Multibit not showing currency ticker

[vints998]

I am using multibit 0.4.21 and for several days now there has been no values in my currency ticker and I am not seeing bitcoins converted to currency.
Is anybody else having this issue?

[jim618]

I think MtGox has been intermittent on providing their currency info over the weekend.

In 0.4.21 you have some other choices of exchanges. If you go into Preferences you can choose one of the others to provide you with your currency information. If you upgrade to 0.4.23 you also have OpenExchangeRates as an exchange which can give you 150+ fiat currencies.

(There is a free sign up you have to do with OpenExchangeRates as an anti-spam measure. It is explained in the help:
https://multibit.org/help_ticker.html )

[vints998]

Thanks for the reply. I tried a different exchange for the second row and it worked ( in dollars ). Unfortunately I need Mt.Gox as my first row as, being in the UK, I want to see Pounds.
I hope Mt.Gox get back to normal soon!

[vints998]

Hi Jim,
if you are still monitoring this thread, I still cant see the MT.Gox ticker. Is it just me!!

[Mike Hearn]

It's also broken for me. I suspect Mt Gox changed their API or something as their website seems to be working fine. Signing up for a developer product is kind of annoying ... someone could act as a relay/proxy for OpenExchangeRates? Perhaps one day paid for with micropayments

It's really important to have this working out of the box. Otherwise it looks kind of ridiculous.

[jim618]

Yeah - the exchanges tend to just change their APIs occasionally without any warning.

I will mention it to Tim, who does the XChange library.
That's the main reason for having multiple exchanges available, so that no single exchange is a point of failure.

The OER sign up is in their term of conditions for usage for the free package - I'm not sure they would permit a relay/proxy.
As no-one is paying anything to the exchanges for their information (currently!) there is no guarantee of service at all I am afraid.

I agree it is quite annoying though.

[vints998]

Have updated to 0.5.9 now and have signed up to open exchange rates for the currency ticker in GBP.
Works great, thanks.

[jim618]

Yeah Open Exchange Rates seems pretty reliable. They concentrate on exchange rate data and have a commercial service so probably make more emphasis on uptime.

Re: Mt Gox. Talking to Tim Molter (the lead XChange dev) there is a fix for MtGox in his latest release so I will look at integrating it into MultiBit next week. We also have some ideas for improving things when MtGox (or other exchanges) change their data format but that will be a bit later.

[inf]

how about http://bitcoincharts.com/about/markets-api/ ?

[jim618]

XChange already supports BitcoinCharts:

https://github.com/timmolter/XChange

A slight problem with the BitcoinCharts data is that it includes exchanges and rates that are stale ie the last transaction might have been 3 months ago. (There is a date of transaction that Tim passes through).

All the exchanges seem to have little quirks in their data - for instance there is no real standard for which way round the currencies are given, nor if BTC or fiat is the denominator.

It takes time to work through them.