What is a Crypto Tumbler?

Crypto tumbler is a service that mixes transactions to make it difficult for third parties to trace the original sender. It is a common tool for people who wish to maintain anonymity when sending Bitcoins or other crypto.

Tumblers work by combining users’ coins with those from different contributors to the tumbling system. This makes it very hard to link a particular wallet’s coins back to its owners, and thus enhances privacy and security.

While many people use tumblers for legitimate purposes, the anonymity that they provide has also been used for illegal activity like money laundering. For example, the owner of a Bitcoin mixer called Helix was arrested in 2021 for helping dark web criminals launder around $300 million. This has led to new anti-money laundering rules and other laws that will further limit the usefulness of tumblers.

Gizmodo Australia takes no position on whether or not using a tumbler is legal in your jurisdiction. Regardless, we strongly recommend that you read the terms and conditions of any tumbler you use before depositing your coins into it.

Tumbler services may be centralized or decentralized. Decentralized tumblers are more secure as they don’t rely on any single entity to operate the service and run its servers. However, centralized tumblers have the added benefit of being faster as they can process transactions much quicker than decentralized tumblers. Crypto tumbler