{"slug": "a-free-no-key-mcp-server-for-crypto-news-and-market-data-claude-cursor-chatgpt", "title": "A free, no-key MCP server for crypto news and market data (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT)", "summary": "The Basis Desk team launched a free, read-only remote MCP server at basisdesk.news/mcp that exposes crypto news and market data to AI agents in Claude, ChatGPT developer mode, Cursor, VS Code and Windsurf without an API key. The server offers seven tools — including search_news, latest_news, get_article, market_snapshot, whale_transfers, token_safety and daily_brief — and is implemented as a stateless JSON-RPC handler on Cloudflare Workers supporting protocol versions 2025-11-25 back to 2024-11-05. It is listed in the official MCP Registry as news.basisdesk/mcp and is free for personal and commercial use with attribution.", "body_md": "*Written with AI assistance by the Basis Desk team.*\n\nIf you build agents that touch crypto, you have probably hit the same wall we did: models are confident about prices and events they cannot see, and scraping news sites is fragile. So we exposed our newsroom as a **remote MCP server** — free, read-only, no API key.\n\n**Endpoint:** `https://basisdesk.news/mcp` (Streamable HTTP). It is also listed in the official MCP Registry as `news.basisdesk/mcp`.\n\n| Tool | Use it for | \n|---|---|\n| `search_news` | \"What happened with X?\" — full-text search over stories that are checked against primary sources (SEC/CFTC filings, court records, company and protocol releases) | \n| `latest_news` | Newest stories, filterable by category (bitcoin, ethereum, defi, regulation, institutions, security…) | \n| `get_article` | One story as Markdown with key points and numbered source links — for citations | \n| `market_snapshot` | Prices refreshed every minute, 1h/24h/7d change, market cap, dominance, Fear & Greed, ETH gas, BTC fees | \n| `whale_transfers` | Large ETH/stablecoin (≥ $5M) and BTC (≥ 100 BTC) transfers from our own chain scanner, with exchange labels | \n| `token_safety` | Contract risk signals (honeypot, taxes, mint/pause/blacklist powers, proxies) from GoPlus Security | \n| `daily_brief` | The day's 5–7 stories that mattered, for \"crypto news today\" prompts | \n\nAll tools are annotated `readOnlyHint: true`; nothing writes anywhere.\n\n**Claude (connectors), ChatGPT developer mode, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf** — add a custom/remote MCP server with the URL above, or in JSON:\n\n```\n{\n  \"mcpServers\": {\n    \"basis-desk\": { \"type\": \"http\", \"url\": \"https://basisdesk.news/mcp\" }\n  }\n}\n```\n\n**stdio-only clients** — bridge with `mcp-remote`:\n\n```\n{\n  \"mcpServers\": {\n    \"basis-desk\": { \"command\": \"npx\", \"args\": [\"-y\", \"mcp-remote\", \"https://basisdesk.news/mcp\"] }\n  }\n}\n```\n\n**Raw JSON-RPC** (handy for testing):\n\n```\ncurl -s https://basisdesk.news/mcp -H 'content-type: application/json' \\\n  -d '{\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"id\":1,\"method\":\"tools/call\",\"params\":{\"name\":\"market_snapshot\",\"arguments\":{\"symbols\":[\"BTC\",\"ETH\"]}}}'\n```\n\n`token_safety`)\nThe server is a stateless JSON-RPC handler on Cloudflare Workers (protocol versions 2025-11-25 back to 2024-11-05, no sessions, CORS on). Stories come from an automated pipeline that clusters primary-source documents, drafts with an LLM and runs a grounding audit plus deterministic checks (citations, n-gram overlap, banned phrases) before publishing — so the answers your agent gets carry links you can verify.\n\nThere is also a server card at `/.well-known/mcp.json`, an OpenAPI spec for the plain JSON endpoints at `/openapi.json`, and `/llms.txt`.\n\nFree for personal and commercial use with attribution (\"Basis Desk\" + the article URL). Please keep it to a few requests per second. Data can be delayed; nothing here is investment advice. Docs: [https://basisdesk.news/developers](https://basisdesk.news/developers) — feedback welcome in the comments.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-free-no-key-mcp-server-for-crypto-news-and-market-data-claude-cursor-chatgpt", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/basisdesk/a-free-no-key-mcp-server-for-crypto-news-and-market-data-claude-cursor-chatgpt-28kb", "published_at": "2026-09-30 09:10:11+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-30 09:17:57.681621+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "agent-protocols", "ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Basis Desk", "Claude", "ChatGPT", "Cursor", "VS Code", "Windsurf", "Cloudflare Workers", "GoPlus Security"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-free-no-key-mcp-server-for-crypto-news-and-market-data-claude-cursor-chatgpt", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-free-no-key-mcp-server-for-crypto-news-and-market-data-claude-cursor-chatgpt.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-free-no-key-mcp-server-for-crypto-news-and-market-data-claude-cursor-chatgpt.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-free-no-key-mcp-server-for-crypto-news-and-market-data-claude-cursor-chatgpt.jsonld"}}