I’ll keep it short, since I’m backfilling this entry.

I spent some time trying to make some authenticated requests to Coinbase’s API. I wanted to use Deno, created by the same person who made NodeJS, to send the request, but the only crypto API it exposed was the Web Crypto API, whose primitives are, well, too primitive for a newbie like me to use correctly. One of the headers Coinbase requires on authenticated requests is the base64 encoding of a signature created using a SHA-256 HMAC on some message composed of the current timestamp, method, request body, and URL. I succeeded instantly with NodeJS, but I ended up switching to Rust as my language of choice for this little exploration. Didn’t manage to get all the way, but Rust is and always has been one of my favorite languages (even though I’ve never put the time into becoming fluent in it). Stay tuned for more updates on that front.

Other than that, spent a lot of time—too much time—going through crypto Twitter and feeling bad I didn’t get into this space 3 months ago, when I could have copped a CryptoPunk or Art Block or . That being said, I could also have bought SHIB, or Tesla in the early 2010s, or Apple, or Bitcoin itself. Having some money would be nice, wouldn’t it? Rent doesn’t pay itself. I probably did some other things, but the main focus was trying to make calls to Coinbase, trawling Twitter, and learning some more number theory on Brilliant.

I’ll keep it short, since I’m backfilling this entry.

I spent some time trying to make some authenticated requests to Coinbase’s API. I wanted to use Deno, created by the same person who made NodeJS, to send the request, but the only crypto API it exposed was the Web Crypto API, whose primitives are, well, too primitive for a newbie like me to use correctly. One of the headers Coinbase requires on authenticated requests is the base64 encoding of a signature created using a SHA-256 HMAC on some message composed of the current timestamp, method, request body, and URL. I succeeded instantly with NodeJS, but I ended up switching to Rust as my language of choice for this little exploration. Didn’t manage to get all the way, but Rust is and always has been one of my favorite languages (even though I’ve never put the time into becoming fluent in it). Stay tuned for more updates on that front.

Other than that, spent a lot of time—too much time—going through crypto Twitter and feeling bad I didn’t get into this space 3 months ago, when I could have copped a CryptoPunk or Art Block or . That being said, I could also have bought SHIB, or Tesla in the early 2010s, or Apple, or Bitcoin itself. Having some money would be nice, wouldn’t it? Rent doesn’t pay itself. I probably did some other things, but the main focus was trying to make calls to Coinbase, trawling Twitter, and learning some more number theory on Brilliant.