Many cryptocurrencies, including the oldest one, Bitcoin, are not as anonymous as they may seem to inexperienced users. Blockchain analysis and tracking IP addresses are among the methods that make it possible to trace Bitcoin transactions and link Bitcoin addresses to their owners. In response to these challenges in the crypto space, many teams of developers have proposed privacy-enhancing solutions.
After the introduction of US sanctions targeting Tornado Cash, one of the most popular tools used for obscuring Ethereum-based transactions, many users began transitioning to alternatives such as Bitcoin mixers and tumblers.
Read also: Choosing Best Bitcoin Mixers: Everything You Need to Know About Tornado Cash Alternatives
If you would like to try one of them and enhance your financial privacy, you may be interested in the review of some of the best Bitcoin mixer platforms such as the Whir tool, the Wasabi Wallet CoinJoin mixer, UniJoin, and Mixero. Additionally, in this article, you will find a comprehensive overview of the capabilities to obscure transactions and limitations featuring another popular tool, Samourai Wallet’s Whirlpool.
What is Tornado Cash?
Before exploring other crypto projects that can be used as Tornado Cash alternatives, it is crucial to understand what this tool exactly is and what makes it different from Bitcoin mixers.
Tornado Cash is an open-source privacy solution empowered by the research conducted by the team behind the Zcash privacy coin. While Tornado Cash used to be one of the primary choices of cryptocurrency users willing to enhance the privacy of their transactions before sanctions introduced by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2022, this tool is completely different from Bitcoin mixers.
Read also: US Senate wages war on crypto anonymity, targets mixers and BTMs, requiring ID verification
The functionality of Tornado Cash is based on the smart contract functionality and zero-knowledge proofs enabled by the Ethereum network, and it is focused on the financial privacy of the transactions involving ETH and ERC-20 tokens rather than Bitcoin.
In practice, Tornado Cash relies on the zkSNARK technology, which stands for zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge. It allows users to break the link between the addresses of transaction participants, which helps to obscure certain elements of the transfer such as the origin and destination.
The status of a sanctioned platform in the US makes the use of Tornado Cash in this country illegal. Yet, there are Tornado Cash alternatives for enhanced privacy in financial transactions carried through Ethereum, such as Aztec and Zether.
What is a Bitcoin mixer for private transactions?
Cryptocurrency mixers are services designed to combine coins deposited from multiple users, which helps to obfuscate the origins of funds. Bitcoin mixers, respectively, work with the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, which is actually one of the major differences between such services and Tornado Cash.
You may come across different approaches to the use of the term "Bitcoin mixer." Some members of the crypto community specifically refer to the services based on the CoinJoin method as Bitcoin mixers, but this usage may vary. What is important, though, is the common usage of the CoinJoin technology by robust Bitcoin mixers.
According to the leading blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, "a CoinJoin is a type of mixer commonly built into privacy wallets — meaning cryptocurrency wallets that pitch themselves on increased privacy — that combine users’ coins with the coins of multiple other users in a single transaction. Users often repeat this process multiple times." The firm also emphasizes that such mixers are always non-custodial, which helps their users avoid the risks of keeping funds within centralized storage.
Bitcoin mixers are not the sole solutions aiming to enhance the financial privacy of cryptocurrency transactions. Yet, many alternatives do not incorporate mixing functionality.
Bitcoin tumblers vs Bitcoin mixers
In many resources, you can find the terms Bitcoin tumbler and Bitcoin mixer used interchangeably. However, according to the Bitcoin anonymizing tool Whir, some users believe there is a slight difference between tumblers and mixers, mainly in the fact that "Bitcoin mixers refer to services that break up the transaction history of Bitcoin, while Bitcoin tumblers refer to services that mix coins from multiple users."
Tornado Cash alternatives - the best Bitcoin mixer tools
Below, you will find a list of Tornado Cash alternatives focused on crypto anonymity that is empowered by the CoinJoin technology and often cited as the best Bitcoin mixer tools. While going through this overview, keep in mind that many of them also have certain drawbacks, and not everyone leaves positive reviews about all of them. In fact, the controversy surrounding a privacy protocol makes it difficult to provide any guarantees and recommend a particular tool, requiring crypto users to act at their own risk.
Compare the functionality and requirements of these tools with your expectations and try to search for further alternatives if none of these solutions satisfies you. Moreover, once you are ready to make your first transaction, give the tool a try by starting with a relatively small transfer. Yet, ensure it is still within the minimum acceptable limit since many Bitcoin mixers treat transfers of insufficient amounts of funds as donations.
The Whir platform
Whir is a CoinJoin-based Bitcoin privacy solution that offers a 1% fixed fee. It promises its users to work without KYC and logs and provides 24/7 support. Pay attention to the name of this platform. Although it may sound similar to Whirlpool, the latter is a separate solution further described in this article.
