Topic: API for acquiring and converting to BTC? (Read 192 times)

An exact answer to your question already exists in MoonPay. Here, is a service that lets you buy cryptocurrency with a card (using an API of course), and sends it to a particular crypto address. The decentralized, private solutions listed by others should work as well. I just thought I'd pop up with something slightly easier [obviously, I am not affiliated with them].

Binance is going to be in for a barnstorm if they turn out to be one of them...

One more thing to say is that one can use a centralized exchange, because he's fully unaware that a decentralized exchange is a thing. He may feel he has to hand out all this info, because otherwise he has no easy way to acquire bitcoin. It's the same reason one will feel forced to integrate with PayPal to process payments, because he has no idea that electronic cash exists.

In that case, the merchant wouldn't say "I won't accept payments, because of privacy invasion", but "Unfortunately, I'll have to give up my privacy and my custody, because my business cannot operate otherwise".

Well, you're going to trust your whole bank account and crypto savings to the security of an API? I wouldn't. When you use an exchange (you shouldn't), at least you get codes via email, SMS, 2FA and whatnot before it allows you to withdraw; that wouldn't be possible with an API. APIs get hacked all the time.

There are certainly experienced Bitcoiners who use centralized exchanges, but I'd like to believe they do this with the awareness of the risks they take while doing it and the costs it will entail in terms of monetary and privacy implications.

I feel like the group of 'experienced Bitcoiners' is quite heterogeneous. There are guys who have been cypherpunks for like forever, way before Bitcoin, so they've not budged to the temptation of quickly acquiring some BTC on MtGox et al., and stuck to mining (especially early on) and P2P trading. Others got into cryptography and computers through Bitcoin, so their first purchases might have been through a CEX due to lack of knowledge when starting out. Some of them try to 'anonymize' after-the-fact (we talked about it here: How to leave KYC for good), others have accepted their decreased anonymity ('now it's too late anyway'). So it's really different from person to person.

The thing is, it's dangerous to give automated "helpers" like bots and APIs the permissions to access and work with your money. Can you trust it to not have any bugs or intentional vulnerabilities that would allow its creators to edit the receiving addresses and amounts being bought/sent? Probably not.

I have never used the app, so I don't know. My assumption is that the coins will be deposited in an address that's part of your app. But maybe you can enter a custom address, which in your case would be one that's part of your Ledger. Someone who knows more about Cash.app could give you a better answer.

Don't forget the often-occurring wallet maintenance issues. You mentioned a good example with Dogecoin. Wallets can be in "maintenance mode" for weeks and months before you can access your coins again. Interestingly, it occurs when there are huge pumps or significant drops in value. Once the issue is fixed, it's too late to take advantage of the situation in case you wanted to buy something cheaper or sell it at a high.

Not necessarily the experienced ones, but certainly those concerned about their privacy. Often, it goes hand in hand, and those who have been around for a while are also concerned about remaining anonymous. That's something you can't do on CEXs where you are often asked to verify your identity and answer questions about your business activities or origins of your money. Saying, that's none of your business doesn't work. Hence, we have completely decentralized P2P exchanges where no questions are asked.   

Thanks. So can I assume that for experienced Bitcoiners, Bisq and other peer-to-peer exchanges are their way of acquiring BTC? Not Binance, Coinbase etc?

By the way, why do you say this is a really bad idea?

I'll have to, silently, admit I had this mindset before I get into bitcoin. Fortunately, I never bothered to give KYC. It's not easy to understand what's going on if you're outside the rabbit hole the entire time. 

It doesn't have the same fees like Binance, wherein you're charged more than 20 times the fee you should have actually paid, but it does have fees. First and foremost, there are the trading fees; the taker and the maker pay combined 1% of the amount you trade.


Then there are the on-chain fees;

Presumably no fee too.

Thanks, just downloaded it and going to play around.

I feel like many newcomers don't understand the importance of privacy and all the issues with KYC; they're in the 'I have nothing to hide' mindset that everybody gets conditioned into from childhood. It takes some time to wrap your head around it and understand how monumentally critical it is to take care about your privacy online.

