Mining companies will play up their differences: firmware, pools, cooling systems, finance, power expertise, management teams. But at the core of what they do, there is little to separate different mining companies from one another: The product is identical, it costs nothing to ship, and they use exactly the same machines (ASICs) to convert electricity to bitcoin. Differences in electricity cost largely determine which miners will survive and which will not. In a prolonged period of price stagnation, or even a steady rise, only those companies with access to the cheapest electricity will be operating.

The master argument, then, for a global distribution of miners in the future goes as follows. First, Bitcoin mining, by design, is driven to the cheapest energy in the world. Second, cheap energy is distributed around the world, and also “behind the meter”. So, third, mining will be geographically distributed and behind the meter too.