Whir offers its users four "mixing strengths" and eight processing periods. Customers can choose the ASAP mode or set a delay that ranges from one hour to two days. The team behind Whir stresses that "The longer the delay, the higher the anonymity of the mixed Bitcoins."
The mixing strengths available for Whir users are:
- Standard strength of 1%;
- Stronger strength of 1.5%;
- Extreme strength of 2%;
- Anonymous strength of 3%.
Transaction limitations
Note that Whir has strict limits for Bitcoin mixing. At the time of publication, the minimum amount accepted by the platform for mixing was 0.01 BTC, whereas the maximum amount of funds allowed per transaction was 1 BTC. The team explains that such transaction limits are necessary for maintaining the best privacy while "guaranteeing the legal status of the transactions."
On its official website, the project’s team claims that Whir is "an anonymous, non-KYC Bitcoin mixing service." While Whir does not ask its users for any forms of identification and "does not log IP addresses and does not use tracking scripts," it is possible to further enhance your privacy by using the Tor version of the service.
Users’ opinions about Whir
There are not too many reviews left by the users of Whir; however, at press time, there were several opinions shared by the cryptocurrency community with the users of the Trustpilot review platform.
Five reviewers gave the service five stars, whereas one person had a negative experience in February 2023. Registered as Parker Martin, the Trustpilot user complained about the Whir platform stealing their money. However, this comment received a fast reply from the Whir representatives, who explained that the transaction involved only $25, which was much less than the minimum amount of 0.001 BTC acceptable by the service, as mentioned earlier. While the insufficient amount of funds made it impossible for the platform to process the transaction, the team was ready to discuss this issue with the users through customer support.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of customer support, as the user raising this issue did not provide any update.
Based on this modest number of reviews, Whir currently has a general score of 3.7 stars on Trustpilot, which cannot be regarded as a representative review.
Read also: One-Third of Stolen Crypto in Top 2023 Exploits Funneled Through Bitcoin
UniJoin
UniJoin is another Bitcoin mixer based on the CoinJoin technology. To enhance the anonymity of its users, UniJoin does not store logs and supports Tor browser integration. The special UniCode feature is another measure taken by UniJoin to enhance privacy, preventing crypto users from joining the same pool during the next mixing round. Furthermore, the service allows users to set the transfer delay, enabling them to postpone the transaction according to their preferences.
"This feature makes a time correlation between your deposit and payout impossible and increases the level of anonymity," the team behind the project explains.
While UniJoin secures the privacy of transactions, it also provides its customers with flexibility depending on their needs. According to the official website, "When you need to make a transaction where your identity must be revealed, such as a transaction to a friend or a purchase that requires your personal details, UniJoin allows you to directly specify the recipient's address and ensure that the funds are sent to the intended recipient, but not from your actual wallet address, maintaining your anonymity and privacy of your crypto holdings."
At press time, UniJoin was offered only for Bitcoin; however, the platform’s team was considering adding Ethereum, Tether, and Litecoin in the future.
How much will you pay for using UniJoin?
Note that the payment for UniJoin services is based on a unique system of randomly generated fees for Bitcoin mixing operations, intended to create a robust defense against tracking transactions through Blockchain analysis, preventing the possibility of calculating the total combined amount.
“We charge a fee for each mixing operation that ranges from 1% to 3% and is generated with a decimal value with four digits,” the team behind UniJoin explains, adding that such a mechanism "guarantees that any chance of counter calculations on the blockchain is completely eliminated and that your anonymity is maintained with the highest level of security."
In addition to the service fee, the users of UniJoin also have to cover the miner’s fee.
Users’ opinions about UniJoin
At press time, UniJoin had 47 reviews on TrustPilot with 66% of five-star reviews, and 24% of one-star reviews. While the positive reviews mainly praise the service for offering a legitimate tool for Bitcoin mixing, many negative reviews report the opposite: either rather long delays for withdrawals contrary to the reportedly one-hour expectation time specified by the team or a lack of withdrawals altogether.
Note that there were also occasional reports of other online services or phishing websites and Telegram channels impersonating UniJoin. There is also a possibility that some of the users who had a negative experience using UniJoin had been deceived by one of them. The platform itself warns potential users about phishing attempts.
Wasabi Wallet
Wasabi Wallet is widely believed to be one of the best tools for enhancing Bitcoin privacy currently available on the market. It is commonly compared to one more product mentioned later on this list, Samourai Wallet’s Whirlpool, with the latter usually described as less effective.
Wasabi Wallet is empowered by CoinJoin and, together with its other features such as client-side block filtering, communication over the Tor anonymity network, as well as its non-custodial nature, the tool is "trustless by design, so that neither the public nor the developers can breach your privacy," as per the wallet’s official website.
