WHAT IS THIS PLACE
BittCity turns the top 99 cryptocurrencies into a living pixel-art city. Every tower you see is a coin. The taller the tower, the bigger the market cap. Windows blinking green mean someone's up today. Pink means not so lucky. Zoom in, hover on a building, switch timeframes, sort by rank — it's the market, but as architecture.
No login. No wallet connection. No tracking pixel. No popups telling you to sign up for the newsletter you didn't ask about. The site literally doesn't know who you are and that's by design.
It is not a tool for professional traders. It is a feeling. You open the page, you look at the skyline, and you know — before reading a single number — whether the market is having a day or not.
WHO'S ALEX
Hi. I'm the one who made this. I'm into design that ignores trends, AI as a tool not a hype-cycle, programming out of necessity rather than love, and data visualization with actual love. I spend too much time on digital maps — the weirder and older the better. I also care about the stranger corners of crypto, the ones that aren't an ETF filing.
BittCity sits at the intersection of those six things. That's it. That's the pitch.
You can find me on X as @Mapcrafter. DMs open. Feature requests welcome. Conspiracy theories about why crypto UIs all look like 1998 extra welcome.
HOW THE SKYLINE ACTUALLY WORKS
Under the hood there's no magic. There's a fairly short data pipeline and a <canvas> tag. The interesting part is what happens between them.
A serverless function fetches the top-99 coins from the CoinMarketCap API.
Results get cached in Upstash Redis for 20 minutes. This keeps the site fast and the API bill reasonable.
The browser pulls the cached JSON, sorts it by whatever the user picked (24h, 7d, 30d, 90d, market cap, rank).
Each coin is given a building height proportional to its market cap, clamped between a minimum and maximum so the chart stays readable even when BTC is 100× bigger than #99.
A deterministic pseudo-random function decides window layouts per coin. Same ticker always gets the same window pattern. This matters — otherwise the city would flicker and feel broken.
Windows light up green or pink based on the coin's performance on the current timeframe. Intensity scales with the size of the move.
Everything renders to a <canvas> at 30 FPS with a pixel-art rendering mode. Mountains, stars, street lamps, flocks of birds, the occasional comet — all procedural.
If you want the long version of what makes this interesting, I wrote it up: Data Art in the Browser — turning raw JSON into living architecture.
WHY PIXEL ART
Three reasons, in descending order of honesty.
- It reads instantly. A 1-pixel dot either lights up or it doesn't. There's no ambiguity. Financial data doesn't need photorealistic rendering — it needs clarity.
- It scales forever. Pixels don't care about resolution, device ratio, or dark mode. 99 buildings on a phone look fine. 99 buildings on an ultrawide monitor also look fine.
- It's what crypto looks like when you strip the enterprise consultants out. I wrote a whole piece about this: Web3 Aesthetics and the Retro Obsession.
WHAT'S CRYPTO JUMP
It's the game hiding inside BittCity. Click PLAY on the top bar and a pixel businessman appears. He wants to jump to the next rooftop. You tell him whether to bet UP or DOWN on the next coin. If you're right, your deposit grows. If you're wrong, you lose half of it. After 10 jumps, leverage kicks in. After 20, it kicks harder. After 30, even harder. You don't win this game. You survive it — for a while.
Full rules and philosophy: Crypto Jump — the full guide.
FAQ
Is BittCity free to use?
Completely free. No paywall, no login, no wallet connection. Open the site and it works.
How often is the market data updated?
Roughly every 20 minutes. Prices come from the official CoinMarketCap API, then cached to keep things fast and the API costs sane. If you want second-by-second numbers, a dedicated exchange is the right place.
Which cryptocurrencies are shown?
The top 99 by market cap, right now, in real time. That list shifts constantly — a coin can drop out of the skyline and a new one can move in on the next refresh. This is a live system, not a hand-picked gallery.
How is each building's height calculated?
Height maps directly to market cap. Bitcoin is the tallest tower because it has the largest cap. A mid-cap gets a mid-size tower. There's a zoom control on the top bar that lets you change the scale — useful when one coin absolutely dwarfs everything else and the smaller towers start looking flat.
What do the window colors mean?
Green windows = the coin is up on the selected timeframe. Pink = down. Dim or sparse windows = roughly flat. You can switch timeframes from the top bar (24h, 7d, 30d, 90d) and the lighting re-renders to match.
Does BittCity store any of my data?
No. There's no login, no tracking pixel, no analytics that identify you. Your wallet address, if you ever type one anywhere (you don't need to), never leaves your own browser. The site genuinely cannot tell you apart from the next visitor.
What is Crypto Jump?
A mini-game hiding inside BittCity. A pixel businessman jumps between rooftops and you call the next coin's direction. Right call: bag grows. Wrong call: half your stack evaporates. It is not financial advice. It is barely a game. It is, I would argue, the most honest piece of software about what leveraged trading feels like.
Does BittCity work on mobile?
Yes. The skyline pans with touch, the market table scrolls cleanly, and the game is playable with a single-tap interface. It's built pixel-first, so small screens are first-class rather than an afterthought.
Who made BittCity?
Alex — a designer/developer into data visualization, digital maps, AI tools, and the weirder corners of crypto. Reachable on X as
@Mapcrafter. The Telegram channel is
@bittcityxyz.
Can I support the project?
Yes. There's an ETH address on the Contact modal on the main site — click the envelope icon. No pressure, no token, no utility promised. Just appreciated.
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