Miners costs are denominated in their local currency so you need to look at the USD or CNY value of the transaction fees over time not the BTC amount to underst

Miners costs are denominated in their local currency so you need to look at the USD or CNY value of the transaction fees over time not the BTC amount to understand the financial picture as seen by miners. In USD terms transaction fees have increased more than 7x over the course of 2016. [0] The block reward only halves roughly every 4 years so total USD denominated fees are growing much faster than the coinbase reward is shrinking. Long term either the block size will have to be raised or the average value transferred per transaction will have to go up to increase fees. Either way rising Bitcoin price isn't bad for the cost of transactions. If anything it makes the coinbase more valuable and causes miners to care less about transaction fees. [0] https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd