What is Ghost (GHOST)?
Ghost is a decentralized crypto currency that was launched in 2020 with a simple goal, privacy. Transacting privately and with anonymity is a basic human right. Most people believe that you are safe to use Bitcoin because it’s the first cryptocurrency or it has strong privacy features. It is relatively easy to trace back the origins of each transaction and reveal the identity of the user. Ghost is engineered to obfuscate transactions throughout the network on both the receiver and senders end to conceal all elements of said transaction using bleeding edge cryptography. The team who developed Ghost has a strong belief of privacy for all with the ease of transacting. Ghost provides protection to all users and financial freedom, which was the goal from the start.
Who are the original Founders of Ghost?
Ghost’s origins date back to Particl, a privacy-focused and decentralized cryptocurrency launched in 2017. Particl is a fork of Bitcoin. In 2020 the developers behind Ghost forked Particl’s core and began work on code revisions and additions. Originally, there were a few developers who still wish to remain anonymous, that started looking at developing a new privacy coin that is fully decentralized and offers unparalleled privacy. Josh Case is one of the Co-Founders that brought this vision to fruition.
John McAfee is also regarded as one of the Co-Founders of Ghost. McAfee’s involvement with the project is limited to just advertising. In an effort to make the Ghost ecosystem more decentralized, Josh Case stepped down from any authoritative roles. Following Ghost’s interim governance model, the community decides the direction of the project, which has been in the community’s hands since Josh Case stepped down.
What makes Ghost different?
There are a variety of features that distinguishes Ghost’s unique code. One of the project’s foremost importance is decentralization. Ghost wants to become the standard when it comes to trustless systems. Ghost operates on a Proof-of-Stake consensus method. This allows users to secure the blockchain by staking their coins, which in turn the users gain rewards for doing so. Users who have the status of “Ghost Veteran”, are those that hold enough coins to be eligible for bonus rewards from the network. Veterans earn additional rewards that are distributed once a month to all eligible vets, including the daily staking rewards. This makes Ghost’s staking rewards some of the highest in the industry.
Privacy is executed through a couple of special attributes. Where other privacy coins have ‘selective anonymity”, Ghost by default obfuscates every transaction on both the receiver & sender end. This is achieved with Dandelion++ . To further increase the anonymity of the user, Ghost also uses confidential transactions and RingCT, all while running Bulletproofs to decrease fees and speed up transaction times. There are several other implementations that will be added to the blockchain in the future, see our roadmap for details.
GHOST was first tradable on 25th May, 2020. It has a total supply of 17,228,397.06,828,917. As of right now GHOST has a market capitalization of USD $6,029,111.42. The current price of GHOST is $0.350 and is ranked 1129 on Coinmarketcap and has recently surged 34.95 percent at the time of writing.
GHOST has been listed on a number of crypto exchanges, unlike other main cryptocurrencies, it cannot be directly purchased with fiats money. However, You can still easily buy this coin by first buying Bitcoin from any fiat-to-crypto exchanges and then transfer to the exchange that offers to trade this coin, in this guide article we will walk you through in detail the steps to buy GHOST.75.181.97.104
Step 1: Register on Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange
You will have to first buy one of the major cryptocurrencies, in this case, Bitcoin (BTC). In this article we will walk you through in details two of the most commonly-used fiat-to-crypto exchanges, Uphold.com and Coinbase. Both exchanges have their own fee policies and other features that we will go through in detail. It is recommended that you try both of them and figure out the one that suits you best.
Coinbase is also one of the largest crypto exchanges that accept fiat deposits. Use the link below to register at Coinbase and you will receive a free amount of $10 worth of BTC after buying $100 worth of cryptos.
Once you finished the KYC process. You will be asked to add a payment method. Here you can either choose to provide a credit/debit card or use a bank transfer. You will be charged higher fees when using cards but you will also make an instant purchase. While a bank transfer will be cheaper but slower, depending on the country of your residence, some countries will offer instant cash deposit with low fees.
Now you are all set, click the ‘Trade’ button at the top left, choose Bitcoin and confirm your transaction…and congrats! You’ve just made your first crypto purchase.
Step 3: Transfer BTC to an Altcoin Exchange
But we are not done yet, since GHOST is an altcoin we need to transfer our BTC to an exchange that GHOST can be traded, here we will use HotBit as our exchange. HotBit is a popular exchange to trade altcoins and it has a large number of tradable altcoins pairs. Use the link below to register your new account.
Founded in 2018 and holding Estonian MTR licence, American MSB licence, an Australian AUSTRAC licence and a Canadian MSB licence，HotBit cryptocurrency exchange is known as a cryptocurrency trading platofrm that continues to develop and integrate various forms of businesses such as spot trading, financial derivatives, cryptocurrency investment and DAPP into one platform. Hotbit allows US investors right now. Currently, Hotbit’s businesses covers more than 210 countries and areas. Based on its globalized and unified strategies, HotBit continues to focus on world’s emerging markets such as Russia, Turkey and southeastern Asia markets, and was ranked one of the top 3 most welcomed exchanges by Russian media in 2019.
After going through a similar process as we’ve done before with Coinbase, you will be advised to set up 2FA authentication as well, finish it as it adds extra security to your account.
Step 4: Deposit BTC to exchange
Depends on the policies of the exchange you might be required to go through another KYC process, this should usually take you from 30 minutes to possibly a few days maximum. Though the process should be straight-forward and easy to follow. Once you’re done with it you should have full access to your exchange wallet.
