I was skeptical too, but approached it from this end: At the moment, one Bitcoin transaction costs me about $10 in network fees. The party pushing it through

I was skeptical too, but approached it from this end: At the moment, one Bitcoin transaction costs me about $10 in network fees. The party pushing it through gets, say, another $90 or so in reward for mining it (6.25 BTC reward per block ÷ 3500 transactions per block × $50000 per BTC).