How hard is it to use their API to do this?

Because I can't even switch from the simple interface to the ActiveTrader interface. Its a big hassle and you need to email them and wait to be approved first.

A few weeks back when ETHBTC was low, I wanted to buy some ETH with my BTC which was sitting there doing nothing and turns out you can't even do that.

You can only Buy or Sell the Fiat based cryptos like BTCUSD, ETHUSD, LTCUSD,BCHUSD, and you can't do ETHBTC or BTCLTC, etc. You could do this a year back or so but with this simple interface you don't even have that option.

So to get the API trading going, do I need to be aproved first or can anyone do this?