Wallet and stock xchanges reference

Disclaimer. Fees and Api information is from 2014-03-20, this document is shared on a ‘as is’ basis, we take no responsibility for it’s correctness and is only used as a reference of historical purpose.

Table of Contents

1. Information about the different crypto currencies

Bitcoin (BTC/XBT)
Litecoin
Feathercoin (FTC)
Namecoin (NMC)
Ripples (XRP)
Ven (XVN)

Peercoin (PPC)
Primecoin (XPM)
Dogecoin (XDG)
Novacoin (NVC)
Terracoin (TRC)

2. Fees

Kraken
Bitstamp
Coinkite
Blockchain
MtGox

3. API services

Kraken
Public market data
Private user data
Private user trading

Bitstamp
Public Data Functions
API authentication
User transactions

BTC-e
The list of methods

Coinkite
API Functionality

Blockchain
Blockchain Wallet
APIAddress Management

4. Bibliography


1. Information about the different crypto currencies

Bitcoin (BTC/XBT)

Transactions

Bitcoin transaction is a digitally signed message transferring the ownership of bitcoins from one Bitcoin address to another. A user sends a payment triggering the broadcast of the transaction to the Bitcoin network. For the transaction to take effect it must be recorded in a public ledger or public transaction database called the block chain. Approximately every ten minutes a bundle of transactions, called a “block”, is added to the block chain. The incentive for this accounting process, known as “mining”, carries a reward of 25 bitcoins per block, added to the block chain.This 25 bitcoins reward maintains the integrity of the Bitcoin system by allowing the computers that confirm transactions to also mint new bitcoins in the process. Bitcoin payment processing fees are optional, and generally substantially lower than those of credit cards or money transfers.

Block chain

Integral to Bitcoin is a public ledger, a database with a sequential record of all transactions, known as the block chain, that records bitcoin ownership at present and at all points in the past. By keeping a record of all transactions, the block chain prevents double-spending, a problem particular to digital money. The block chain provides only a certain level of anonymity, hence also called “pseudo-anonymity”; it identifies receivers by Bitcoin addresses, not individuals’ names, but racking the flow of bitcoins can give clues as to who owns them.Bitcoin intermediaries, such as exchanges, are required by law in many jurisdictions to collect personal customer data.

Mining

Those who volunteer to maintain the block chain are called miners and are rewarded with newly created bitcoins and transaction fee payments. Miners all over the world process payments by verifying each transaction as valid, adding it to the block chain and therefore secure the network. Because the Bitcoin network is not controlled by a single repository, like a central bank, the US Treasury has called Bitcoin a decentralized currency. As of 2014 payment processing is rewarded with 25 newly created bitcoins per block. To claim the reward, the miner includes in the block a special transaction called the “coinbase” that assigns the reward bitcoins to an address of the miner’s choosing. All bitcoins in circulation can be traced back to such coinbase transactions. The block reward will be halved to 12.5 bitcoins in 2017 and again approximately every four years thereafter. By 2014 estimates there will be 21 million bitcoins in existence in 2140, and transaction processing will only be rewarded by the transaction fees. Users that pay a fee may have their transactions processed more quickly according to the Bitcoin Foundation. The most efficient mining hardware makes use of custom designed application-specific integrated circuits, which are much faster mining and have low power consumption compared to general purpose microprocessors, such as x86 processors.

Buying and selling bitcoins

Bitcoin can be bought and sold for many different currencies from individuals and from companies. The fastest way to obtain bitcoins is to purchase them in person or at a Bitcoin ATM for cash. Participants in online exchanges offer bitcoin buy and sell bids. Companies buy or sell bitcoin in bulk on exchanges and offer their customers the option via ATM to buy or sell bitcoin at market price. Bitcoin ATMs allow bitcoins to be purchased for cash, and some also allow cash withdrawals from Bitcoin wallets stored on smartphones. Using an online exchange to obtain bitcoins entails some risk, since according to one study 45% of exchanges have failed and taken client bitcoins with them.Social trading platforms such as CoinTouch mitigate this risk as users transact directly.

