Bitcoinity. If you’ve spent any amount of time in this community, changes are you know exactly what it is. For those who don’t, Bitcoinity.org perhaps serves as one of the leading — if not the leading — Bitcoin charting ‘service’ on the web.
Keeping track of the price of Bitcoin at multiple exchanges in multiple currencies has been critically useful for many of us. I know I personally keep it open in a tab throughout the day. At any given time of the day, thousands of people are carefully monitoring where the price of Bitcoin is going at their preferred exchange.
But being me, the price per coin isn’t all I want to know about. I was curious to know more about this project in general. As such, I had the opportunity to ask Bitcoinity founder Kacper Cieśla a few questions about the project.
Can you give me an introduction about yourself?
I’m a 27-year-old programmer from Poland. Started quite early (when I was ~8 years old), went though number of languages. In the last few years I seem to have been mostly spending time in Ruby.
How did Bitcoinity come to a start?
I had spare 15-inch LCD and I love charts. I wasn’t even sure I would make it public. But I shared it on IRC and some people liked it.
What was your goal in setting up the charts?
Tracking Bitcoin price in realtime. I’m not a trader, but back then Bitcoin was even more volatile than it is now, so it was very interesting to watch how it played out.
Did you think the charts would become so popular in the community?
No way. I never advertised it in any way. I literally just shared link on the IRC channel. It blows my mind how popular both Bitcoin and Bitcoinity became.
What goals do you set up for yourself in maintaining the chart ‘service’?
Simplicity and reliability.
Any plans for additional features in the future?
Yeah I started http://data.bitcoinity.org, also I’d love to add some more small features that people are asking for on Bitcoinity, but last year I’ve been slowed down by some nasty eyes disease so it’s not going fast.
What do you think the Bitcoin community is missing in terms of data knowledge?
Bitcoin is kind of technology that gathers fantastic people. Many of these people are programmers, and they have created tons of great tools already. They create awesome visualizations with gnuplot and sharing it on forum, there are some other chart services, I’m sure Bitcoinity is not the end. I love that people choose it for checking Bitcoin price and I’ll try to make the best of it, but this is free decentralized market. We should have many different great tools.
A special thanks to Kacper Cieśla for taking time to answer my questions.
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