Bitcoin Blender, a cryptocurrency mixing service, has closed its doors after it released a short announcement in which users were asked to withdraw their crypto from their platform, according to a report made by BleepingComputer on May 30.
Bitcoin Blender was a mixing platform launched in 2014, but its operations have been ceased for good this week. No further explanations or reasons were given to its users aside from the message of withdrawal.
It is not known if this move was prompted by the forced closure of another fellow mixer, Bestmixer.
The shutdown was allegedly posted on Monday on both the homepage of the dark web website and on the BitcoinTalk Forums. Some were not able to withdraw their funds in the short amount of time left until the closing, and others missed the message altogether.
“I recently came to know about the shutting down process of bitblender, I had much coins saved onto it. I unfortunately missed the withdrawal warning as I was away for past few weeks. I am trying to access http://bitblendervrfkzr.onion/ for last 2~3 hours but I can not succeed.”- said one user.
While the Tor server of the service is no longer accessible, the clearnet website is still online.
This is the second service of this type that has been taken down this week. However, it does seem that Bitcoin Blender was not forced by any legal entity into making this decision.
The tumbling and mixing of cryptocurrency is a process in which the sender address of the funds is hidden by mixing it with other addresses.
Dutch, Luxembourg authorities and Europol have closed top crypto mixers BestMixer after it was discovered that some of the coins were involved in money laundering.