
Show HN: Free API service for crypto and foreign exchange rates - arzzen
https://www.exchangerate.host/
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Wowfunhappy
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are often out of date anyway.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 However, outdated root certs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.

~~~
arzzen
Hi, you can use api via
[http://api-v1.exchangerate.host](http://api-v1.exchangerate.host)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Very cool, thank you!

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gkoberger
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 :) )

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Osiris
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?

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de6u99er
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';](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); } ```

~~~
aaomidi
fetch isn't universally supported.

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AnonC
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?

~~~
arzzen
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.

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d33lio
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!

~~~
sketchthat
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.

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

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xur17
It looks like this is just an api for exchange rates vs sendwyre, which has
exchange services.

~~~
davidajackson
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.

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zwarag
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?

~~~
yboris
Perhaps search through [https://dribbble.com/](https://dribbble.com/) \- this
style is currently very popular. Perhaps search for "isometric".

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

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

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7ewis
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?

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

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

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tradertef
How do you plan to make money?