Since bitcoin transactions are irreversible, sellers of bitcoins must take extra measures to ensure they have received traditional funds from the buyer.

Wallets

Bitcoin uses public-key cryptography, in which a pair of a public and a private cryptographic key is generated. A collection of keys is called a wallet. Note that sometimes the term is used to mean the software in the sense of digital wallet. A Bitcoin transaction transfers ownership to a new address, a string having the form of random letters and numbers derived from public keys by application of a hash function and encoding scheme. The corresponding private keys act as a safeguard for the owner; a valid payment message from an address must contain the associated public key and a digital signature proving possession of the associated private key. Because anyone with a private key can spend all of the bitcoins sent to the corresponding address, the essence of Bitcoin security is protection of private keys. Theft of bitcoins has occurred on numerous occasions, and the practical day-to-day security of Bitcoin wallets is a concern like the security of other forms of payment. Risk of theft can be reduced by generating keys offline on an uncompromised computer and saving them on external storage or paper printouts. The ubiquitous media images of “physical bitcoins”, produced by various vendors confuse and do not do justice to their function; they store a private key on paper, metal, wood, or plastic. There are also digital products known as “Hardware Wallets” to store bitcoins securely on a physical device. Bitcoins can be lost. In 2013 one user said he lost 7,500 bitcoins, worth $7.5m at the time, when he discarded a hard drive containing his private key.

Software

Bitcoin wallet software, sometimes called a Bitcoin client, allows a user to transact bitcoins. A wallet program generates and stores private keys, and communicates with peers on the Bitcoin network. The first wallet program called Bitcoin-Qt was released in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto as open source code. It can be used as a desktop wallet for payments or as a server utility for merchants and other payment services. Bitcoin-Qt, the so-called “Satoshi client” is sometimes also referred to as the reference client because it serves to define the Bitcoin protocol and acts as a standard for other implementations. When making a purchase with a mobile device, QR codes are used ubiquitously to simplify transactions. Several server software implementations of the Bitcoin protocol exist. So-called “full” nodes on the network validate transactions and blocks they receive, and relay them to connected peers.

For more information about Bitcoin follow the link:

www.bitcoin.org

Litecoin (LTC)

Differences from Bitcoin

Litecoin offers three key differences from Bitcoin, which its developers hope will make it better than Bitcoin. The Litecoin network aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than Bitcoin’s 10 minutes, which its developers claim allows for faster transaction confirmation. The drawbacks of faster block times are increased blockchain size and an increase in the number of orphaned blocks. Advantages include greater resistance to a double spending attack over the same period as Bitcoin, if both networks had the same computing power. Litecoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm, a sequential memory-hard function, requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm which is not memory-hard. The Litecoin network will produce 84 million litecoins, or four times as many currency units as will be issued by the Bitcoin network. The original intended purpose of using scrypt was to allow miners to mine both Bitcoin and Litecoin at the same time. The choice to use scrypt was also partially to avoid giving advantage to video card (GPU), FPGA and ASIC miners over CPU miners. While CPU mining is no longer “profitable,” lone CPU miners are still able to contribute to the network and acquire coins when pool mining–the same is no longer possible in the Bitcoin network.[citation needed] Mining litecoin with a CPU and not utilizing the video card is approximately 100-300 times slower than mining bitcoin with a video card depended on hardware. Due to Litecoin’s use of the scrypt algorithm, FPGA and ASIC devices made for mining Litecoin are more complicated to create and more expensive to produce than they are for Bitcoin, which uses SHA-256.

Transactions

A peer-to-peer network similar to Bitcoin’s handles Litecoin’s transactions, balances and issuance through scrypt, the proof-of-work scheme (Litecoins are issued when a small enough hash value is found, at which point a block is created, the process of finding these hashes and creating blocks is called mining). The issuing rate forms a geometric series, and the rate halves every four years (every 840,000 blocks) reaching a final total of 84 million LTC.

