Samourai Wallet Defends Need for CoinJoin While Wasabi Already Moved to Bar Some Bitcoin Transactions

cryptonews.com:

Samourai Wallet, a mobile software wallet for Bitcoin (BTC), has defended the need for CoinJoins, insisting that they are not the same as coin mixers, but rather that they provide users with "basic financial privacy" that is not offered by public blockchains.

In a detailed response to the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) askingfor the regulation of CoinJoins, Samourai Wallet argued that there is a clear distinction between "crypto mixers" and CoinJoins, the open-source software algorithms used in the wallet.

A “mixer” is "a custodial system where crypto is sent into the control of a third party custodian who promises to send back crypto that is unrelated to the deposit." In contrast, users retain full custody of their coins in CoinJoins, and funds are never transferred to any third party.

In simple terms, CoinJoin is a type of collaborative bitcoin transaction where all parties put in and get out the same amount of crypto, but the addresses are mixed in the transaction making the origin of the coins difficult to trace.

Samourai also highlighted the need for CoinJoins, saying that public blockchains like Bitcoin enable everyone to see some key details of all transactions, including the time, amount, and other info. The wallet added that no normal person would tolerate such a situation in the existing financial system.

"The blockchain doesn’t have the luxury of legislative power to solve these problems, therefore software solutions such as CoinJoin are used to obtain these basic protections," the wallet said.

The wallet team also claimed that the vast majority of their users are law-abiding and use CoinJoin software to simply obtain that basic level of financial privacy.

This is a response to the report that the NCA asked for the