Craider: How-to connect your Coinbase API

Craider
5 min readAug 17, 2018

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After Kraken, Poloniex and Binance, Craider has now added Coinbase to it’s selection of exchanges! Coinbase is one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, with 50,000 new users signing up each day. For many traders, Coinbase is the fiat gateway into crypto, and as such it was on our short list of exchanges to add. We’ll be adding 10 more exchanges in the future, as you can read on our product road map in our one pager, so stay tuned for more how-to’s.

Extra security and user restrictions

Coinbase works a bit different than the other exchanges on the Craider Telegram trading bot. It has an extra layer of security called a “passphrase” each time you make a new API. So besides the API key and the API secret, you will need to have this passphrase as well in order to connect your Coinbase account to the Craider Telegram bot. More details on that below in the how-to part.
Another thing that makes Coinbase stand out from the other available exchanges on Craider is that Coinbase has restrictions on trading based on your geographical location. For example, Canadian, Australian, and Singaporean accounts include access to cryptocurrency only without access to fiat. A full overview of the restrictions per location can be found here. We have taken these restrictions into account when using our “Cashout” function

Creating a new API key on Coinbase

First make sure that you have a Coinbase PRO account and have access to the API creation. You will need to be verified by two forms of identification for this. Once logged in to your dashboard, navigate to your profile picture on the right hand side and click the downward facing arrow next to it. This will open up a menu with settings. Choose “API”, and you will be redirected to the API creation screen.
Click the “+New API” button to create a new API, and a smaller screen will appear with information that you have to fill out. You will be asked to give the API certain permissions, the Craider bot only needs VIEW and TRADE, not TRANSFER permission. This is to make sure that the bot can only execute trades and not move your funds around between wallets. Your funds are always safe with us because of this!

There is a randomly generated string under the passphrase box, you can keep it as is or set your own personal passphrase. We recommend setting a personal one because it’s easier to remember. If you do chose to keep the randomly generated string as a passphrase, we recommend you store it somewhere secure because it will not be shown again.

Once you have filled the information and have verified your creation of a new API key, you will be shown the API secret. This is also only shown one time, so store it somewhere safe for future reference. Your API key will now be shown in the list of API keys, we recommend you keep this tab open for the next part of the how-to.

Creating a Coinbase API for Craider

Adding Coinbase to your markets on the Craider Telegram bot

Once you have successfully created the API key, AND you have your API secret AND passphrase handy, you are ready to!
Open up a chat with the Craider bot on Telegram (link will take you to the bot), and chose “my markets”. You will be asked which exchange you want to add, chose Coinbase from the list. The Craider bot will then ask you for your API key. Copy paste the key from the API screen in to the chat text bot and press enter to send it to the bot. Craider bot will then ask you for your API secret. Here is where it gets a bit tricky, because of the extra security layer of the passphrase, you will need to provide both the API secret AND the passphrase at once for this step. The API secret and the passphrase are only separated by a : (colon) symbol.

Example: your API secret is a randomly generated string of letters and numbers, let’s call this secret randomstring. When setting up the API on Coinbase you chose a personal passphrase* password123. The randomstring and the password123 must be typed after each other, only separated by a : (colon) symbol.

The full API secret will be

randomstring:password123

And this is what you will type to the bot, and press enter. The bot will then verify the API connection and report back. If all is well, you can start trading on Coinbase right away!

Adding Coinbase API to Craider Telegram bot

API connection to Coinbase is more complex than the other exchanges, however if you have a problem always make sure first if you have copy pasted the API key, secret, AND passphrase correctly, and that you have separated the API secret and passphrase with a colon (:) . If problems still persist, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on our special Craider help chat. A Craider team member will be there to help you with your issues.

Happy trading!

*Note: please always use secure and strong passphrases for your own safety, password123 is NOT a secure passphrase and was only chosen for this post as a simple example!

This post was written by Seetha Val, Head of Community at Craider. For a full view of Craider’s product offering, please visit our website or join our Telegram chat.

Craider is a digital assets platform consisting of a mobile messenger bot, a web based portal and a multi-functional exchange, all powered by data driven analytics. Craider’s aim is to streamline the flow of funds between platform users, traditional financial markets and the emerging digital asset economy.

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