Bitcoin Forum

The fees seem to be the biggest reason cited for bitcoins impending demise.

Will the fees ever reduce to a reasonable amount?

Yes! Both Lightening Network & a future Block Size increase will result in smaller fees & perhaps faster confirmations.

Among a lot of other reasons including the FUD from China, Korea, and India. Add that together with Tether and a huge surge in December and you have what I call inevitable January. Don't fret though Bitcoin isn't going to die it will survive and yes the fees will get much cheaper when LN gets added. At the same time speed will get increased as transactions would then be near instantaneous!

Wow, that's interesting!  I've been out of the loop!  What do you think a fee  for a $100 transaction with ln will be?

Pretty much this. The fees will reduce and speed will increase in the future, as the new changes are rolled out. The question is whether another coin that is cheaper and faster (such as Ethereum), or even instant and free (such as Nano/RaiBlocks) beats Bitcoin out before then.

In the meantime, fees are actually pretty low. You can see the current mempool and estimated transaction times at the sites below:

https://core.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#2d (https://core.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#2d)

https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/#fees (https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/#fees)

I think, not in the near future. The Lightning Network is just an external wrapper outside of the blockchain of Bitcoin, which requires a big banking hubs. The transactions of the users will be merged by the channels of this technology, but the internal fees of Bitcoin won't be reduced.