Today I paid BTC0.00029744 ($1.53) for a $92 bill as a regular transaction fee and even waited about an hour for the transaction to get confirmed.
Just sent one an hour ago, 0.00015955 , almost half you paid and next block confirmation!
Also, the main culprit for higher transaction fees is veriblock:
Bitcoin Shed Over 40% In Transaction Count After Testnet EndedWell, you know that it's not really because of the prices going up but rather truly a correlation due to other factors, right? Transaction fees increase when the network is busy. If too many poeple are sending their bitcoins in the network, miners need more encouragement with confirming the transactions, so we have to pay them more (at least, that's how I see it).
Nope, miners don't need anything more.
You can create a block with 1 million ASICs or with a couple of CPUs like Satoshi did.
There is no relation between the hashrate and the number of tx that can be confirmed, that is only limited by the block size.