As per the latest report by DataLight, despite 2018 being bearish for crypto market and Bitcoin losing 80 percent of its value, in comparison to Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal, Bitcoin as a payment system has been thriving.

When it comes to annual change in price and capitalization, Bitcoin fell sharply while classic payment systems showed more than 10 percent growth. While the price of Bitcoin at the end of 2018 has been around $3,800, Visa’s price has been $132, $188 for Mastercard shares, and $84 for PayPal shares.

Similar to price, market cap change shows the same dynamics. However, at 2017 end, at $237 billion Bitcoin’s capitalization has been very close to Visa’s $258 billion and surpassed that of MasterCard and PayPal.

It shows what we already know more that is the crypto market is more volatile than the traditional market assets as the research states, “the average daily volatility of Bitcoin was more than 6% in 2018, which is almost 3 times higher than that of its competition.”

Bitcoin loses to these payment giants in terms of the number of accounts as well.

Bitcoin Beats Classic Payment System in Payment Statistics

Taking a look at the number of transactions, a key factor of a payment network, classic payment systems have much lower indicators than Bitcoin and the lower the indicator, the higher the activity index.

However, Bitcoin surpasses centralized traditional systems in terms of total transaction volume.

“Bitcoin is many thousands of times ahead of the competition in this aspect. Its $40000 is 450 times larger than Visa’s. This tells us that the Bitcoin’s network is more suitable for larger, probably international payments.”

Another parameter where Bitcoin beats these systems by a long margin is the fee. The report details that for smaller amounts that is below $100, MasterCard and Visa is a reasonable choice but as sum increases, Bitcoin is a better choice due to its low fees at $0.20 for even millions of dollars.

While Visa, MasterCard, and Paypal have centralized data centers to process transactions, Bitcoin has approximately 1000 nodes that remained steady even during the bear market.

This all has been while Bitcoin has been created just 10 years back in 2009 while PayPal is here since 1998, and Mastercard and Visa go way back to 1966 and 1958 respectively.

Though it took 60 years for these payment giants to become industry leaders, the report concludes Bitcoin is much superior to these systems right now.