Trezor’s integration of CoinJoin is driving the community wild with concerns about the hardware wallet company censoring Bitcoin (BTC) transactions.
Trezor implements CoinJoin
On April 19, the hardware wallet manufacturer announced implementing CoinJoin in collaboration with Wasabi Wallet.
Trezor said the new feature would improve users’ transactions’ security and privacy. The firm said the new function is available on its Trezor Model T wallet — adding that it would be integrated to Model One later.
CoinJoin usually combines multiple transactions to obfuscate users’ transactions to enhance privacy. This makes it difficult to trace these transactions to a specific individual, as numerous users are pulled into one transaction.
Trezor said the CoinJoin feature would be available to users by clicking the “Anonymize” button. The degree of privacy is determined by the number of CoinJoin rounds the user prefers.
The firm added that the rest of the process is automated and requires no active participation from the user. The feature attracts a 0.3% fee of the amount that the user wants to obfuscate,
Community highlights censorship concerns
The crypto community criticized Trezor’s new feature — many citing the censorship concerns that come with it.
The host of the Proof of Decentralization Podcast Chris Blec highlighted this concern, saying “the terms of service of Wasabi Wallet (zkSNACKs), which will be providing Trezor’s new CoinJoin feature gives” room for censorship.
Blec said:
“Wasabi’s tool is a total capitulation to government censorship. It blocks BTC transactions that are for things like buying guns & ammo, sexual content, alleged copyright violations, credit repair services & much more. It also states that they are under no obligation to tell you why you’re blocked.”
A rival privacy firm Samourai Wallet also highlighted this concern in several tweets. According to the firm, Trezor’s new integration is a pipeline to surveillance.
Meanwhile, the hidden reply on Trezor’s CoinJoin announcement showed it hid all the responses that expressed these censorship concerns.
Trezor was yet to respond to CryptoSlate’s request for comment as of press time.
