The Problem with Bitcoin: High Transaction Fees

Although I did not get into bitcoin early enough to make massive profits, I do hold some bitcoin in paper wallets. One of the biggest problem with bitcoin, in my opinion, is the transaction fees. Making microtransactions using bitcoin is horrendous. For example, if I see a YouTube video I like and the content creator asks for donations, he or she usually asks for donations via Patreon or PayPal. However, often I don't want to give money using PayPal or Patreon due to privacy concerns, so if the content creator accept bitcoin, I can send, say, one dollar worth of bitcoin, but when I send the bitcoin, the bitcoin wallet app normally takes away a large chunk of that money. For example, is I send $1 worth of bitcoin, I've seen 50 cents worth of that money be used for fees.

The solution to this is to use altcoins. Looking at the chart below, the average transaction fee for bitcoin is about $4! The other altcoins such as bitcoin cash, litecoin, dash, and even dogecoin, all have average fees below 50 cents. This may in part be due to the fact that bitcoin is the most dominant cryptocurrency, which means it has the highest network congestion. However, to what degree is it a problem inherent in the bitcoin protocol itself?

Source: bitinfocharts.com