Litecoins are currently traded primarily for both fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies, mostly on online exchanges. Reversible transactions (such as those with credit cards) are not normally used to buy litecoins as Litecoin transactions are irreversible, to avoid the danger of chargebacks.

Addresses

Payments in the Litecoin network are made to addresses, which are based on digital signatures. They are strings of 33 numbers and letters which always begin with the letter L.

Confirmations

Transactions are recorded in the Litecoin blockchain (a ledger held by most clients). A new block is added to the blockchain roughly every 2.5 minutes (whenever a small enough hash value is found for the proof-of-work scheme). A transaction is usually considered complete after six blocks, or 15 minutes, though for smaller transactions, fewer than six blocks may be needed for adequate security.

For more information about Litecoin follow the link:

www.litecoin.org

Feathercoin (FTC)

Transactions

Every block on the Feathercoin network contains transactions. The process of block generation, known commonly as mining, requires significant computational resources. In order to encourage mining activities, every node which manages to generate a valid block is awarded with a generation fee of 200 FTC, though this value halves every 840,000 blocks (nearly every 4.1 years). The generating node is also awarded with all transaction fees, i.e. small optional payments issued by senders to get their transactions processed at higher priority. The total supply of feathercoins is finite and estimated at 336 million.

Mining algorithm

Feathercoin and Litecoin use the scrypt hash function for proof-of-work introduced by Colin Percival. Both cryptocurrencies operate with a block target of 2.5 minutes which is 4 times faster than Bitcoin (10 minutes) allowing quicker transaction processing. Bitcoin employs a different hash function, SHA-256. The Feathercoin network adjusts the hashing difficulty every 504 blocks to maintain a given block generation speed, and this process is known as retargeting. Litecoin and Bitcoin feature a slower 2016 block retarget rate. The difficulty is adjusted according to the total network computational power which is called the hash rate. There is a limiting coefficient implemented (the square root of 2) which assures that no difficulty increase higher than 1.4142 or decrease lower than 0.7071 may take place.

Largely because Feathercoin came after Litecoin, Feathercoin has seen much slower adoption, and has significantly less miners. This means the network is inherently insecure, and has required centralization in the form of a “feature” called ACP (Advanced Check Pointing) to prevent attacks on the blockchain. Feathercoin has seen entire days of transactions erased and replaced during previous attacks, and this remains a serious concern for the network’s ongoing survival.

Addresses

Payments on the Feathercoin network are made to unique addresses which are based on digital signatures. They appear as strings of 33 characters which always begin with either 6 or 7. Every address corresponds to a unique private key known by the owner only. It’s nearly impossible to find out a private key using a brute-force attack.

Confirmations

Transactions are contained in blocks. Every valid block is added to the network block chain, a list of all generated blocks starting with #1 block known as the genesis block.Interstingly, Feathercoin uses the exact same genesis block as Litecoin (essentially, the Feathercoin blockchain is a fork of the Litecoin blockchain). Every next block references one previous block, thus a chain is created. A transaction is considered complete after 6 confirmations usually, i.e. when 6 blocks have been added to the block chain after the block containing this transaction. Although this is not mandatory and confirmation policies may vary among receivers.

For more information about Feathercoin follow the link:

www.feathercoin.com

Namecoin (NMC)

History

A Namecoin like system was first described in 2010, with ideas such as BitDNS by Appamato, and then by internet activist Aaron Swartz, as a counterexample to Zooko’s triangle. A few months later on April 18, 2011, it was implemented as Namecoin (which at the time had no GUI). In June 2011, Wikileaks publicly endorsed Namecoin. In September 2011, Namecoin switched to merged mining (see the mining section). In 2013, GUIs, such as Namecoin Qt began to appear; as of November 5, the latest version of Namecoin Qt is version 0.3.72. February 5th, 2014, a Windows/Linux Firefox plug-in called FreeSpeechMe was released that allows automated resolution of .bit addresses by downloading the Namecoin block chain and running it in the background. March 7th, 2014 a Windows system-wide Dot-Bit program called MeowBit was released.

