2. How do I circumvent high fees?
I use Altcoins where I can and if I must use BTC, I pay the amount for 18 Sat/VB and use ViaBTC to accelerate the transaction for free.
I wanted to suggest set the fee low but to meet the requirements of the viabtc service for free transfer but right now that’s not possible because the hourly slot for free service is said to have been hijacked by bots and it will be hard to get a transaction accelerated using Viabtc free service.
I quickly rushed to the ViaBTC acceleration page to check what you claimed that bots had hijacked it and I was surprised that at 7 minutes past 4 PM, the available slot was 0. This has never happened before ever since I used the service.
Well, I can't ascertain the bot hijacking allegation as ViaBTC will not allow their website to be compromised with bots. It is either they are the ones doing it or the traffic is so high for obvious reasons. Bitcoin's fee issue is pushing people to use any available services that can lower the fee, so you shouldn't be surprised if there are thousands of people using that service on an hourly basis now.
This will appear like a bot if people continue to queue to secure a space at the very first second of a new hour.