Huh, I totally thought transaction fees were set in Ether and that’s why the costs are so high (in fiat of course). If that’s not it, what makes the transactions so expensive? Lot of competition for limited throughout?
Yes, it's competition for limited throughput. Especially with the DeFi boom, fees have been bid higher and higher to be sure transactions are included in an immediate block.
Incidentally, if you're looking to keep up with Ethereum in particular, the newsletter Week In Ethereum News is an excellent resource. It's a links-with-descriptve-blurbs kind of thing. It's still a bit of a firehose if you're catching up on the space, but just pick a few items that sound interesting every week. https://weekinethereum.substack.com/
