Maybe fees are replacing the halving of bitcoin mining. I mean, the volume of bitcoin and also the hashrate increased significantly.

The increased demand, though, has pushed Bitcoin up against its block size limit.

I mean you can just set the fees lower but your transaction will be marked as low priority and held up, that means a longer confirmation time and who wants that? Actually it is quite good for the bitcoin for having more people adopting it, but with the price of higher fees with halving every 4 years or so.