bca-mcp

The canonical crypto MCP server for AI agents — Python edition. 3,500+ editorial articles, 200+ entity dossiers, 43 academy lessons, and live market data — accessible as MCP tools your agent can call natively.

Sibling of @blockchainacademics/mcp (TypeScript). Same REST API. Same attribution contract. Use whichever fits your stack.

v0.2.0 ships 8 read-only MCP tools + the `bca` CLI — the most-used corpus + market endpoints, plus a terminal-first way to explore them. Later versions expand toward parity with the TS sibling (99 tools). Starting narrow on the MCP surface is deliberate: tight tools, sharp descriptions, low-risk publish.

Why

LLMs hallucinate about crypto. BCA ships ground-truth editorial content with full attribution. Plug this MCP server into Claude Desktop, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Eliza, or any MCP-compatible agent and your model queries the BCA corpus like any other tool — with cite_url, as_of, and source_hash on every response.

Install

pip install bca-mcp
# or, isolated:
pipx install bca-mcp
# or, ephemeral:
uvx bca-mcp

Zero-config first run (no API key needed)

uvx bca-mcp works out of the box. The package ships with a public demo key baked in that unlocks 10 marquee tools (get_price, get_trending, get_fear_greed, get_market_overview, search_news, get_sentiment, get_entity, get_explainer, get_recent_stories, get_topic). Shared global cap of 100 calls/day + 20/day per IP. On startup the server emits a one-time banner to stderr noting the demo mode is active.

Configure (unlock all 99 tools)

Get a free API key at https://brain.blockchainacademics.com/signup (free tier: 2,000 calls/month per user; paid tiers unlock expanded rate limits and agent-backed research generation).

Set the env var before launching the server:

export BCA_API_KEY="bca_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
# optional: override the default https://api.blockchainacademics.com
export BCA_API_BASE="https://api.blockchainacademics.com"
# BCA_API_BASE_URL is also accepted as a legacy alias

When BCA_API_KEY is set the demo banner is suppressed and you get the full 99-tool surface. When it's unset, every response carries meta.tier: "demo" and meta.upgrade_url so your agent can detect the demo path.

Use from Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json).

Zero-config demo path (no API key needed):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "blockchainacademics": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "bca_mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Full 99-tool surface (add your key from brain.blockchainacademics.com/signup):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "blockchainacademics": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "bca_mcp"],
      "env": { "BCA_API_KEY": "bca_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop — the tools appear in the tool picker. If you installed via pipx, you can swap "command": "bca-mcp" with empty args (a console-script entry point is registered by the package).

Use from LangChain

Ten lines via langchain-mcp-adapters:

import asyncio, os, sys
from mcp import ClientSession, StdioServerParameters
from mcp.client.stdio import stdio_client
from langchain_mcp_adapters.tools import load_mcp_tools

async def main():
    params = StdioServerParameters(
        command=sys.executable, args=["-m", "bca_mcp"],
        env={**os.environ, "BCA_API_KEY": os.environ["BCA_API_KEY"]},
    )
    async with stdio_client(params) as (r, w), ClientSession(r, w) as s:
        await s.initialize()
        tools = await load_mcp_tools(s)   # -> list[StructuredTool]
        print(await tools[0].ainvoke({"query": "stablecoin regulation"}))

asyncio.run(main())

Full worked example in examples/langchain_agent.py. Raw MCP client loop (no LangChain) in examples/generic_agent.py.

Use from Eliza

See examples/eliza_plugin.md for integration notes — bca-mcp plugs into Eliza's MCP plugin surface as a stdio-transport server.

The bca CLI

pip install bca-mcp also registers a terminal-first CLI. It talks to the same REST API as the MCP server — handy for debugging, quick lookups, and shell pipelines.

bca login                                # store API key in ~/.bca/config.toml (chmod 600)
bca news search "bitcoin etf" -n 5       # recent articles, rich table + cite_url
bca entity ethereum                      # dossier panel
bca price BTC,ETH,SOL                    # spot + 24h change table
bca market overview -n 10                # top-N by market cap
bca indicator coverage-index bitcoin -w 30d
bca explainer what-is-a-blockchain       # rendered markdown
bca agent summarize-whitepaper --url https://ethereum.org/…
bca version                              # CLI + live API version

Every command accepts --json for unformatted output suitable for jq pipelines. Env vars (BCA_API_KEY, BCA_API_BASE) take precedence over ~/.bca/config.toml.

Tool catalog (v0.1.0 — 8 tools)

All v0.1 tools are free tier — no paid plan required to call them.

Tool details

#### search_news Required: query (1–512 chars). Optional: entity, since (ISO 8601), topic, limit (1–50, default 10).

#### get_article Required: slug (1–240 chars).

#### get_entity Required: exactly one of slug (e.g. "vitalik-buterin") or ticker (e.g. "ETH", case-insensitive). Aliases resolve automatically (CZ → changpeng-zhao, Maker → makerdao, BSC → bnb-chain, …).

#### list_entity_mentions Required: slug (entity). Optional: since (ISO 8601), limit (1–200, default 20).

#### list_topics No arguments.

#### get_explainer Required: exactly one of slug (e.g. "what-is-a-blockchain") or topic (keyword).

#### get_price Required: ids (comma-separated CoinGecko IDs, e.g. "bitcoin,ethereum" — NOT exchange tickers). Optional: vs (quote currency, default usd).

#### get_market_overview Optional: limit (1–100, default 20).

Attribution contract

Every response includes a structured attribution block:

{
  "data": { ... },
  "attribution": {
    "cite_url": "https://blockchainacademics.com/...",
    "as_of": "2026-04-19T12:34:56Z",
    "source_hash": "sha256:..."
  },
  "meta": null
}

When your agent surfaces BCA content to a user, you MUST link `cite_url`. This is the core trade: BCA gives agents ground-truth citations; agents give BCA distribution. as_of and source_hash let downstream systems detect staleness and verify content integrity. Fields are preserved as null (not dropped) when upstream omits them, so agents can detect missing provenance explicitly.

Degraded-state envelopes

The BCA API sometimes returns status=integration_pending or status=upstream_error envelopes (200 HTTP) when a specific data source is temporarily unavailable. The MCP server passes these through as successful tool responses — your agent sees the envelope and decides how to surface it. This matches the TS sibling's behavior.

Errors

The server never crashes the stdio process. All failures surface as MCP responses with isError: true and a JSON body:

{ "error": { "code": "BCA_AUTH", "message": "..." } }

Development

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e '.[dev]'
pytest -q

Run the server directly for debugging:

BCA_API_KEY=... python -m bca_mcp

Contributing

Issues, PRs, and feature requests: https://github.com/blockchainacademics/bca-mcp-python

License

MIT © 2026 Blockchain Academics