Bitcoin Wallet Wasabi Wallet Discontinues CoinJoin Service Due to U.S. Regulatory Uncertainty

zkSNACKs, the company behind the Bitcoin wallet Wasabi Wallet, has announced that it will discontinue its CoinJoin coordination service. The decision was made to ensure compliance with the latest legal and regulatory updates in the United States. The closure of the CoinJoin service is due to the lack of clarity in U.S. regulations regarding privacy-enhancing tools in the cryptocurrency space. Despite the closure, Wasabi Wallet will continue to function as a regular Bitcoin wallet, offering users the ability to generate private keys for transactions. The CEO of zkSNACKs acknowledged that CoinJoins provide a level of privacy that is unmatched by other methods. The closure of zkSNACKs' CoinJoin service will also impact other products and services in the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as Trezor Suite and BTCPayServer. It remains uncertain whether similar crackdowns on privacy protocols and CoinJoin services will occur in jurisdictions outside the U.S. CoinJoin services obfuscate Bitcoin transactions by combining multiple inputs and outputs from different users into a single transaction, making it difficult for outside observers to determine specific transaction details. Wasabi Wallet, launched in 2018, utilizes Tor for anonymity and employs a light client approach for checking balances without compromising privacy.

Sources :
- CoinTelegraph