Monitoring Real Time Cryptocurrency Activity with Geneos

At over 20 years old, Geneos is still as flexible as ever. Our bread and butter is monitoring financial services applications and infrastructure but we are constantly looking to expand the limits of Geneos. I work in the client services team in ITRS’ New York office and as a side-project, I decided to use Geneos to track what is happening in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world.

Monitoring Crypto Prices

I first decided to extract trade data from CoinCap’s WebSocket through the XML-RPC protocol from a Java application. CoinCap’s API exposes 24-hour percent change, the last trade, and the exchange that executed the last trade.

Monitoring Crypto Exchange Account Activity

My next step was to monitor activity on cryptocurrency exchanges, which are usually the main method for someone to purchase a cryptocurrency. Many exchanges expose their data through some type of API. There are a large number of pre-package modules in NPM that manage and interact with these exchanges. Below is an example of monitoring a small account on Binance, a Tokyo-based exchange.

Monitoring Bitcoin Mining Activity

Another way to obtain cryptocurrencies is through mining. Mining is the process where machines use special software to solve math problems and are issued a certain number of bitcoins or cryptocurrency in exchange. In the process of solving these equations, they verify and approve transactions which in turn secures their respective networks. If you’re mining with Geneos, you can monitor an ASIC, GPU or CPU mining rig whether it’s a Windows or a Linux device. With the Processes plugin, it's possible to switch mining processes on the fly. The screenshot below is an example of Geneos monitoring mining software with the Processes plugin.

It is possible to obtain the hourly rate in US dollars or bitcoins of a mining operation and you can use an Geneos API or a toolkit plugin that collects the necessary stats. Just like exchanges, some mining pools expose their stats through an API, which makes it easy to get stats via web requests.  I was able to calculate the earn rate by creating a java application that uses prices from CoinCap’s WebSocket API, network stats from WhatToMine.com’s API, and my mining accounts on Nanopool.org, Antpool.com and SiaMining.com. Once the stats were collected, I calculated the results and then finally publish the data to a netprobe via the Geneos API plugin. Here is a view of the current balance and mining rates for each of the mining pools:

Whether its trading, mining, or even simple monitoring, Geneos can adapt. I've given you just a flavour of monitoring cryptocurrencies, but as the blockchain evolves and new currencies emerge, Geneos will continue to play its role as an essential monitoring tool.