However, point 3 should be easy for anyone to understand; your funds can get stolen when you use a centralized exchange.
Here's a list of crypto exchange hacks and it's not even exhaustive. https://cryptosec.info/exchange-hacks/

Additionally, most 'legit' / not-yet-hacked exchanges have frozen some users' balances, closed their accounts, restricted access or blocked trading of some currency pairs, leaving users waiting for months to be able to get to their money.
Most new users don't realize the huge discrepancy between 'deposit experience' and 'withdrawal experience' on these platforms. Deposits are always easy and fast, often without KYC, no questions asked. After more and more deposits, maybe some trades and gains, when they want to withdraw (This is the WRONG way to use an exchange by the way; just want to make it clear - but most people do it like this), suddenly they ask for some paperwork that you might not be able to provide or have other reasons why withdrawals are blocked, and even if it works, they'll slap you with a big withdrawal fee.

I'm even aware of exchanges (still in operation) that a few months back, when Dogecoin pumped, mysteriously blocked all withdrawals of this coin due to a claimed hack. It is pretty certain that they actually sold their customers' coins to make a nice profit and bought them back a few months later, when the 'hack was resolved' and returned them to the customers.

This kind of stuff can only happen with centralized exchanges and I believe is the most interesting point against them for newcomers that don't understand the privacy implications.

If zander1983 got intrigued about all my privacy talk here, he should have a look at this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/why-beginners-should-pay-attention-to-their-privacy-5394338

Bisq is a decentralized peer-to-peer network wherein you can find other people to trade with, using security deposits. Here are the advantages:

• You avoid Know-Your-Customer (KYC) which is when you hand out your personal info to private companies.
• Your activity is private. There's no entity that's watching what you're doing. Trade takes place according to yours and your selected individual's policy.
• You don't have to trust an entity to hold your money.
• You can choose to trade from a variety of cryptocurrencies to national currencies hand-in-hand or/and via financial institutions such as Paypal.

You don't get the above benefits with Binance, Coinbase or any other centralized exchange.

Thanks, useful video. You then need to transfer to your private wallet? I also wonder about card fees. These are usually 2-3%. But perhaps Binance have negotiated a much smaller card fee, given their presumably huge volume.

I do that now via Coinbase and find it very cumbersome. Whats the difference between Bisq and Coinbase? Im relatively new to all this.

Im in Europe, we're way behind. Cashapp isn't here. Also, with Cashapp, do you need to then manually move it to a private wallet?

So, why do you want an API? Why can't you just buy 500 EUR worth of bitcoin every month? Personal suggestion: Don't go with Coinbase, they're, along with Binance, the worst centralized exchanges out there. Use a DEX instead, such as Bisq.

Read more.

Ok so what I want to do is every month schedule the sending of 500 euros worth of BTC from my current account to my private wallet (Im using Ledger). How could I achieve this?

I can't find any exchange that supports funding through API where you can able to top-up.

Binance have this API before but they disable it due to the risk if someone has access to your API because they can able to transfer and withdraw everything from your bank and credit cards.
Why not automate your deposit? If it was from a Credit card Binance has this option where you can able to automate the deposit amount daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

You can read more about auto-deposit from the link below.

- https://www.binance.com/en/support/faq/3b628537b6314964bb08b5b22fab6c18

I'm pretty sure lots of exchanges have something like that, but I'm not aware of one that allows to do so via API.
But then again I recommend against using exchanges altogether, anyway. It would really help to know what zander1983 is trying to do to help point in the right direction.

Cash app has a feature called Auto Invest that does something similar as what you are asking. You can schedule when the app will purchase Bitcoin for you and in which amount. This can be done daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or just a one-time purchase. There is a $10 minimum judging by their FAQ. 

I'm not aware of such an API and it also sounds like a really bad idea. I'm wondering why you're looking for something like this.
It sounds a bit like an XY Problem; if you gave more details on what you're actually trying to achieve, it would help us to give you better answers.

Is there an API that does both acquiring of funds and exchanging for Bitcoin? E.g. a user provides their debit card, the funds are taken from it and converted to BTC and deposited to some address.

I know Coinbase does this within its app. But is there an existing API that does this? None of the APIs I've seen do the acquiring of funds, the user requires an existing wallet on the platform and it needs to be topped up with fiat.