Coin Mixers Recovering As Users Shift to New Platforms: Cambridge University
Coin mixer usage has rebounded to its highest level since 2022, per research from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. Following the 2022 U.S. sanctions on Tornado Cash, overall mixer transactions plummeted, but activity steadily recovered after sanctions were lifted in March 2025. Usage in 2025 reached about 32,000 transactions, up from 21,000 in 2024, yet still below the 38,000 seen in 2022. Users have migrated to more compliant platforms. Railgun now accounts for 71% of mixer activity, leveraging ‘proof-of-innocence’ checks; Tornado Cash (Classic and Nova) handles 25%, while Privacy Pools covers 5%. Most deposits now come from unlabelled sources (95%), with transactions happening mostly within 24 hours of wallet creation—suggesting an emphasis on avoiding identification, a pattern linked to illicit actors. However, researchers highlight mixers’ appeal for legitimate privacy reasons, like personal safety and commercial confidentiality. While recent protocols impose increased compliance and operational barriers for bad actors, mixers remain popular among cybercriminals—as shown by Tornado Cash’s role in the majority of Ethereum security incidents post-2022.
