During last year’s inaugural Bitcoin Black Friday , BitPay–hailed as the PayPal for Bitcoin–processed 99 transactions. This year, the system experienced a nearly 6300% surge, processing 6,296 transactions Friday and making Nov. 29 BitPay’s busiest day yet.





Overall, BitPay saw 55,288 transactions in November, a 165% increase from the previous month. This was no doubt accelerated by Shopify’s announcement released the day before Thanksgiving that its 75,000 merchants can now accept Bitcoin using BitPay. Last week, the value of Bitcoin soared to an all-time high, surpassing $1,000 on the Mt. Gox exchange.