Fees - do they work?

[Man From The Future]

It seems, now, that it won't be a very long itme until we hit the 25BTC/block point.

Just now, I see in the blocks Eligius gets, never more than 1BTC in fees, and few with more than 0.2.

Will fees really be enough, as an incentive to mine, in the future? Is the current 0.0005 enforced TX fee by the default client per KB >27 large enough/small TXs large enough?

I've probably misunderstood something completely, or am forgetting something important, sp please point out what I'm doing wrong. I also haven't considered exponential growth in the number of people using bitcoin...

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[Raulo]

There were quite a few threads that discussed this problem. E.g.,
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6284.0
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8126.0
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9162.0

The were two camps:
1. The market will solve all the problems
2. Yes, but with a not too pleasant outcome for bitcoiners.

[BkkCoins]

The more transactions the higher the fees. I think it's probably right that fees stay more or less the same but the number of transactions skyrockets in future. If it doesn't then BitCoins will always be a small player on the fringe. Any mainstream acceptance should result in big jumps in transaction counts.

[Jaime Frontero]

by the time we get to the 25 BTC block, we'll know.

as i understand it, it's not only the the number of people involved with Bitcoin - exponential or not - but also what the exchange rate will be in a year and a half.

a Bitcoin at $1,000 USD?  that's $25k per block of 25.  2% of that (equivalent to a 1 BTC fee on a block now) is $500.  i think the fees would be worthwhile...