Recently, someone has been repeatedly using on-chain "coincidence transfers" as conspiracy theory material, and I find myself a bit tempted to respond. To be honest, many of these are not mystical: from A to B, it looks like a direct connection, but in reality, there's a detour—breaking it down into "who first consolidates, which transaction is used as a fee, which time window is being rounded up, and which common exit point it finally lands on." Once you trace the path, it’s not so mysterious anymore.

If I only focused on the last hop address at the time, I might also have joined the chorus of "definitely laundering / definitely not laundering"; but adding details like relays, change addresses, and batch processing makes it easier to see whether someone is just saving effort or deliberately hiding. Recently, the debate over privacy coins, mixing, and compliance has been quite intense in the group. I think it’s better to clarify the path first before taking a side; otherwise, the argument ends up just being an emotional clash... I’ll go review the appendix of that proposal again.