Bitcoin's average transaction fee only surpassed $55 once in history

In Nouriel Roubini's written testimony for the Hearing on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain at the US Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Roubini said: "Paying $55 dollars of transaction costs to buy a $2 coffee cup is obviously never going to lead Bitcoin to become a transaction currency." Let's look at the data.

According to BitInfoCharts's data, the current average fee is $0.408 while the median is $0.0966. In the past six months, the average fee exceeded $2 for 10 days but never reached more than $7. The median fee wasn't higher than $0.3 for almost the last four months. The average fee surpassed $55 for only one day in Bitcoin's existence on December 22. The highest median fee recorded was $34.1 on December 23.