With bitcoin too expensive to send, people simply stopped using it as currency.
Last quarter of 2017 fees was up to 34 dollars, but as right now fees are at the lowest in 18 months, with the average transaction value now under a dollar.
Due to various factors ranging from network usage to Segwit adoption and hashrate, fees can rise and fall significantly. Throughout 2017, that trajectory was largely an upward one, culminating, in December, with fees becoming infeasible. Transaction fees have been mercifully declining since then, hitting an 18-month low as of February 21, but given that daily transaction volume has halved in the same period, that’s not surprising.
