How does a Tumbler (or a Crypto Mixer) Work?

What is a Tumbler?

A crypto mixer (also known as a tumbler) is a service designed to enhance the privacy of cryptocurrency transactions. It does this by mixing your cryptocurrency with others’ to make it harder to trace back to you. Find out how tumblers work in this detailed article.

Explaining how Tumblers work: Step-by-Step Process

Characters

Red (R) with 1 Bitcoin (BTC)
Blue (B) with 0.5 BTC
Green (G) with 1.5 BTC

Step 1: Depositing into the Mixer

Red, Blue, and Green each send their BTC to the mixer’s address.
- Red sends 1 BTC
- Blue sends 0.5 BTC
- Green sends 1.5 BTC

Step 2: Pooling All Funds

The mixer collects all these funds into one big pool. Now, the mixer has a total of 3 BTC from these three individuals.

Step 3: Shuffling

The mixer breaks down the funds into smaller, random amounts. Let’s say it decides to deal with transactions in chunks of 0.1 BTC, so:

The 3 BTC gets divided into 30 pieces of 0.1 BTC each.

Step 4: Mixing and Sending

The mixer then randomly sends these 0.1 BTC chunks to new addresses. Here’s how it might look:

Red might receive:
- 0.1 BTC from Blue
- 0.1 BTC from Green
- 0.8 BTC from several different sources (this makes up his 1 BTC)
Blue might receive:
- 0.1 BTC from Red
- 0.4 BTC from Green
Green might receive:
- 0.5 BTC from Red
- 0.5 BTC from Blue
- 0.5 BTC from various small chunks

Step 5: Withdrawal

Each user withdraws their new set of coins from the mixer. Now, the coins they receive are from different sources, making it much harder to trace back to the original sender.

Visualization

Imagine three different colored marbles (Red, Blue, Green) going into a big mixing bowl. You shake the bowl thoroughly, and when you pour them out, each person gets a new mix of marbles:

Red originally had 10 red marbles, but now gets 10 marbles which are not all red anymore.
Blue had 5 blue marbles, but now has 5 marbles of mixed colors.
Green had 15 green marbles; after mixing, they get 15 marbles of various colors.

Key Points to Explain

Privacy: By mixing, no one can easily tell where the original coins came from. This is like shaking the marbles so that no one can say which marble belonged to whom originally.
Blockchain: Even though all transactions are on the blockchain, the path from one wallet to another becomes very complex, like a puzzle with many pieces moved around.
Anonymity: It’s not perfect anonymity, but it adds layers of complexity to tracing transactions.