What is the expected transaction fee (satoshi/byte) in the long-term?

[tiagocs]

I can see in this graph (https://bitcoinfees.info/) that the transaction fee in satoshi/byte doubled in the past year. With the increase in price of bitcoin, the transaction fees increase... unless the transaction fees in satoshi/byte somehow decrease at a faster pace.

Is there any forecasts for this fee in the long term, is there any analysis or a consensus on the transaction fees in satoshi/byte?

By the way, is there any proof-of-work cryptocurrency that is designed to have a low transaction fee in the long term?

[mrcash02]

I think it's impossible to predict it exactly. If the Bitcoin's users number increase there will be more transactions, so the transactions fees will increase. If this number increases too much, the fees will be very expensive.

But as technology is unlimited, I believe there could be solutions in the future to prevent this issue, to make transactions faster to be completed, allowing us to pay reasonable low fees. And I'm not talking about palliative solutions that work for some short period of time like now.

People usually use another Crypto-Currencies when Bitcoin fees are too high. Until this problem is solved people will keep doing this.

[tiagocs]

I just had a mental breakthrough and realized that increasing block size would make the fees go down because it allows for faster transaction frequency... So all the debate about block size is also about the transaction fees. Now I am inclined to think that increasing block size is good. What are the arguments in favor of small block sizes?

I totally agree with you on using altcoins because bitcoin fees are too high. I personally use Ripple to transfer cheap between crypto exchanges, other people use litecoin, ...

[mysacrifice]

This is almost impossible to predict. When it is not even feasible to predict btc prices how one can do it for the transaction fees.

[andreibi]

Well, the goal is keeping the fees under 10 USD cents. The only way to do that is to scale bitcoin by the best way necessary. The core wants Segwit and Lightning solution while there is a camp of big blockers.

[tiagocs]

@andreibi And is Segwit + Lightning incompatible with large block sizes? I am long on both bitcoin core and bitcoin cash, I want both to succeed, I just would like to know what are the arguments for low block size.

[aleksej996]

I just had a mental breakthrough and realized that increasing block size would make the fees go down because it allows for faster transaction frequency... So all the debate about block size is also about the transaction fees. Now I am inclined to think that increasing block size is good. What are the arguments in favor of small block sizes?

I totally agree with you on using altcoins because bitcoin fees are too high. I personally use Ripple to transfer cheap between crypto exchanges, other people use litecoin, ...

I believe that the argument is that it will cause centralization because only big data centers would be able to run full nodes. And that the block size increase needs a hard fork, which means that it forces old nodes to upgrade to new software. The point is that Core believes that change is not necessary and it has it costs, so they try to go around it with the Segwit softfork.

@andreibi And is Segwit + Lightning incompatible with large block sizes? I am long on both bitcoin core and bitcoin cash, I want both to succeed, I just would like to know what are the arguments for low block size.

Segwit and LN are compatible with large block sizes, which is exactly what a upcoming hard fork in the second part of November is trying to do.
The so called Segwit2x will increase the block size from 1 mb to 2 mb, since Segwit is already activated on the Bitcoin network.
It has a support from big mining pools for now, but the Core team and many users don't really support it. We will see how it turns out. The fork is more unpredictable then the Bitcoin Cash fork, since it has a bigger support and the split could be bigger.

[darkangel11]

IMO it depends on two things. One is the value of Bitcoin, because as we could see in the recent months when value goes up so do the fees. Now, the fees can go up by 1$ for every $1000 in BTC price, or they can go up by 1$ for every 2000, you never know, but the tendency will be to push the fees up.
Factor number two are the upgrades. We were getting ridiculously bottlenecked right before the segwit and bcc, but now it got much better. If we continue to upgrade the network I'm sure the situation can be kept under control.