Bitcoin is software and an incentive system. If you only memorize data structures, you will still be surprised when fees spike, blocks fill, or miners orphan a chain tip. Economics explains the behavior.
Why this matters
Builders ship wallets, fee estimators, and Lightning nodes. All of them live inside a fee market and a security budget. Ignoring incentives leads to stuck transactions and brittle products.
Analogy
Block space is like seats on a fixed-size bus that leaves every ~10 minutes. When demand is high, people bid higher fares (fees). Miners are drivers paid by the fare box plus a scheduled subsidy that halves over time.
Supply schedule
New bitcoin enters circulation through the block subsidy. Approximately every 210,000 blocks (~4 years), the subsidy halves. Eventually the subsidy trends toward zero and security relies more on fees.
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Fee markets
A transaction pays a fee equal to inputs minus outputs. Wallets express urgency as sat/vB (satoshis per virtual byte). Higher fees usually confirm faster when the mempool is congested.