Building a Crypto Intelligence API as a Solo Founder
I built Regime — a crypto market intelligence API that classifies markets as bull/bear/chop using 10 weighted signals — in about 4 weeks as a solo founder. Here's the architecture, costs, and what I'd do differently.
The Stack
- Runtime: Node.js / TypeScript
- Database: SQLite (via better-sqlite3) — no Postgres needed
- Hosting: Home server + Cloudflare Tunnel
- Process management: PM2
- Email: Resend
- Payments: Stripe
- Total infrastructure cost: $35/month (just CoinGlass API)
Yes, $35/month. Everything else is free.
Data Sources (9 sources, $35/mo)
| Source | Cost | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Binance.US | Free | Candles, prices, volume, order book |
| CoinGlass | $35/mo | Funding rates, OI, liquidations |
| Hyperliquid | Free | Funding rates, OI (no auth needed) |
| CoinGecko | Free | Market cap, dominance, price fallback |
| Alternative.me | Free | Fear & Greed index |
| DeFiLlama | Free | DeFi TVL, stablecoin supply |
| FRED | Free | DXY, Fed funds rate, 10Y treasury |
| Yahoo Finance | Free | SPX, Gold, VIX |
The key insight: most financial data is free or near-free. The expensive stuff (Glassnode at $799/mo, Bloomberg at $24K/mo) gives you deeper data, but for regime classification you don't need tick-level on-chain metrics. You need macro indicators.
Architecture Decisions
SQLite over Postgres: For a single-server API with < 1000 RPM, SQLite is faster, simpler, and zero-maintenance. WAL mode handles concurrent reads. I'll migrate to Postgres when I need multi-server or > 10K RPM.
Home server over cloud: A Cloudflare Tunnel gives you HTTPS + DDoS protection + caching for free. My server is a desktop PC. Total hosting cost: my electric bill.
TypeScript monorepo: Everything in one repo with pnpm workspaces. Packages: auth, billing, macro-data, strategies, alerts. Apps: dashboard (API server), engine (pipeline), telegram-bot.
PM2 for everything: 9 candle analysis lanes, dashboard, telegram bot, daily report cron, watchdog — all managed by PM2. pm2 save && pm2 startup survives reboots.
The Regime Classifier
10 signals, each votes bullish/bearish/neutral:
Weighted sum > 0.2 → Bull
Weighted sum < -0.2 → Bear
Between → Chop
Weights were determined by grid search over 302K 4-hour candles. SMA 50/200 got 20% weight (highest standalone predictive power). Funding rates got 10% each. Everything else got 5-10%.
The trick is graceful degradation: when a data source fails, its weight redistributes proportionally. The system never breaks.
What I'd Do Differently
Start selling earlier. I built features for 3 weeks before making the landing page. Should have had a landing page on day 1.
Simpler tier structure initially. Started with feature-gating, switched to usage-limiting. Usage-limited free tiers convert 73% better.
Skip the Discord bot. Telegram + X + API is enough. Discord communities need 50+ active users to not feel dead.
Build the blog earlier. SEO compounds. Every day without indexed content is a day of lost organic traffic.
Current Numbers (Day 25)
- 10 signups (5 real users)
- 1 paying customer (Pro, $49/mo)
- 6,730+ market snapshots collected
- 14 SEO blog posts
- $35/mo costs, $49/mo revenue
- 25 days of uptime
Not going to win any awards yet. But the data moat grows every hour, and the distribution machine is running on autopilot.
Try It
curl https://getregime.com/api/v1/market/regime
Free, no auth needed. Quickstart guide
Building in public on X.
Try Regime Intelligence
Regime is a real-time crypto market regime detection API. One endpoint tells you if the market is bull, bear, or chop — so your bot only trades when conditions match your strategy.
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