The wider world · 80 / 86 · 3 min

Privacy tools

Privacy coins and mixers try to break the public trail. This course says what they are. It is not a guide to hiding money from the law.

A worked case

A person reads about a mixer and treats the page as instructions. An exchange later freezes the deposit because it touched the tool. The freeze is the firm stopping the money. The page was never a manual, and using it as one does not make the firm accept the coins.

What they are

A privacy coin hides amounts or participants better than a normal public chain. A mixer pools transfers so the trail is harder to follow. Both can fail, and both attract attention from exchanges and police.

What this is not

Do not use this page as instructions to launder money or to evade the law. Exchanges may freeze deposits that touched these tools. That freeze is the firm stopping the money.

If you need privacy from a company, start by not posting your address under your real name. That is not a mixer. It is hygiene.

What a mixer is, and the sanction that followed. Not a manual.

A privacy coin tries to hide amounts or participants better than a normal public chain. A mixer pools transfers so the trail is harder to follow. That is the whole description this page will give. On 8 August 2022 the US Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash, a mixer on Ethereum. The press release said the service had been used to launder billions of dollars, including funds stolen by the Lazarus Group, and it named bridge thefts among the sources. Exchanges began freezing deposits that had touched the contracts. Some people's lawful money was stuck. That freeze is the firm stopping the money, which is the school's check, aimed at a tool.

Courts later argued about whether immutable software can be sanctioned as property. In 2025 the Treasury removed the Tornado Cash designation. The arguments are not a guide, and the removal is not permission. This course will not tell you how to use a mixer, how to break a trail, or how to hide money from the law. Exchanges may still refuse the coins. Police still read the public chains. If you need privacy from a company, start by not posting your address under your real name. That is hygiene. It is not a mixer.

Do not use the Treasury notice as a set of instructions, and do not use this page as one either. The notice is a record of a government deciding it could stop a door, and of the fight about whether it could.

Read it yourself

• US Treasury: sanctions on Tornado Cash (8 August 2022)
• Bitcoin white paper, the privacy section, for what a public chain already shows

These links are the record. They are not a recommendation, and they are not instructions. A news story or a court paper can still be wrong about a detail. The check does not change because a famous name is in the story.

Apply the check

Open a question. The line is about this topic. It is not a verdict that anything is safe.

Check yourself