Uses

Although Namecoin can be used as a currency, it is mainly intended to be used as a decentralized DNS. Domain names are registered by paying a small fee (to stop spam and leave domains for future users) of 0.01 NMC, they are then updated for the first time, after this the person owns the domain, which can only be removed from them if they choose to transfer it. Domain names must be updated every 250 days, or they will expire

Addresses

Payments in Namecoin are made to addresses (based on digital signatures). Addresses are human readable strings of 33 numbers beginning with the letters N or M (they used to start with 1, like Bitcoin, but this was changed to avoid confusion). This makes Namecoin pseudonymous, but not anonymous.

For more information about namecoin follow the link:

www.namecoin.info

Ripples (XRP)

Concept In Ripple, users make payments between themselves by using cryptographically signed transactions denominated in arbitrary real-world assets (dollars, gold, airmiles etc). To this end, Ripple keeps a ledger which records debts between users that trust each other. In this way, all assets are represented as debt. When a payment is made between two users that trust each other, the balance of the mutual credit line is adjusted, subject to limits set by each user. In order to send assets between users that have not directly established a trust relationship, the system tries to find a path between the two users such that each link of the path is between two users that do have a trust relationship. All balances along the path are then adjusted simultaneously and atomically.

Gateways

A gateway is any person or organization that enables users to put money into and take money out of the Ripple network. They accept currency deposits from users and issue balances into Ripple’s distributed ledger. Furthermore, gateways redeem ledger balances against the deposits they hold when currency is withdrawn. In practice, gateways are similar to banks, yet they share one global ledger known as the Ripple network. Depending on the type and degree of interaction a user has with a gateway, the gateway may have Anti-money laundering (AML) or Know your customer (KYC) policies requiring verification of identification, address, nationality, etc. Such policies are designed to prevent criminal activity

Trustlines

Users must ‘extend trust’ to the Ripple gateway that holds their deposit. This manual creation of a trustline indicates to the Ripple network that the user is comfortable with the gateway’s counterparty risk. Furthermore, the user must put a quantitative limit on this trust and create a similar limit for each currency on deposit at that gateway. For example, if a user deposits $50 and BTC 2.00 at The Rock Trading, the user will have to grant trust of at least that much in both currencies to the gateway for the monies to be available in the Ripple network. It is not recommended for a user to grant trust to other parties unless the user fully understands the ramifications.

Rippling

When establishing a trustline, an option will present itself in the client to allow ‘rippling’. If this option is checked and a new trust is established in the same currency as an existing trustline, the Ripple client will present a warning to the user. Trusting multiple gateways in the same currency and allowing the rippling feature will subject the user’s balance of that currency to automatically switch (or ripple) between one gateway and another. This will not change the user’s total balance, but will alter the issuer of the balance. This advanced tab feature may be a source of confusion for some. Users who wish to allow rippling will earn a small transit fee for providing inter-gateway liquidity. It is not recommended for a user to allow rippling unless they fully understand the ramifications.

Read more about Ripple follow the link.

https://ripple.com/wiki/

Ven (XVN)

What is Ven (XVN)?

Ven (XVN) is the only digital currency that’s completely back by assets (a basket of currencies, commodities, and carbon futures). Ven was created in 2007 within the Hub Culture social network. Ven is easy to use – transactions are instantaneous, available to anyone with an email address, and free inside the network. Since it’s backed by commodities and carbon futures, Ven is environmentally friendly and more moderately inflationary than traditional national currencies. Ven is controlled and managed by the Hub Culture social network. Oversight of reserves is managed in conjunction with partner banks, including HSBC. Thousands of people and organizations use Ven through the Hub Culture stores, supplier relationships, micro-payments, and other activities. API protocols mean Ven can be exchanged anywhere for anything.

