Block reward to the rescue

[Le Happy Merchant]

If we see an increase in the transaction velocity of Bitcoins to the point that we begin to see aggregate fees of 25+ BTC on top of the block reward, miners will see ROI and profits.

Just a thought.

[tacotime]

Unless we hit the "Bitcoins and Red Balloons" problem and someone sybil attacks the network to obtain a ton of fees while no one else gets them.

There are some weird patterns recently in fees that are a little suspicious: http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees

That may also be evidence of some kind of new form of money laundering: If you're a miner with enough hash power to claim your own blocks, you can not broadcast a bunch of transactions with large fees and give them to yourself when you announce your block.

[crazyates]

Eventually, this will be true. When block rewards are 3.125 in a little over 10 years, the plan is that the TX fees will keep miners compensated. Hopefully by that point, the TX fees will be many magnitudes more than the actual block rewards.