Transaction fees are supposed to compensate for the decline in newly minted coins. Using very bad back-of-the-envelope math, transaction fees are about $2 right

Transaction fees are supposed to compensate for the decline in newly minted coins. Using very bad back-of-the-envelope math, transaction fees are about $2 right now, with about 2,300 transactions per block. That works out to a couple billion dollars over the last 10 years, which isn't peanuts. (Again, bad estimate that uses USD and today's numbers as if they'd been the same since the beginning.)