Step by step running the tumbler

Tumbler is a JoinMarket bot which attempts to completely break the link between addresses. It is used to restore privacy where it has been damaged. It creates many many coinjoins to bounce coins around in different amounts and times.

Examples of users might be people who bought bitcoins with a very privacy-invading method, such buying from an exchange, and wish to have privacy in all their purchases again. Some bitcoin users also just need it as a simple medium of exchange, buying bitcoins with traceable fiat and immediately spending them on goods and services. Example would be an anonymous buyer of a domain name, VPS hosting, email or VPN provisions. Users also might be those who engage in capital flight or want to store bitcoins without anyone knowing.

Quick simple tumbling

First create a wallet and send bitcoins to it.

You will need two or more addresses of your destination. If you use just one address, your enemy could see X amount of bitcoins going in and then just search for an output of similar size to X. Using two or more addresses means you can split up payments into different sizes which together add up to X. The tumbler.py application can be made to ask you for a new address just before it needs to send, giving you the chance to click Generate New Address on whatever service you're using and copypaste it in. (Beware: Some services like Bitstamp only allow one new address every 24 hours)

Run tumbler.py with your wallet file and at least one address.

It will print out an estimate of the time taken,

waits in total for 19 blocks and 35.96 minutes
estimated time taken 225.96 minutes or 3.77 hours
tumble with these tx? (y/n):

Type 'y' if you're happy to tumble. Bot will then connect to the JoinMarket pit and start doing transactions.

When tumbler.py needs another destination address, it will ask for a new address.

insert new address: 1JPFmg1RSa2gtzcsow9fBjwdvWPsxcP3eX