So over the past 48 hours as we all know bitcoin price soared to new heights and is now going through a price correction. The network fess though for sending have also shot up, it no longer makes sense for sending small amounts which is a kicker as my online business takes btc as form of payment :/ What does everyone think, will the fees go down over time and if u had to hazard a guess how long? I'm hoping it settles over the next few days.
I don't think bitcoin fees will go down anytime soon. Bitcoin is showing signs that is becoming mainstream, so this means that the network, that is already working at max capacity for a long time, will probably get even slower. Of course that since the price is surging, we might see miners from other coins (like bcash) coming into the network, so the hash power should increase and that might help, but I think we are getting way more users (thus more tx on the network) than miners, so the fees will probably stay high.
I know that is this is not very good for people that try to run a business that accepts bitcoin, and we are already seeing some companies removing BTC as a payment method (steam is one example of that), but I don't think this will affect bitcoin, since BTC is now evolving as an asset and not as a payment method.
This will change when the lightning network arrives, and from what I heard, it is already being tested with success, so those are great news for us. I think it will still take a long time to be deployed for the whole community, but things are in motion, and the future looks bright for BTC.
