Treasury Shifts Tone on Mixers

The United States Department of the Treasury submitted a 32-page report to Congress acknowledging that cryptocurrency mixers can have legitimate uses for financial privacy. The report, required under Section 9 of the GENIUS Act signed in July 2025, arrived roughly seven weeks past its January 14 deadline.

Treasury reviewed over 220 public comments before concluding that 'legitimate digital asset users may use mixers to ensure financial privacy in transactions on public blockchains.' The agency cited protecting information about personal wealth, business payments, and charitable donations as valid use cases.

A Line in the Sand

The report draws a clear distinction between custodial mixers, which must register with FinCEN as money services businesses, and non-custodial mixers, for which Treasury recommends no new restrictions. Treasury also requested Congress enact a 'hold law' allowing financial institutions to temporarily freeze suspicious assets during investigations, particularly targeting licensed payment stablecoins.

The illicit finance data in the report is stark: North Korean hackers stole at least $2.8 billion in digital assets between January 2024 and September 2025, with the $1.5 billion Bybit hack accounting for more than half. Over $1.6 billion flowed through bridge deposits from mixers since May 2020.

Why It Matters

This represents a measurable shift from outright hostility to at least acknowledging that privacy is not inherently criminal. But the irony is suffocating. Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill are sitting in prison for building exactly the kind of non-custodial privacy tool Treasury now concedes has legitimate uses. The state acknowledges your right to privacy in a report while jailing the people who built privacy tools. That tension will define the next chapter of Bitcoin's relationship with regulators.