Bitcoin mining runs on the same arithmetic.
Mining means running computers that compete to add the next page of transactions to Bitcoin's shared record. The winner gets newly issued bitcoin. That is how new coins come into the world, and it is also how the network pays for its own defense.
The machines wear out. A new one is fast for a while, then a faster one arrives, and the old one earns less every month until it is worth scrap. Power gets paid every month, in local money, to a utility that does not take bitcoin. Rent on the building is the same story.
So a miner earns in one money and pays in another. To cover the bills, a share of what gets mined has to be sold. Nobody picked that schedule. It runs from the people producing security straight out into the open market where anyone can buy.
That cost is what spreads the coins around. A system that pays for its security using units it already holds has no pipe like that. Whoever starts with the most keeps the most, because nothing pushes any of it back out.
The strongest case against me is a fair one. Industrial operators with long power contracts and first access to hardware have an advantage so wide that "anyone can join in" is close to a story we tell ourselves. Small miners may be funding a professional industry and calling it participation. I take that seriously.
What would show me wrong: home and small scale production falling as a share of the total, cycle after cycle, while the money only works at industrial size.
I keep coming back to how ordinary the mechanism is. Bitcoin's security has a bill, the bill comes due in dollars, and that is why the coins keep landing in new hands.
if this made the power bill feel like part of the design, Zap ⚡