For more on Ven, follow the links below:

https://www.hubculture.com/groups/237/projects/427/wiki/

Peercoin (PPC)

Transactions

A peer-to-peer network handles Peercoin’s transactions, balances and issuance through SHA-256, the proof-of-work scheme (Peercoins are issued when a small enough hash value is found, at which point the block of transactions is added to the shared block chain. The process of finding these hashes and creating blocks is called mining). Peercoins are currently traded for fiat currencies, bitcoins, and other cryptocurrencies, mostly on online exchanges. Reversible transactions (such as those with credit cards) are not normally used to buy Peercoins as Peercoin transactions are irreversible, so there is the danger of chargebacks.

Addresses

Payments in the Peercoin network are made to addresses, which are based on digital signatures. They are strings of 34 numbers and letters which always begin with the letter P. One can create as many addresses as needed without spending any Peercoins. It is quite common to use one address for one purpose only which makes it easy to see who actually sent the Peercoins.

Confirmations

Transactions are recorded in the Peercoin blockchain (a ledger held by most clients), a new block is added to the blockchain roughly every 10 minutes (whenever a small enough hash value is found for the proof-of-work scheme), a transaction is usually considered complete after 6 blocks, or 60 minutes, though for smaller transactions, less than 6 blocks may be needed for adequate security.

Read more about peercoin follow the link.

https://www.peercoin.net/

Primecoin (XPM)

More info is coming later.

Read more about Primecoin follow the link.

https://primecoin.org/

Dogecoin (XDG)

More info is coming later.

Reed more about Dogcoin, follow the link:

https://dogecoin.com/

Novacoin (NVC)

More info is coming later.

Terracoin (TRC)

More info is coming later.

Reed more about Terracoin, follow the link:

https://terracoin.org/

2. Fees

The charge on the different stock exchanges and wallets we are using.

Kraken (BTC/XBT, LTC, NMC, XVN, XRP, XDG)

Kraken gears several different currencies. But right now it’s only LTC as we deal with there, all currencies have different volume fee

LTC/EUR

Fee Schedule Pair Info
Fee Volume Base Currency Litecoin (LTC)

0.20% < $2,500 Quote Currency Euro (EUR)
0.19% < $5,000 Fee Volume Currency US Dollar (USD)
0.18% < $10,000 Margin Call Level 80%
0.17% < $17,500 Margin Liquidation Level 40%
0.16% < $25,000 Available Leverage ——
0.15% < $35,000 Margin Fee None
0.14% < $50,000
0.13% < $75,000
0.12% < $100,000
0.11% < $150,000
0.10% < $200,000
0.09% < $350,000
0.08% < $500,000
0.07% < $750,000
0.06% < $1,000,000
0.05% >= $1,000,000

Bitstamp (BTC/XBT, XRP)

Bitstamp is our main exchange to buy BTC. They also excange Ripple, but dont have any wallet for it, but acts more like a money exchange in terms of Ripple.

FEE SCHEDULE
Fee % 30 days USD volume

0.50% < $500 0.28% < $62,500
0.48% < $1,000 0.26% < $75,000
0.46% < $2,000 0.24% < $100,000
0.44% < $4,000 0.22% < $150,000
0.42% < $6,500 0.20% > $150,000
0.40% < $10,000
0.38% < $15,000
0.36% < $20,000
0.34% < $25,000
0.32% < $37,500
0.30% < $50,000

Coinkite (BTC/XBT, LTC)

Coinkite is a wallet that can have two different currencies LTC and XBT / BTC. they also have wallts for Dollar and Euro

