Pipe Bitcoin's mempool into Gource and watch blocks settle it live

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README.md

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README.md<br>Outline<br>Episode 14 — The Live Tree

Bitcoin's mempool as an organism, growing on your desk, right now.<br>Episode 12 rendered history; Episode 13<br>rendered four eras of it. This one renders the present: every bead that<br>appears is one real, unconfirmed transaction entering Bitcoin's mempool at the<br>moment you're watching.

(A ~64 s capture is in media/ — during that one minute,<br>134 transactions moved 51.8 BTC ≈ $3.3M through the tree.)

Run it yourself — one pipe

pip install requests # and install gource + have it on PATH<br>python live_tree.py | gource --log-format custom - --realtime \<br>-1280x720 --hide filenames,progress,mouse,date --dir-name-depth 2 \<br>--camera-mode overview --file-idle-time 120 --bloom-multiplier 1.3 \<br>--background-colour 06060e --user-scale 1.7

That's the whole thing. live_tree.py polls<br>mempool.space's free, keyless API for fresh<br>transactions and streams a Gource custom log; Gource in<br>--realtime mode grows the tree as the lines arrive. Leave it running — it's<br>a screensaver where every pixel is real money in flight.

Reading the tree

Avatars are value bands, by each transaction's total input at the live<br>BTC price: whale (≥ $1M) · big-money (≥ $100k) · mid-size (≥ $10k) ·<br>retail · dust. When a whale avatar appears and starts zapping, that's<br>seven figures on the move, unconfirmed, in front of you.

Branches are receiving-address neighborhoods (grouped by prefix — you'll<br>see the bc1 taproot/segwit sea and the older 1…/3… wheels). Two verified<br>giants from our era studies (Bitfinex's hot wallet, Bitbank's cold wallet)<br>get named branches if they act while you watch.

Colors are USD value tiers per output — the same gradient as Episodes<br>12–13, priced live: dim teal dust up through burning gold and red.

Settlement edition — the block arrives on film

The tree doesn't just grow anymore. When a new block is mined, it appears as<br>its own avatar (block-) and sweeps the tree, turning every bead it<br>confirmed white. Transactions that vanish unconfirmed (replaced / RBF) are<br>plucked off as red deletions by the replaced avatar. Settlement, made visible:

We left the recorder running until Bitcoin obliged. In our capture<br>(media/settlement.mp4), block 957,382 arrived and<br>settled 321 of our tracked transactions (of 4,900 in the block) — you can<br>watch the white ripple through the wheel, and the beads that stay colored:<br>those are still waiting for the next block. During the ~5-minute session,<br>924 BTC ≈ $59M flowed through the tree.

The full pipeline is still one pipe — the block sweep is just M events and<br>the pruning is D events in the same Gource log the mempool stream writes.

Honest notes

This is a sample, politely taken: one poll every 2.5 s plus a cap on tx<br>fetches (~8 per poll) against a public free API. At Bitcoin's typical 4–7<br>tx/s you see most of the flow, not all of it. Turning the cap up would be<br>rude; don't.

Value bands use transaction input totals, which include change — a "whale"<br>is a transaction moving ≥$1M, not necessarily a ≥$1M payment.

Unconfirmed means unconfirmed: some of what you watch may be replaced (RBF)<br>and never confirm. The tree shows intent, not settlement.

Open doors

Confirmation events: when a block arrives, flash the confirmed beads and<br>prune the replaced ones — settlement made visible.

The holdings-vs-flow split screen ("two institutionalizations" as film).

A fifth era panel (2018) for the tetralogy.

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tree block live gource bitcoin mempool

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