HN Explorer

Bitcoin Price Checker (Personal Project)

9 points by elbrian ↗ HN
Hey guys!

I am a long time lurker who is just finishing up the initial release of a personal project: a bitcoin price checking website & Android app.

URL: http://pricebtc.com

The mission of this website/app is to provide a current price of BTC as quickly and easily as possible.

The Android app is under 30kb, and uses the internet only to retrieve a <1kb txt file that contains the prices. As far as data usage goes, I think this is probably one of the best in the world.

I'm interested in hearing any feedback you guys might have, be it about the design / user experience, or additional functionality.

Thanks!

8 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 26.0 ms ] thread
jbarrow
The user interface is great! Simple, and it does what is advertised.

If you really wanted, you could make it switch currencies using some simple javascript and graceful degradation so it doesn't have to reload the page for a simple conversion.

Slightly OT: I did not realize Bitcoin had climbed to $350...

elbrian
Thanks for the feedback!

The reason I decided against AJAX on the currency switcher is so folks would see the GET variable in the URL and know that they can bookmark it if they want to always see a currency besides USD.

In the upcoming weeks (once I have more than 5 currencies supported) I'll be looking for a way to AJAXify the experience while still making it apparent that you can bookmark the site with a specific currency pre-selected.

I've considered putting cookies in there, as well, but decided against that for the sake of reduced load times and keeping things as straightforward and lightweight as possible.

got2surf
You can do something like this to change the URL without reloading page, and then just use AJAX for the currency switcher:

  window.history.pushState("Updating URL to ___", "Title", "/?currency=USD");
elbrian
Perfect! I'm going to implement this tomorrow morning.

Very glad I posted this here. You guys rock.

EDIT: Just got it working. Thanks again for the pro advice!

wikwocket
Very slick. To ask the perennial HN question, do you plan to monetize it? I wonder if Coinbase (or any other BTC marketplace) offers an affiliate program for people you refer...
jeremybox
Very nice indeed! Could you have GBP as well? I think it's a currency worth having there :-)
elbrian
All set! Can't believe I forgot that one.
ux_tester
bitcoin price updated every minute current bitcoin price provided by coinbase.com

> do you have to crawl coinbase.com/charts every minute or do they offer BTC quotes via their API?

nice project, I also like the interface!