great too. The point is, just because you mix your BTC, doesn’t mean you need to do anything special – you’ve already gone the extra mile to preserve your online identity and wealth.

However, once you receive bitcoins from someone else, or after you buy bitcoins from an exchange, you will need to go through the process of using a bitcoin mixer again. Think of it like containment – every time you expose your wallet to sources other than your own, your wallet is no longer anonymized and will need to be refreshed.

Preserve your digital wealth

The reason for all of this is simple. You don’t want to lose the digital wealth you’ve spent time, money, and labor accumulating.

Global regulators change direction with every contrasting blow of the wind. This makes it impossible to know who or what will be deemed illegal or out of regulations from one day to the next.

Therefore, the only assurance you can have that your crypto wealth will remain sovereign and truly yours is to protect it by keeping it hidden in plain sight. We say plain sight because, at the end of the day, blockchains are publicly-viewable ledgers.

However, if someone is able to see your wallet but can’t make heads or tails out of its funding sources, well then, they can look all they want – but they can’t touch. And that, dear readers, is the beauty of mixing your BTC on a regular basis.