Introduction to the Course

Get an overview of the course, its intended audience, prerequisites, and learning objectives.

We'll cover the following

What's this course about?

We can describe cryptocurrency as a form of currency that only exists virtually and isn't regulated by a central authority. Rather, there is a secure decentralized system to trade cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are built using the principles of blockchain technologyA blockchain is a decentralized yet secure database distributed across several computer nodes linked using a peer-to-peer network. Blockchain saves information in data blocks linked together in a chain, giving Blockchain its distinctive name.. With cryptocurrency, we can transfer funds cheaply, quickly, and securely. The process is somewhat shielded from government interference, which is one of the reasons why it has taken the financial world by storm.

With the newfound popularity of cryptocurrencies, market data on cryptocurrency trading has become equally important. This market data is essential for evaluating the value of crypto portfolios, managing risk when trading cryptocurrencies, drafting good market-makingMarket-making is where a trader makes both bid and ask offers on a particular asset to make profits on the bid-ask spread. strategies, and even for use in big dataWe refer to big data as a vast collection of data that is too large or complex to process with traditional data applications. research.

We'll quickly go through the CoinAPI service in this course, which provides us with essential data on the cryptocurrency market. This data includes information on the different cryptocurrency exchanges, metadata on each cryptocurrency, current and historical prices, exchange rates, and more. Don't be intimidated by any of these terms yet! We'll cover each of them in detail later in this course. By the end of the course, we'll integrate CoinAPI into a demo dashboard application to provide interactive and visual cryptocurrency-market data.

This course is intended for individuals who wants to learn how to use and integrate cryptocurrency-market data APIs. The course is particularly designed for:

  • Beginners who want to explore CoinAPI and have some knowledge about cryptocurrency trading.
  • Active cryptocurrency traders who already have sufficient knowledge about cryptocurrency and want to directly use the CoinAPI to make informed decisions when buying and selling cryptocurrencies.
  • Professional developers who have already worked with different cryptocurrency-market APIs and want to explore CoinAPI to integrate it into their next project.

Prerequisites 

This course requires an intermediate knowledge of Python and some basic understanding of cryptocurrency trading. We also assume you are well versed in HTTP requests and JSON objects, as we’ll make many API calls using HTTP requests. It is also helpful to have some proficiency with Python's Django framework for the project at the end of the course. It also requires basic knowledge of API architecture.

Learning objectives

By the end of the course, you'll be able to:

  • Understand the different API services provided by CoinAPI.
  • List different cryptocurrencies and the exchanges that trade in them.
  • Fetch the current trade and quote prices for each cryptocurrency.
  • Display historical cryptocurrency data graphically.
  • Integrate CoinAPI in a simple dashboard web application.