The recent surge in the price and volume of Bitcoin led to a record-breaking US$12 billion market cap for the digital currency, significantly increasing the demand for Bitcoin in regions including China, South Korea, and the United States.

Despite being ranked in the top 100 of the M1 money supply rankings and boasting a substantially large market cap of US$12 billion, bitcoin is still only worth more or less 50% of the Discover Financial Services network, which holds a market cap of US$22.2 billion.

Operating two international credit card and financial networks Discover and Pulse networks, Discover Financial Services is one of the largest financial corporations in the world today. The network has millions of credit card users that pay nearly 4% in transaction fee on a daily basis.

Recently, users of bitcoin began to discuss about the unprecedented advantages of using Bitcoin to settle both local and foreign transactions over traditional networks like the Discover Financial Services network.

While Discover credit cards and its financial services are highly respected due to its relatively lower transaction fees compared to other credit cards and networks in the market today, it still charges a standard credit card transaction fee, which is substantially higher than bitcoin’s.

If users struggle to leave the comfort of swiping a physical object to purchase items, they could always search for bitcoin alternatives like Coinbase and Xapo debit cards, which they can use as normal credit / debit cards but with minimal transaction fee.

On a positive note, the market cap of Bitcoin has surpassed that of Western Union’s, which currently is around US$9.55 billion.