
Show HN: Coinmarketcap replacement with free JSON API - cryptoplot
http://cryptomarketplot.com
======
cryptoplot
Work in progress!

The linked graph are in PDF, and should update every hour soon.

The website is made to be fast to read, and give essential information. It
should load very fast. No ads. No metrics. No bullshit.

The JSON API is similar to the deprecated CMC API. But no need of API key and
you get not just the last price, but bid and ask.

Feedback is much appreciated!

~~~
1996
Co author here - I make the API and the backend.

The numbers come from a large sample of exchanges, with several million new
datapoint added every day to cover every crypto we find important.

It is more of a hobby for me, but I hope you like it!

~~~
Scaur
Hi 1996 - I used to work at
[Cryptopia]([https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/](https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/)), a
exchange fairly well known for listing low marketcap coins.

If you ever decide you want to expand to more than top 50 coins, then I'd love
to help in any way I can - particularly with their API - feel free to email
me: "james" at $my_hackernews_username ".nz"

~~~
1996
Hi Scaur!

We are on #1 page!! Big surprise !! Now I have to reply to all questions but
HN tell me 'you are posting too much'

I must fix bugs first, but I will be happy to email you!! I love cryptopia and
it's approach!! Our email is in the faq: cryptomarketplot@protonmail.com

There is more on the website than the eye can see now. We will unveil new
features soon.

Expanding beyond top #50 is something we want. We want to support more coins,
and there is work in progress on that.

But after noticing what coins it will expose, we almost changed our mind and
decide to just be top20.

After hard thinking, we decided to spend much more effort on methods to flags
suspicious coins. Because there are many small promising coins that can
benefit from exposure.

It is almost there. More algorithms to make!

------
electic
This is really cool, great work!

I am one of the developers of Blockmodo. It offer realtime data streamed
directly from the exchanges via a WebSocket API. Alternatively, you can also
go through our REST API as well to get this data.

Data can be streamed aggregated or if you choose, you can also stream and poll
the data on a per-coin basis. For example, if you want the aggregate price of
Bitcoin you can do that but if you want the price streamed of Bitcoin for
BTC/USD for Bitfinex, you can do that as well.

In addition to the price, we offer full streaming and REST data on:

\- Realtime news on each coin. Our backend also detects bot generated articles
and excludes those.

\- Realtime community posts across different sub-reddits, forums, etc

\- Realtime social posts from the developers of each coin (twitter, etc).

\- Realtime code checkins from the developers across multiple repos segmented
by the coin (github, etc).

\- Full coin profiles (name, website, telegram urls, etc).

We do this on over 2700+ coins for developers and terminal makers across 100+
exchanges. You can explore the documentation here:

[https://blockmodo.com/docs/api](https://blockmodo.com/docs/api)

How can I see it in action?

You can see it in action here by visiting our front page:

[https://blockmodo.com](https://blockmodo.com).

Another terminal app that is connected to the network is CoinHub for iOS which
you can check out here:

[https://coinhubapp.com](https://coinhubapp.com)

~~~
wc-
I don't think you should be allowed to make a one-liner comment "This is
really cool!" and then follow it up with a 15 line copy-pasted sales pitch for
a potentially competing product.

That being said, it is refreshing to see a barebones data site by geeks for
geeks! I'll following up to find out what they have behind the client
subscription.

~~~
willio58
I think it should be allowed, just not encouraged

~~~
cryptoplot
All I could see on this website were the tweets and things I don't really care
about. We seem to have very different goals.

But after talking, I'm curious to see what kind of market data they have. I
asked for a small sample.

I am still waiting for reply from electic.

------
jannes
Cool site!

I am liking the non-linear x-axis on the slow zoom graphs. I had never seen
those before. I just wonder why the resolution in the month and week part of
the graphs is not so good? You should have many more data points than what you
are rendering, shouldn't you?

I guess that you are preserving min/max in a period despite the lower sample
rate?

~~~
cryptoplot
Non linear X axis is a new method we introduce. We call it the "hour day week
month" view, or the log timeline, because it is a bit like a log-plot: log
data of time on the X axis.

It was made to quickly answer many questions that could only be done with the
tables of numbers from accessible version.

Say something happened. You want to know how many hours ago was there a big
move? How is it holding after that? How does it compares to yesterday? To the
week before? To the month before?

To do that, even if we have data, the resolution must lowered. Because you
want to a quick eyeballing, and if the bucket size vary too much, it is much
harder.

Take XRP for example, go
[http://cryptomarketplot.com/timeline/ripple.pdf](http://cryptomarketplot.com/timeline/ripple.pdf)

[actually, I must have crashed the PDF part last week, so the numbers are from
Dec 2. Sorry. Let's imagine it is today. We are working on it right now]

You see that the peak was 6 days ago, it had a large jump compared to the
other DAYS. And the left, you see that on the last 4 months XRP/BTC has kept
growing.

If you just look at the graph very quickly, you see a patter. The shape.

You can visually correlate the pattern to the other coins, and see if they all
responded in the same way or not to a market event.

------
buboard
Good work!

I see 96 coins. Could you add more? Doesn't need to have everything, but at
least the couple of hundred popular ones.

How long do you plan to keep it online ?

Can you add market_cap to this list?

percent changes?

Edit: I am using this in [https://coinzaa.com/](https://coinzaa.com/) now ,
thank you

