it makes sense that the mass does cancel out, it is a change of potential and kinetic energy at all, i suppose i'm just conflating more complicated things with it lol.

it's pretty likely to be a coincidence, but if i had to guess it's a "lucky coincidence" one that was intentionally chosen because of it's convenience. Rather than by pure happenstance. There's not a particularly good reason 1 meter needs to be 1/10000000 the pole equator distance for example. So that would be pretty easy to reverse fudge nicely.