If this is your first time making a crypto deposit, the screen here may look a bit scary. But don’t worry, it’s basically simpler than making a bank transfer. At the box on the right, you will see a string of random numbers saying ‘BTC address’, this is a unique public address of your BTC wallet at HotBit and you can receive BTC by giving this address to the person to send you the funds. Since we are now transferring our previously bought BTC on Coinbase to this wallet, click on ‘Copy Address’ or right-click on the full address and click copy to grab this address to your clipboard.
Now head back to Coinbase, go to Portfolio page and click on BTC on your asset list, then click on ‘Send’ on the right.
Under the Recipient field, paste the wallet address from your clipboard, for security consideration you should always check if both addresses are matching. It is known that there are certain computer malware that would alter the content in your clipboard into another wallet address and you will be essentially sending funds to another person.
Click ‘Send’ to proceed, you should receive a confirmation email instantly, click on the confirmation link in the email and your coins are on the way to HotBit!
Now go back to HotBit and head to your exchange wallets, don’t worry if you haven’t seen your deposit here. It is probably still being verified in the blockchain network and it should take a few minutes for your coins to arrive. Depending on the network traffic condition of the Bitcoin network, during busy times it may take even longer.
You should receive a confirmation notification from HotBit once your BTC has arrived. And you are now finally ready to purchase GHOST!
Step 5: Trade GHOST
Go back to HotBit, then go to ‘Exchange’. Boom! What a view! The constantly flicking figures might be a bit scary, but relax, let’s get our heads around this.
In the right column there is a search bar, now make sure “BTC” is selected as we are trading BTC to altcoin pair. Click on it and type in “GHOST”, you should see GHOST/BTC, select that pair and you should see a price chart of GHOST/BTC in the middle of the page.
Below there is a box with a green button that says “Buy GHOST”, inside of the box, choose the “Market” tab here as that is the most straight-forward type of buying orders. You can either type in your amount or choose what portion of your deposit you would like to spend on buying, by clicking on the percentage buttons. When you have confirmed everything, click “Buy GHOST”. Voila! You have finally bought GHOST!
Binance
Binance is a popular cryptocurrency exchange which was started in China but then moved their headquarters to the crypto-friendly Island of Malta in the EU. Binance is popular for its crypto to crypto exchange services. Binance exploded onto the scene in the mania of 2017 and has since gone on to become the top crypto exchange in the world. Unfortunately, Binance does not allow US investors so we recommend you to sign up on other exchanges we recommend on this page.
Gate.io
Gate.io is an American cryptocurrency exchange that launched 2017. As the exchange is American, US-investors can of course trade here and we recommend US traders to sign up on this exchange. The exchange is available both in English and Chinese (the latter being very helpful for Chinese investors). Gate.io’s main selling factor is their wide selection of trading pairs. You can find most of the new altcoins here. Gate.io also demonstrates an impressive trading volume. It is almost every day one of the top 20 exchanges with the highest trading volume. The trading volume amounts to approx. USD 100 million on a daily basis. The top 10 trading pairs on Gate.io in terms of trading volume usually have USDT (Tether) as one part of the pair. So, to summarize the foregoing, Gate.io’s vast number of trading pairs and its extraordinary liquidity are both very impressive aspects of this exchange.
Last Step: Store GHOST securely in hardware wallets
Ledger Nano S
- Easy to set up and friendly interface
- Can be used on desktops and laptops
- Lightweight and Portable
- Support most blockchains and wide range of (ERC-20/BEP-20) tokens
- Multiple languages available
- Built by a well-established company found in 2014 with great chip security
- Affordable price
Ledger Nano X
- More powerful secure element chip (ST33) than Ledger Nano S
- Can be used on desktop or laptop, or even smartphone and tablet through Bluetooth integration
- Lightweight and Portable with built-in rechargeable battery
- Larger screen
- More storage space than Ledger Nano S
- Support most blockchains and wide range of (ERC-20/BEP-20) tokens
- Multiple languages available
- Built by a well-established company found in 2014 with great chip security
- Affordable price
If you are planning to keep(“hodl” as some may say, basically misspelt “hold” which get popularised over time) your GHOST for a considerable long time, you may want to explore ways of keeping it safe, although Binance is one of the safest cryptocurrency exchange there had been hacking incidents and funds were lost. Because of the very nature of the wallets in exchanges, they will be always online(“Hot Wallets” as we call them), therefore exposing certain aspects of vulnerabilities. The safest way of storing your coins to date is always putting them into a type of “Cold Wallets”, where the wallet will only have access to the blockchain(or simply “go online”) when you send out funds, reducing the chances of hacking incidents. A paper wallet is a type of free cold wallet, it’s basically an offline-generated pair of public and private address and you will have it written somewhere, and keep it safe. However, it is not durable and is susceptible to various hazards.
Hardware wallet here is definitely a better option of cold wallets. They are usually USB-enabled devices that store the key information of your wallet in a more durable way. They are built with military-level security and their firmware are constantly maintained by their manufacturers and thus extremely safe. Ledger Nano S and Ledger Nano X and are the most popular options in this category, these wallets cost around $50 to $100 depending on the features they are offering. If you are holding your assets these wallets are a good investment in our opinion.
0 Comments