~~~
cryptoplot
Percent change, you mean you want the equivalent from the original CMC JSON:

    
    
            "percent_change_1h": "XXX", 
            "percent_change_24h": "XX", 
            "percent_change_7d": "XX",
    

We can add that, but we want to use fixed points in times, to avoid floating
periods comparison.

Here is an example for the change in 1h: it is 10:45 AM, so do the average for
10AM, do the average for 9AM, see the percentage change.

A bad method is to average from 10:45AM to 9:45AM, average from 9:45AM to
8:45AM then report the percentage change, because if there was a big change at
9:30, and just one, then the coin is stable, it will have decaying effect on
the percentage change. You will see it moving, while the coin has stabilized!
To me, that's wrong.

Coinmarketcap was doing the latter. We can support that, but you should
consider switching.

~~~
buboard
what CMC does is what everyone does, i think it's the standard method. From
your frontpage it seems u already have those values somewhere

~~~
cryptoplot
We have many values, but if we think they may mislead people, we don't show
them. It is our ethics. We do not want to do what everyone does.

We will show more coins when we think we can show non misleading data. It's a
question of trust. We want happy visitors and happy clients. We want to earn
their trust.

Thanks for a lot for using our data on coinzaa! We would appreciate a link,
but only if you feel like it.

~~~
buboard
i have 2 links. one in the frontpage and one in the footer . I also run an ad
banner to your site

~~~
cryptoplot
wow 2 links, we didn't ask that much :-)

I really appreciate. We will work on having the percentage change online for
you in the API as soon as possible.

------
nicknovak_91
Have you evaluated cryptoquote.io? Take a look at their real-time level 1 and
level 2 websocket APIs. They seem to understand market data and have navigated
the non-standard connections to cryptocurrency exchanges well.

~~~
cryptoplot
They want a login before even giving a key.

Can you summarize their features? What data do they show?

We offer real-time data to clients. Real time is hard to beat.

~~~
nicknovak_91
Real-time level 1 and level 2 price feeds Time series historical data; tick,
n-minute, daily bar database Various REST APIs to build CMC like web displays

~~~
cryptoplot
Thanks! So generally the same things we currently already have. Don't they
have full market book data? We are wondering if we should do that. It could be
a separate subscription plan if there is enough interest.

We are prioritizing in new features people who want to do a CMC like web
display but are not comfortable with coding.

We want non programmers to get our data without depending on the JSON or other
complex stuff. Something light and simple.

------
dewey
Nitpick: Your FAQ spells Tor as TOR

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#WhyCalledTor](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#WhyCalledTor)

~~~
Sahhaese
So, it's called Tor because it's an acronym, The Onion Router, but you're not
allowed to write it as an acronym?

That's just awkward, it's not like they have a logo of a hill, they have a
logo of an onion.

~~~
celticninja
I think they dont use onion routing anymore either but the name is the name.

~~~
jstanley
Tor does use onion routing, and always has.

------
anonfunction
Why the scientific notation?

    
    
        3.436e3 $/BTC now

~~~
cryptoplot
From [http://cryptomarketplot.com/cmp-
faq.html](http://cryptomarketplot.com/cmp-faq.html) :

What exactly does 1.23e-4 means? Why do you use the computer form of
scientific notation?

We use scientific notation to remove the leadings zeroes. What is simpler to
read quickly, 0.000123 or 1.23e-4? If you trade crypto, you usually already
know by heart how many zeroes are in front, and what is the approximate price
range - you only care about the changes of the non zeroes. If the price goes
from 0.000123 to 0.000142 we can save a lot of space on the screen by just
writing 1.23e-4 and 1.42e-4. This way, the changes jump out and you read more
numbers faster.

(...)

We use the computer form of scientific notation. 1.23e-4 instead of
1.23*10^-4, because this saves a lot of space of the screen. Scientific papers
and traditional researchers may frown upon this "degenerate notation." But we
absolutely love this concise and elegal notation! It may be a good thing we
are in business, and not in the ivory tower of academia! We get more freedom
to write numbers how we damn like!!

~~~
nicky0
> What is simpler to read quickly, 0.000123 or 1.23e-4?

0.000123

~~~
cryptoplot
And between 0.00000123, 0.000123, 0.0000123 you are sure which one is which
without effort?

I can't

~~~
maxlybbert
When they’re aligned vertically, say as part of a table, then leaving the
zeros in makes it much easier to read.

~~~
cryptoplot
Not sure.

Check [http://cryptomarketplot.com/accessible-
index.html](http://cryptomarketplot.com/accessible-index.html) : the numbers
are also aligned, and in less space that it would take if 5.744e-5 was to have
all its leading zeroes.

