Controversial Ghost Coin can now be used in Hong Kong vending machines

Ghost Coin can now be used to pay for products in over 60 vending machines across Hong Kong, but faces accusations of stealing some of its source code from PIVX

Ghost Coin, created by John McAfee, can now be used to pay for products in over 60 vending machines across Hong Kong — even the ones located inside Hong Kong Disneyland.

Ghost Coin is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that went live alongside the Ghost Distributed Exchange last week. It is a proof of stake privacy coin that allows transactions to be anonymous, with its mainnet launched on June 22.

This is similar to a recent announcement that Bitcoin can now be used to pay for products from Coca-Cola vending machines across New Zealand and Australia. A partnership between Coca-Cola Amatil and Centrapay allows customers to use the cryptocurrency in around 1,200 vending machines in both countries.

Ghost Coin stoked controversy when it was revealed that certain sections of its white paper were copied from PIVX, an open-source privacy coin. Representatives from Ghost admitted that their code is forked from PIVX and has since worked on implementing more of their own improvements.

PIVX, which in itself is also a fork from DASH, said that Ghost was at fault for blatantly masking the fact that they copied their work. While the company had no issue with Ghost forking PIVX, PIVX argued that their white paper is copyrighted and that even if it was open-source, they should have attributed the sections that they lifted.

“@officialmcafee, you are free to fork and expand on the great features we have built with PIVX (with proper attribution as required by MIT license), however the whitepaper written by @Strontiumz38 is not open source and was fully copyrighted in 2018 as can be seen on the 2nd page.” PIVX posted on Twitter.

“We would also like to point out again that the $GHOST whitepaper lists specs that align with the Zerocoin Protocol, which is not only outdated, but cryptographically flawed and can be exploited. There are also multiple technical errors and inaccuracies that should be addressed.”

“Even if the whitepaper was open source (which it is not) you are required to credit and attribute the sources as clearly stated under the MIT license.”

McAfee took to Twitter to warn PIVX that he plans to sue for defamation.

“Claiming a procuct is open source while witholding the documention is fraud. Pure and simple. I will soon demonstrate that in the courts. Lawsuit coming for defamation.” his tweet reads.