STARTER (FREE) PERSONAL

1% on Withdrawals € 7.23/mo or € 72.26/yr
1% on POS Sales 0% on Withdrawals
1% on POS Sales
2 sub-accounts 10 sub-accounts
Max funds ฿5 / Ł100 Max funds ฿250 / Ł5,000

No withdrawal limits
No withdrawal limits
No Miner’s Fees FREE deposits
Up to 1 Payment Terminal Up to 1 Payment Terminal
No FREE debit card 1 FREE debit card
Exchange markup share: 50% Exchange markup share: 0%

PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS

€ 21.68/mo or € 216.79/yr € 197.08/mo or € 1970.78/yr
0% on Withdrawals 0% on Withdrawals
0% on POS Sales 0% on POS Sales
30 sub-accounts 100 sub-accounts
Max funds ฿500 / Ł10,000 Max funds ฿1,000 / Ł20,000

No withdrawal limits No withdrawal limits
FREE deposits FREE deposits
No Miner’s Fees No Miner’s Fees
Up to 3 Terminals Up to 10 Terminals
1 FREE debit card 1 FREE debit card
Exchange markup share: 0% Exchange markup share: 0%

ENTERPRISE

€ 1970.78/mo or € 19707.83/yr
0% on Withdrawals
0% on POS Sales
Phone Support
Dedicated Account Manager
Unlimited sub-accounts
Unlimited funds ฿∞ / Ł∞
No withdrawal limits
FREE deposits
No Miner’s Fees
Unlimited Terminals
Exchange markup share: 0%
H.S.M. Appliance [Optional]

Blockchain (BTC/XBT)

A wallet solution that only handles Bitcoin, reason why we are using this is that it is safe and most of our clients have it and then they get their bitcoin within 1 min after we made ​​orders.

fee per transaction is 0,0001 BTC

BTC-e (BTC/XBT, LTC, NMC, NVC, TRC, PPC, FTC, XPM)

Used as a stopgap measure by the purchase of various crypto currencies is cheaper than kraken due to larger volumes, but more difficult to send money to.

fee per transaction is 0.01 LTC

MtGox (BTC/XBT)

Closed down due to bankruptcy

3. API services

Kraken

Public market data

Get server time
Get asset info
Get tradable asset pairs
Get ticker information
Get OHLC data
Get order book
Get recent trades
Get recent spread data


Private user data

Get account balanceGet trade balance
Get open orders
Get closed orders
Query orders info
Get trades history
Query trades info
Get open positions
Get ledgers info
Query ledgers
Get trade volume

Private user trading

Add standard orderCancel open order

For more details see the link:

https://www.kraken.com/help/api

Bitstamp

Public Data Functions

TickerOrder book
EUR/USD conversion rate


API authentication

API keyNonce
Signature
Private Functions
Account balance

User transactions

Open ordersCancel order
Buy limit order
Sell limit order
Withdrawal requests
Bitcoin withdrawal
Bitcoin deposit address
Unconfirmed bitcoin deposits
Ripple withdrawal
Ripple deposit address

For more details see the link:

https://www.bitstamp.net/api/

BTC-e

The list of methods

Get infoTrans History
Trade History
Active Orders
Trade
Cancel Order

For more details see the link:

https://btc-e.com/page/2

Coinkite

API Functionality

Send FundsReceive Funds
Generage Public Keys
Check Balances
Send Funds to Email
Create vouchers
Create paper wallet (voucher with private key published)

For more details see the link:

https://www.coinkite.com/faq/developers

Blockchain

Blockchain Wallet API

Making Outgoing PaymentsSend Many Transactions
Fetching the wallet balance
Listing Addresses
Getting the balance of an address
Generating a new address
Http Callbacks
Callback Security

Address Management

Archiving an address
Unarchive an address
Consolidating Addresses

For more details see the link:

https://blockchain.info/sv/api

4. Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org
https://sv.wikipedia.org
https://www.kraken.com
https://www.bitstamp.net
https://www.btc-e.com
https://www.coinkite.com
https://www.blockchain.info