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

Configure

Get an API key at https://brain.blockchainacademics.com/pricing (free tier: 1,000 calls/month; paid tiers unlock expanded rate limits and — in later versions — 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

The server fails fast at startup if BCA_API_KEY is missing. Misconfigured hosts surface the problem immediately instead of on the first tool call.

Use from Claude Desktop

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

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

Restart Claude Desktop — the 8 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)

Tool	Category	Endpoint	Tier
search_news	content	GET /v1/articles/search	Starter
get_article	content	GET /v1/articles/{slug}	Starter
get_entity	content	GET /v1/entities/{slug}	Starter
list_entity_mentions	content	GET /v1/entities/{slug}/mentions	Starter
list_topics	content	GET /v1/topics	Starter
get_explainer	content	GET /v1/academy/{slug}	Starter
get_price	market	GET /v1/market/price	Starter
get_market_overview	market	GET /v1/market/overview	Starter

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": "..." } }

Code	Meaning
BCA_AUTH	Missing/invalid BCA_API_KEY (HTTP 401/403)
BCA_RATE_LIMIT	Rate limit exceeded (HTTP 429 — honor Retry-After)
BCA_UPSTREAM	BCA API returned 5xx or malformed JSON
BCA_NETWORK	Network failure or 20s timeout exceeded
BCA_BAD_REQUEST	Invalid tool arguments or 4xx response

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