
Command-line Bitcoin price board - guoyu
https://github.com/turingou/btc
======
SkyMarshal
Speaking of BTC tickers, I also recently discovered this amazing, pure HTML,
Bloomberg-terminal-like realtime BTC price site:

[http://bitcoinwisdom.com/](http://bitcoinwisdom.com/)

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bonestamp2
I like this one as well. I doesn't have as much data, but I think the area
chart is easier to read than the candlestick.

[http://bitcoinity.org/markets/](http://bitcoinity.org/markets/)

~~~
patrickk
Bitcoinwisdom lets you change the chart style under settings.

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salient
It saddens me that so much focus is being put on the _price speculation_
aspect of Bitcoin. 9 out of 10 articles I see about Bitcoin are about its
price. The last Senate hearing on Bitcoin was already quite aggressive about
this, and some suggested that maybe Bitcoin should be regulated as a commodity
instead.

Hopefully this price speculation frenzy of Bitcoin users won't lead to its
demise, and to Bitcoin being declared (or at least thought about) as
irreparably _not a currency_.

~~~
lectrick
If its use as a medium of exchange continues to spread, it is quite possible
that the volatility will go away. Even national fiat currencies have some
volatility, but it's vastly subdued due to the sheer amount of people using it
as a currency, I believe

~~~
gnaritas
I don't see how the volatility will ever go away when the supply of the
currency is fixed; that's a recipe for volatility.

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Jtsummers
Volatility won't "go away", but it _may_ diminish over time _if_ bitcoin
becomes a currency and not a commodity. It will, however, still be a
deflationary currency which means the value of an amount of bitcoin should
trend upwards. So if this gains traction as a currency and the speculators
stop rushing the numbers up higher than what the economy can actually support,
BTC might find a stable deflation rate and its volatility should diminish.
(I'm actually very skeptical of both deflationary currencies and bitcoin in
particular, but this is the bitcoin proponents' theory as I understand it.)

~~~
gnaritas
To think bitcoin can acquire a stable deflation rate is to assume that the
economy stops cycling, that's simply not going to happen. Every boom will
cause a massive deflation period, it can't be stable.

Speculation is the least of bitcoin's problems. I think a crypto-currency is
inevitable, but it'll be one that has a mechanism in it to inflate and deflate
to match the demand for currency in the market. During a boom there's a higher
demand for currency and the supply must increase if prices are to remain
stable, otherwise deflation is going to happen in an amount that matches the
boom; that's not stable.

~~~
lectrick
So you're saying the Fed prints dollars by the millions during booms and
destroys them again by the millions during busts?

Who cares if prices stay stable or not? The value represented by whatever
price is attached to those things won't change

~~~
gnaritas
The government has more than one control over the current money supply,
fractional reserve lending allows the money supply to grow and shrink as
demand requires while the fed attempts to maintain an overall small inflation
rate to avoid the ill effects of deflation.

> Who cares if prices stay stable or not?

Everyone who understand economics even a little bit.

> The value represented by whatever price is attached to those things won't
> change

People aren't paid in value and they don't spend value, they're paid in
currency and they spend currency and they all care that prices are stable
because their paychecks aren't going to suddenly change.

~~~
lectrick
If it is not useful as a value store except to speculators, then it still has
plenty of utility as a value transfer mechanism or a universal FOREX.

~~~
gnaritas
No one said it didn't have value, merely that it's not a good currency because
it won't have a stable value if used as a currency.

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drcode
Looks nice- Everyone just remember that if you don't understand the source
code or download it in a way that allows a "man in the middle" attack, there's
nothing to stop this kind of program (or an MITM-altered version of it) from
emptying out every bitcoin wallet you have installed on your computer.

(I for one will install this program though, on my non-wallet pc)

~~~
topbanana
The same goes for any software

~~~
drcode
Agreed, the risk is just particularly high for little gizmos targeted
especially at bitcoiners.

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dllthomas
The risk seems higher, but I'm not convinced that's anything but cognitive
salience.

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SkyMarshal
Nice work, quick & simple. Installed. Step 2: Make an ncurses version.

~~~
girvo
I love ncurses. I love it so much, that on my Ubuntu laptop, on startup I swap
over to tty1 and fire up WordGrinder to work on my novel, or Tmux + TextAdept
to do some web dev. It's soothing :)

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azmenthe
Somewhat unrelated, but I made a bitcoin LED ticker, here's a link to an early
testing video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxRIeb22QGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxRIeb22QGI)

I later added some other price information (gold, usd, s&p500)

~~~
alfg
This is great. Do you have any source code hosted anywhere? Or the
software/hardware stack used?

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azmenthe
I haven't put up the source because it's pretty coupled with the hardware,
that sign in particular is a BetaBrite. I used a Raspberry Pi and a ruby
script to drive it. I was able to find a ruby library for the sign.

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mariusz79
CLI application in javascript? It's official - we're doomed. There is no hope.

~~~
newbrict
don't know if this is much better but, [https://github.com/Newbrict/bitcoin-
prices](https://github.com/Newbrict/bitcoin-prices)

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VMG
Interesting for Gnome3 users:
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/648/bitcoin-
markets/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/648/bitcoin-markets/)

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traviscline
Just pushed a tool that shows you your margins using the MtGox streaming api:
[https://github.com/tmc/btcmargin](https://github.com/tmc/btcmargin)

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vezzy-fnord
Not bad. One of the better price tickers I've seen.

~~~
guoyu
thank you for trying :p

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znowi
How come btc-e is missing?

[https://btc-e.com/api/documentation](https://btc-e.com/api/documentation)

~~~
guoyu
it will be supported in the next version :)

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cnp
Just what I've always wanted :) :) :) :)

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atmosx
I wot my own... And was displaying the prices at the desktop... It's just 10
lines of ruby and geektool.

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lcasela
Why do I need NPM for this?

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nyargh
curl --silent [https://bitpay.com/api/rates](https://bitpay.com/api/rates) |
jq '.[0].rate'

Is what I use to get the current BitPay rate in USD

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drcross
How would one install in OSX? Do you need nmp first?

~~~
atmosx
Macports or home brew for npm and you are fine.

