Is there a bitcoin api?

Question

Sorry if my question sounds silly, I get downvoted for some reason everytime I ask it. I just need some help

Today I saw the "richest bitcoin wallets" chart and I was inspired to program the same thing, it's interesting for me to know how this type of research is done. I want to be able to look into blockchain data by means of code and perform some queries (I guess?) to sort addresses starting from wealthiest. Also I want to get transactions data to analyze moves of traders

And, of course, I tried to google what I want to do but unfortunately, I was unable to find anything on that topic!

Can someone please point me the right direction? I can't find find out from where to start

Answer 1

There are many.

If we define an Applications Programming Interface (API) as any kind of software interface between computers or programs then the following apply.

1. Bitcoin network protocol. You can write software to use this to obtain blockchain related information from any other Bitcoin node.

2. Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). Many full-node implementations provide an RPC service. For example Bitcoin Core RPC. Other implementations may have their ownAPI. For example Electrum's JSONRPC. There is no guarantee that different software provides the same or even similar RPC API.

3. Command Line interface (CLI). Although probably designed with interactive use in mind, these can be used in scripts or invoked from compiled programs and thus constitute a kind of API. For example Bitcoin Core CLI - though I expect the RPC interface is preferable in most non-interactive cases.

4. Web service APIs provided by major Bitcoin related services. For example Blockchair. This includes some Cryptocurrency Exchanges. It may be that these require registration and may be rate-limited for people who don't pay a subscription or otherwise have a business relationship.