What will happen when only large institutions can afford to use Bitcoin's blockchain, due to rising fees? Won't this centralize the network if most can only trade bitcoin on centralized exchanges?
I don't think we will have a situation when Bitcoin transaction fees will only be affordable for large institutions and not for individuals. If that becomes the case, then we might demand for fork to increase the block size.
Network is centralized at some point because centralized exchanges hold the most reserves and have the highest trading volume and secondly, China and the USA own the most mining hash rate. So, bitcoin is centralized at some point.
Have you tried checking bitcoin's transaction fees today and if I remember correctly the transaction fees are around 40$ per transaction? In your opinion, is this transaction fee suitable for retail investors? If we don't have any solution to improve transaction fees, in the future bitcoin will no longer be suitable for many people as transaction fees will constantly increase. We are just at a stage where bitcoin's popularity is yet to spread globally, and just think if it adopts globally and the number of transactions increases, what will the transaction fees be like? I think it's entirely possible that we will spend $100-300 per bitcoin transaction in the future.