what changed? Usually when there's a run-up in price, transaction fees skyrocket. I always thought it was from all the people transferring to exchanges to cash out, but why not this time?
More systems have been switched over to the segwit native addresses, which have cheaper transactions. A simple transaction can be as low as 30ct nowadays.
Under the best case comparison (legacy P2PKH compared to native segwit), segwit is only 50% smaller. Under more realistic comparisons (P2SH segwit vs native segwit), the difference is much smaller. Is a 100% increase in transaction volume (more realistically I estimate 50%) enough to make the network go from congested with sky high fees (I remember periods where the clearing rate was 200+ sat/byte) to almost zero congestion?
The lightning network is getting more popular. More people are using that for smaller transactions
Problem is, you could end up spending $3.8 billion on pizza.
Neal Stephenson, eat your heart out
Yeah it's actually kind of funny - real HODLfolk would never spend crypto when they could spend fiat