Show HN: Free API service for crypto and foreign exchange rates | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Free API service for crypto and foreign exchange rates

exchangerate.host

62 pointsarzzen23 comments

Is it possible to retrieve results over HTTP?

I'm probably a unique use case, but I'd like to use this to "fix" the exchange rates portion of Apple's currency converter dashboard widget, and I want it to work even on very old OS's. That means I can't use TLS 1.2, and the root certs are often out of date anyway.

I'm currently using exchangeratesapi.io, which doesn't support HTTP either, but does support TLS 1.0, so it kind of works. However, outdated root certs mean I need to instruct users to manually install exchangeratesapi's certificate, which I'd rather not do.

Hi, you can use api via http://api-v1.exchangerate.host

Very cool, thank you!

I was looking for this exact thing a few weeks ago, and couldn't believe how difficult it was to find a decent, free API for crypto exchange rates (I just wanted to write a little script that tracked my investments, nothing huge.)

(Also, I'm the founder of ReadMe; we do API docs... if you want to use us, my emails in my bio :) )

Out of curiosity, what would such an API look like? Would you provide xpubs for various coins and get back current balances and transaction history?

Thanks for sharing, that's really useful. I realized you did the javascript example using XHR Any reason why you didn't use fetch?

```

fetch(url)

.then((resp) => resp.json())

.then((data) => { console.log(data) })

```

instead of

```

var requestURL = 'https://api.exchangerate.host/latest';

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();

request.open('GET', requestURL);

request.responseType = 'json';

request.send();

request.onload = function() {

  var response = request.response; 

  console.log(response);

}

```

fetch isn't universally supported.

Your website looks good. The examples in several languages is also a nice touch (expected from API documentation).

I do have plenty of questions though.

Does this service get historical rates from its sources in real time or does it store those in its own local database?

How long will this service be free for? What’s the business model that’s being thought about?

What kind of rate limiting, if any, is used so that a developer who uses these APIs doesn’t have their app go down because someone else is hammering the server with a lot of requests?

hi, thanks for question,

> Does this service get historical rates from its sources in real time or does it store those in its own local database?

Historical data are stored and synchronized at regular intervals in the local db.

> How long will this service be free for? What’s the business model that’s being thought about?

I was looking for stable service and i did not find any, that would have satisfied my needs, so i decidide create myself. Current features will be as free in the future as they are now.

> What kind of rate limiting, if any, is used so that a developer who uses these APIs doesn’t have their app go down because someone else is hammering the server with a lot of requests?

Yes, there are rate limit, currently 300 per minute, you can see it in the response header.

Very slick site! In a previous life I worked in the crypto transaction tracing space, I ended up building my own tool to do what your API does, but this is much more polished than my tool haha.

Very curious about the front-end! I'd get many more side-projects out the door if I understood the path to get a polished landing page / front-end like yours!

Came here to say the same thing. The frontend looks super slick. Is it a purchased theme or did you build it yourself?

All my personal projects fall over with my poor design and frontend skills.

How does this compare to https://www.sendwyre.com/? Seems like you have multiple features including some conversion so interested in hearing about the differences.

It looks like this is just an api for exchange rates vs sendwyre, which has exchange services.

I see, when I read: >API also comes with separate endpoints for single currency conversion and Time-Series data.

I thought it meant literally converting, not calculating.

I like the illustration of the people building the application a lot. Is there a name for this type of image? Say I'd like to hire someone to make one of these images, what would I be searching for?

Perhaps search through https://dribbble.com/ - this style is currently very popular. Perhaps search for "isometric".

Seems to be a stock photo. If you reverse image search it on google there's hundreds of hits.

Great, I am look for stuff like this. Can you connect to oracle to make it easy to integrate with Solidity contract ?

I've been wanting something like this for so long...

Where do you get your cryptocurrency prices from?

What's the daily run rate like, sustainable? I see you have GitHub donations, is that covering costs currently?

How frequently you update rates for intra day foreign exchanges? let's say USD -> EUR

self plug: an easy to use go library built on this with smart optional caching https://github.com/asvvvad/exchange

How do you plan to make money?

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