WabiSabi
The team behind Wasabi Wallet claims that it uses a unique anonymous credential scheme WabiSabi, "designed to enable more accessible and efficient coinjoins." As per the wallet’s developers, this technology "allows users to utilize the best privacy tool without requiring a large amount of bitcoin in the wallet."
Along with its user-friendly interface, the team behind the project also cites its affordability as an essential advantage for the wallet’s users.
How much does it cost to prioritize privacy by using Wasabi Wallet?
If you are coinjoining coins with a value above 0.01 BTC, Wasabi Wallet charges a coordinator fee of 0.3%. As is typical for blockchain transactions, additional standard mining fees apply. However, mixing coins with a total value of 0.01 BTC or below frees you from paying any coordinator fees.
On top of that, Wasabi Wallet offers remixing services free from coordinator fees. Remixing is the process of mixing coins again, either for additional privacy or as part of the ongoing use of coinjoined funds. If you decide to pay for Wasabi Wallet’s services using the conjoined funds, you will not have to pay coordinator fees either."
Read also: How to Trace Ethereum Address Owner: A Clear Guide
Users’ opinions about Wasabi Wallet
As mentioned earlier, the Wasabi wallet is often compared to Samourai wallet’s Whirlpool. Yet, it is regarded to be a more effective solution for Bitcoin privacy enhancement than the latter.
However, despite the praise, some users are concerned about the project’s backend. For instance, according to the Reddit user Yahiheb, "If the backend stops, you won't receive block filters, and therefore, you cannot sync your wallet and update your balance," emphasizing that "you cannot do much with the wallet if the backend is down."
Meanwhile, the Wasabi wallet has only six reviews on Trustpilot, where it scored 2.4 stars because of three one-star reviews left by its customers in 2023.
While the financial loss was relatively small in one of these cases, amounting to €120, the user emphasized the impossibility of recovering the funds despite reporting an unauthorized transaction. Because of this, the user strongly discouraged others from using the wallet.
Another user shared a frustrating experience of trying to use Wasabi Wallet for over a month. They mentioned losing €50 due to an issue with the Wasabi extension on Chrome, where the provided address was apparently incorrect. Despite more than a week of communication through chat, the user reported no reliable methods or assistance from customer service to recover their tokens and highlighted the overall non-functionality of the wallet on various platforms (iOS, Windows, and Linux).
Finally, one of the users experienced a more considerable loss of €1200 worth of Bitcoin. The attempts to contact the team behind Wasabi Wallet were reportedly unsuccessful.
Mixero
CoinJoin also empowers one more top Bitcoin mixer, Mixero. Similarly to some of the tools described above, Mixero promises its users not to keep any activity logs for privacy protection and recommends using its website through the Tor browser.
"We do not keep any trace of your visit after your session expires, which lasts 24 hours," the Mixero team claims on the official website of the service. "We only keep the information of a transaction until it is completed and confirmed, in case of troubleshooting, we have the necessary details to assist you," the team adds.
XMR-based functions
In addition to CoinJoin, Mixero claims to have adopted an advanced mixing approach that uses XMR, the privacy-centric cryptocurrency known as Monero. "By channeling funds through Monero, transactions are rendered virtually undetectable, offering unparalleled confidentiality," the tool’s website states.
For instance, in the case of Bitcoin (the service also supports Ether), The mixer then takes the deposited BTC and converts it into Monero (XMR). The Monero is sent through a series of transactions within the Monero network. After a certain number of transactions within the Monero network, the mixer converts the XMR back to BTC. This conversion involves creating new, auto-generated wallets not tied to any specific exchange.
"Mixero strongly endorses this method for its superior transactional privacy protection," the team claims.
How much does Mixero cost?
The fees you will have to pay depend on the Mixero mode you prefer. If you would like to use the pure CoinJoin method, you should be prepared to pay at least 0.7% for the service. Pay attention to the fact that choosing the lowest service fees leads to the lowest transaction speed, which is, as per Mixero, determined by a specific protocol associated with a certain fee. The fastest transactions are available to the CoinJoin mode users who pay up to a 4.7% fee.
Furthermore, the CoinJoin method requires paying an extra 0.0003 BTC regardless of the method you choose. For the Advanced XMR-based method, the maximum fees enabling you to enjoy the fastest transactions are also valued at 4.7%; however, the slowest transactions will require a higher fee than in the case of the CoinJoin method, starting from $1.6%.
Minimum deposit at Mixero
"It is necessary to send at least 0.002 BTC and a maximum of 250.00 BTC. If you send less, your money will not be sent to the destination and will be perceived as a donation," Mixero warns its potential users.
In the case of both methods, you can choose the delay time ranging between 0 and 168 hours.
