~~ the default fee in Blockchain.com ~~ And I checked bitcoinfees.earn.com
just so you know, both of these sites are unreliable when it comes to fees. blockchain.com is known to give weird suggestions (usually too low) and bitcoinfees always suggests a much higher fee for high priority transactions and causes a big overpay for those who rely on it.
you are correct though, fees have indeed increased over the past weeks due to the price rise and the large number of people who are both selling and buying bitcoin.
I am wondering why are they doing this? I know they are here to make good money but increasing the fees to 10X that can already be astronomical and will not be helping bitcoin in the long run. One thing I am confused is that there seems to be no industry-wide standard fees that big players should follow. This is detrimental for business and in fact this has been a major reason why many merchants are not interested with bitcoin aside from the fact that sales can be laggard using bitcoin as one of the modes of payment. There must be a better alternative than this. I am hoping that there are other platforms offering services at lower fees.