@jabo38
Here are few more notes and stats that may be useful.
MasterCard debit purchase volume: $448 billion in the United States for the full year of 2012.
Visa debit purchase volume: $1.10 trillion in the United States for the full year of 2012.
MasterCard debit transaction volume: 11.3 billion transactions in the United States for the full year of 2012.
Visa debit transaction volume: 29.5 billion transactions in the United States for the full year of 2012.
Total number of debit card transactions in the U.S.: 47 billion in 2012, vs. 15.6 billion in 2003.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/credit-card-statistics-industry-facts-debt-statistics-cm21786Stock analysis
https://www.trefis.com/company?hm=V.trefishttps://www.trefis.com/company?hm=MA.trefisCharts & Graphs Archive
http://www.nilsonreport.com/publication_chart_and_graphs_archive.php?1=1&year=2014Visa's network is a star-based system.
http://usa.visa.com/download/corporate/_media/visanet-technology/visa-net-booklet.pdfhttp://usa.visa.com/download/corporate/_media/visa-fact-sheet.pdfhttp://investor.visa.com/MasterCard's Banknet is a peer-to-peer mesh network.
http://www.mastercard.com/us/company/en/docs/virtual_private_network.pdfhttp://investor.mastercard.com/investor-relations/default.aspxMasterCard and Visa use ISO 8583 Financial transaction card originated messages protocol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8583Visa handles on average around 2,000 transactions per second with a daily peak rate of 4,000 tps.
http://usa.visa.com/about-visa/our-business/visa-transaction.jspVisa has a peak capacity of around 56,000 transactions per second and 19,000 tps during peak shopping periods.
(removed, only available in yahoo or google cache)
http://www.visa.com/blogarchives/us/2013/10/10/stress-test-prepares-visanet-for-the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year/index.htmlPayPal handles around 10 million transactions per day for an average of 115 tps.
https://about.paypal-corp.com/The Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps due to the bitcoin protocol restricting block sizes to 1MB (anti-spam).
7 tps is the theoretical maximum, the practical maximum is about 2.4 tps.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalabilityhttps://www.quora.com/Bitcoin-is-limited-to-7-transactions-per-second-Other-than-increasing-miner-fees-for-the-processing-power-needed-what-other-viable-solutions-are-thereSide-chains can increase Bitcoin's transaction rate.
http://www.coindesk.com/could-the-bitcoin-lightning-network-solve-blockchain-scalability/"If all Bitcoin transactions were on the blockchain, to enable 7 billion people to make two
transactions per day, it would require 24GB blocks every ten minutes at best."
http://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper-DRAFT-0.5.pdfOne Bitcoin negative you may want to include is that it is susceptible to the "51% attack".
And actually with less than 50%, the same kind of attacks are possible, but with less rate of success.
Someone with only 40% of the network computing power can overcome a 6-deep confirmed transaction with a 50% success rate.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesseshttp://en.bitcoinwiki.org/File:Bitcoin_weaknesses.jpgBitcoin is more centralized due to large mining pools.
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-detente-ghash-io-51-issue/https://bitcoinmagazine.com/9402/mining-pool-centralization-crisis-levels/https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1uk690/ghashio_just_mined_6_in_a_row_again_no_big_deal/Bitcoin hashrate distribution
https://blockchain.info/poolsThe Bitcoin network has ~5800 reachable nodes (8-2-2015).
https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/Bitcoin Network Speed 8 Times Faster than Top 500 Supercomputers Combined
https://tradeblock.com/blog/bitcoin-network-8-times-faster-than-top-500-super-computers-combined/Global Bitcoin Computing Power Now 256 Times Faster Than Top 500 Supercomputers, Combined!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global-bitcoin-computing-power-now-256-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers-combined/Tianhe-2, the world's fastest supercomputer has a performance of only 33.86 petaFLOPS compared to 4,831,951 petaFLOPS of the Bitcoin network (8-2-2015).
http://www.top500.org/featured/top-systems/http://bitcoinwatch.com/PoW is wasteful, every second about 400,000 trillion SHA256 computations are being performed by the Bitcoin network.
The current Network Hashrate is at 389,815,294 GH/s (2-8-2015).
https://blockchain.info/statshttps://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rateBitcoin Miners Are Racking Up $150,000 A Day In Power Consumption Alone
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/13/the-cost-of-a-bitcoin/The Impossible Trinity: Security, Environment Protection and Decentralization
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/10829/impossible-trinity-security-environment-protection-decentralization/Think Tank Reignites Debate Over Bitcoin Mining's Environmental Effects
http://www.coindesk.com/think-tank-debate-bitcoin-mining-environment/Under the Microscope: Economic and Environmental Costs of Bitcoin Mining
http://www.coindesk.com/microscope-economic-environmental-costs-bitcoin-mining/Under the Microscope: Conclusions on the Costs of Bitcoin
http://www.coindesk.com/microscope-conclusions-costs-bitcoin/Virtual Bitcoin Mining Is a Real-World Environmental Disaster
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disasterBitcoin's carbon footprint is out of control.
http://bitcarbon.org/