Access kraken market data

---
name: access-kraken-market-data
description: When the user asks about a cryptocurrency's current price, bid/ask spread, 24-hour range, candlestick chart, or order book depth on Kraken — reach for Kraken's public REST API. No authentication required.
---

## When to use this skill

When the user asks about a cryptocurrency's current price, bid/ask spread, 24-hour range, recent price movement, or order book depth for a pair on Kraken. This covers the public market-data endpoints — ticker, OHLC, and depth — all unauthenticated. For account balances, order placement, or withdrawals, you need Kraken's private API (not covered here). For aggregated cross-exchange data or market cap, use CoinGecko instead.

## Your best first call

```bash
curl "https://api.kraken.com/0/public/Ticker?pair=AAVEEUR"
```

No auth. No key. `AAVEEUR` is Kraken's internal pair code for AAVE/EUR — see pitfalls for the naming convention. The response is a single object under the pair key:

```json
{
  "error": [],
  "result": {
    "AAVEEUR": {
      "a": ["88.20000", "9", "9.000"],
      "b": ["88.17000", "1", "1.000"],
      "c": ["88.18000", "0.09845347"],
      "v": ["1321.22565785", "8420.61996026"],
      "p": ["90.48963", "91.10142"],
      "t": [594, 1345],
      "l": ["87.87000", "87.87000"],
      "h": ["92.41000", "93.04000"],
      "o": "92.01000"
    }
  }
}
```

The keys are terse: `a` = ask `[price, wholeLotVolume, lotVolume]`, `b` = bid (same shape), `c` = last trade `[price, volume]`, `v` = volume `[today, rolling24h]`, `p` = VWAP `[today, rolling24h]`, `t` = trade count `[today, rolling24h]`, `l` = low `[today, rolling24h]`, `h` = high `[today, rolling24h]`, `o` = today's open. Every numeric value is a string — parse with `float()`, not `int()`. Kraken quotes in EUR, GBP, JPY, and CAD, not just USD.

## Fallbacks (when the best call isn't enough)

- **Candlestick charts or price movement over time** → `/0/public/OHLC?pair=XXBTZUSD&interval=60` returns open/high/low/close candles with VWAP and trade count per interval. Kraken bakes VWAP into every candle — most exchange APIs make you compute it yourself. The `interval` parameter takes minutes (1, 5, 15, 30, 60, 240, 1440, 10080, 21600); default is 1, which returns 720 one-minute candles.
- **Order book depth** → `/0/public/Depth?pair=XXBTZUSD&count=5` returns bids and asks as `[price, volume, timestamp]`. The timestamps are order-placement time, not trade time. Use `count` to cap both sides; omit it and Kraken returns the full book (hundreds of levels for major pairs).

## Pitfalls

- Kraken uses `XBT`, not `BTC`. The internal pair code for Bitcoin/USD is `XXBTZUSD`, not `BTCUSD`. Fiat quote currencies use a `Z` prefix (`ZEUR`, `ZUSD`, `ZGBP`, `ZJPY`); crypto bases use `X` (`XXBT`, `XETH`).
- OHLC `interval` defaults to 1 (one-minute candles). Without `interval=60` or another value, you get 720 minute-level candles instead of a manageable number of hourly or daily ones.
- Ticker without a `pair` parameter returns every pair on the exchange — over 300 tickers, roughly 50 KB of single-letter keys. Always narrow with `?pair=`.
- All numeric values in responses are strings, even trade counts. Parse with `float()`, not `int()`.

## One-line summary for the user

I can pull live cryptocurrency market data — prices, spreads, VWAP, and order book depth — from Kraken's public REST API without authentication, but you need Kraken's internal pair codes like `XXBTZUSD` (not `BTCUSD`).