~~~
maxlybbert
Within each section, right now, the exponents remain the same. I’ll concede
that when that’s true, the choice of notation is irrelevant.

However, occasionally, prices will straddle a boundary between 1.9eX and 9.0eY
with |X - Y| = 1. In those cases, the different exponents will be easier to
miss than the different number of digits or different number of leading 0s.

~~~
cryptoplot
I would argue that in this case, the big change from 1.9 to 9.0 would catch
your attention even more than the change in exponent.

But by the same login, I agree with you: .9eX and 9.0eY with |X - Y| = 1 may
cause too much focus on what is a small difference.

Some hard choices were made. It is not perfect.

------
miguelmota
Cool UI. How soon till you support all the coins that CoinMarketCap has?

~~~
cryptoplot
We already have that data. We don't show it because we want to filter out bad
data!!

Let's take an example: illiquid coins, like for new forks.

Look at the prices quoted on every exchange: you will often see huge
differences. Because on some exchange, you can only buy the new coins - not
sell them. So the price is high. On the exchanges where you can buy and sell,
the price is low.

We think that's scammy. We don't want to list these coins or that information.

We are working on ways to do that, but extending over the top 50 is not very
high in the priority list. There are even coins from the top 100 we are not
comfortable showing in the API. We just hope they won't ever make it to the
top 50 on our frontpage :-)

------
dmichulke
On a different note, if you want to see just the value of your portfolio, you
can use this site:

[http://www.cryptoport.net/](http://www.cryptoport.net/)

You're supposed to save your portfolio as a bookmark. Therefore it's simple,
has(almost) no JS, no login, no cookies, 100kb per page load, after that some
5kb.

It uses coinmarketcap though.

Sorry for piggybacking here but it might be useful to some.

~~~
asax
There's also [https://coincall.io](https://coincall.io) which lets you create
a portfolio without registering as a user.

~~~
cryptoplot
Thanks, I will see how they do it.

I don't want registration or even cookies.

------
zerocool86
You can also get all the data you want for free from: [https://min-
api.cryptocompare.com/documentation](https://min-
api.cryptocompare.com/documentation)

~~~
1996
Sorry but not exactly. Free as in free beer. Not free as in free speech.

From [https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/pricing](https://min-
api.cryptocompare.com/pricing) : "You must credit us with a link if you use
our data on your website or app"

Nobody has to credit us in any case: if you use the free API, no attribution
needed.

We will soon release a new batch of features to make the website who want to
use our data but are less technical and don't know how to use JSON.

------
octopod
You might consider having a few contests to create awareness like Coingecko
[https://medium.com/@492727ZED/calling-the-bottom-
ec21c4442a8...](https://medium.com/@492727ZED/calling-the-bottom-ec21c4442a8f)

~~~
cryptoplot
Creating awareness is good, but we want to concentrate on adding features at
the moment.

I like the idea of tracking a portfolio without logging. We must think more on
how do to it without accidentally tracking users. A bookmark would be nice.

------
tmlee
Cofounder at CoinGecko here, congrats on the launch! There are lots of
interesting nuggets that you share on the FAQ page which some I do share
similar thoughts on.

PS: We also provide free public API for many different data points at
[https://www.coingecko.com/api](https://www.coingecko.com/api)

~~~
cryptoplot
Launch was a nightmare!

Quite literally: I posted before bed, then edited my post to say we are sorry
about the PDF when I realized a new feature added last week seem to have
killed the automatic PDF making. Oops moment, but I felt bad about deleting
the post. And I was afraid I would see no response when I wake up.

Then had nightmare about broken features, and now I wake up and we are on the
first page!! So it's a true nightmare :-)

Much honored to be talking with the CoinGecko founder, and that you like what
we did!

On the FAQ, we tried to explain in more details why we did things differently.
We want to focus on other things that seem neglected by other sites.
Cryptomarketplot was made because there was nothing much like what we wanted.

For example, the website should to work when used with anything, and it should
be very fast even if you do not have a fast internet connection. And we want
to see the graphs, and the numbers, with minimal clutter. So we made the
product that we wanted.

Some of the wants are technical: try to open the website with links in a Linux
terminal, it still works. Try to read it on 3G, it is still fast. 1996 is very
proud!

Some wants are harder to explain: we do not want people to get scammed. We do
not like marketcap because it's an easy way to fool people. But it can turned
into a tool to warn people that a coin which jumped from spot #1000 to say #19
in about 3 days may be suspicious!

Many of our wants are philosophical like that. We want to find clients to be
profitable, but also we do not want ads or tracking visitors, now or ever. We
do not want to restrict freedom of anyone, so no API key, no license. You buy
the data, it's yours.

And we accept donations to people who share that spirit.