Users’ Opinions about Mixero
User comments about Mixero are unfortunately limited, with discussions dating back to March 2023. Yet, despite the scarcity of feedback, the available comments on platforms like the Trendri forum suggest a generally positive experience for Mixero users.
One user, in particular, shared their satisfaction with the platform, highlighting that any issues they encountered during a month of regular use were swiftly addressed by the Mixero support team. Additionally, this user commended Mixero as one of the most user-friendly Bitcoin mixers available on the market.
The opinion about the user-friendliness of the platform was shared by some other users, who emphasized that MIxero is suitable for both beginners and advanced Bitcoin users.
The low service charge was also noted as an advantage.
Samourai Wallet’s Whirlpool
Whirlpool is a Bitcoin mixer based on the CoinJoin implementation, offered by the team behind the privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet Samourai. The Samourai wallet comes equipped with Whirlpool, while it is also provided as a standalone solution available through a cross-platform application.
According to Whirlpool’s official website, its major advantages are high liquidity, short processing times, cost-effectiveness, robust privacy features, and accessibility.
To be more specific, the team claims that its "Three available liquidity pools give you the most flexibility when cycling your coins through the Whirlpool," as you will be able to choose a pool based on the total amount you would like to cycle and the desired number of newly cycled outputs.
The high processing speed is attributed to the mobile-first approach used in the Whirlpool app as well as its focus on multiple small yet fast CoinJoin cycles rather than a single slow cycle.
How much does protecting your Bitcoin address with Whirpool cost?
Furthermore, the Samurai team claims that "Unlike other services that charge a volume-based fee, meaning the more you mix the more you pay, Whirlpool charges a flat fee, meaning you end up paying less the more you mix." As per the team, it means that "You pay the same Whirlpool fee to mix 1 BTC or 1000 BTC."
Meanwhile, Whirlpool is reportedly based on advanced mathematical calculations that allow for 1,496 different interpretations of every cycle, which are being increased exponentially for enhanced privacy. The tool supposedly maintains 100% maximum entropy, which ensures there are no possibilities of coins used together in the past to be mixed. This feature of the tool also helps to eliminate deterministic links between inputs and outputs.
Users’ Opinions about Whirlpool
The number of comments left by real users about Whirlpool is not sufficient to get a broader idea of the real experience offered by this tool. The general impression one can get after studying related discussions on Reddit and other forums is that this tool is "a fun toy," as the tool appears reputable in terms of handling users’ funds and is very friendly; yet, the level of privacy it offers may not be sufficient for those interested in securing their anonymity.
Mainly, experienced cryptocurrency users point out the fact that Whirlpool is a trusted mixer. "When you do a CoinJoin using the Samurai wallet, the Samurai server has knowledge of which inputs and outputs are yours. This means the CoinJoin is absolutely useless at providing anonymity against Samurai, or anyone else that might get access to their servers," Reddit user Chytrik explained the issue, emphasizing that such functionality can expose users to entities engaged in tracing participants of cryptocurrency transactions.
Earlier, another Reddit user, Nopara73, wrote that "Even if you are using their Dojo, you will mix with users not using their Dojo [a self-hosted full node server automatically synchronizing with Samourai Wallet], therefore they know that the inputs and outputs they did not identify are yours."
In addition to this, Nopara73 noticed that Whirlpool’s "anonset calculation is mathematically correct, but practically speaking, it is naive," emphasizing that, by applying the same logic to Wasabi Wallet mentioned earlier, when participating in three rounds with its coin, users can set their anonymity to one million.
Although this criticism appears to be well-grounded, it is necessary to keep in mind that most opinions about the Whirlpool solution were shared by the cryptocurrency community around four years ago, and since then, Samurai’s team might have worked on resolving these issues.
Getting the best Tornado Cash alternative to enhance on-chain privacy
In this article, you have learned the concept behind Tornado Cash and Bitcoin mixers and had a detailed overview of some of the leading on-chain anonymizing tools based on the CoinJoin mechanism.
As you can see, going through customer reviews can give you certain insights into the functionality of these platforms. Still, the opinions left by users of these tools can be pretty subjective, if at all those, who have shared their impressions with the community, are real people.
For that reason, it is highly recommended to assess any platform you would like to use according to the following criteria:
- The trustworthiness of the tool as well as the technology it utilizes;
- Extra privacy-enhancing measures used by the platforms, including no-KYC, no-log policies, and Tor integration, as well as more innovative features such as transaction amount limits, pool separation, and delay periods;
- Service fees;
- Customer support and tool transparency.
Although it may be rather difficult to ensure the chosen Bitcoin mixer complies with legal regulations in your jurisdiction, you should at least filter out the platforms that are officially sanctioned in your country.
Finally, once you assess crypto mixers and identify your preferred one, remember the importance of maintaining a minimum deposit to avoid unintentionally donating your funds to one of these decentralized applications.
