Just over a week since Adafruit Industries announced you could pay for their products with bitcoin, the DIY electronics merchant has raked in tens-of-thousands of dollars in the cryptocurrency.
âWe can say itâs in the multiple tens-of-thousands of USD,â Adafruit founder Limor Fried told CoinDesk.
The companyâs sales were boosted by Bitcoin Black Friday (bitcoinâs answer to the discount-shopping holiday that follows Thanksgiving), which generated a record day of transactions for bitcoin payment processor BitPay, the service Adafruit uses.
Furthermore, in a curious twist, at least one customer who decided to pay with bitcoin used the very same coins they mined using Adafruitâs bitcoin mining tutorial. Fried said:
âThe coolest thing for us is a customer told us they made a bitcoin miner using our tutorial, mined coins and then spent them on Adafruit.â
The company first entered the bitcoin world six months ago with the PiMiner, a Raspberry Pi-powered bitcoin miner. From there, the decision to implement bitcoin payments was a natural progression for Adafruitâs team.
âWe all considered mining coins a fun math puzzle and hobby,â said Fried.
Like other businesses that have adopted bitcoin payments, Adafruit was concerned by the volatility of the currency due to the risk of bitcoinâs price plummeting shortly after a sale.
âThe big challenge for us was how [to] sell physical goods with a âcurrencyâ that changes so often,â said the entrepreneur.
BitPay was crucial to solving that challenge, she said. The payments processor, which transacted a $1m order in October, does the currency exchange into dollars at the point of sale.
âWe never touch the bitcoins, each day BitPay does a daily bank transfer in USD to us. This was perfect for us,â she added.
According to Fried, the most popular bitcoin purchase on Adafruitâs website, which has over 1,600 products, is the humble Raspberry Pi model B.
âThe average order [with bitcoins] is over $100. Many orders were over $1,000 and we have a few over $8,000. The most popular item people purchase with bitcoins is the Raspberry Pi model B,â she said.
Bitcoin Black Friday, bitcoinâs answer to the âfrenzied consumerismâ that follows Thanksgiving celebrations in the US, returned for a second year in 2013. The day was set up by Jon Holmquist in retaliation to claims that bitcoin has been fuelled by speculation rather than its potential as a global payment system.
This argument was made rather forcefully in a recent Wired article that suggested bitcoinâs irreversibility was a âfatal flawâ that ensures it âwonât ever achieve widespread adoption as a currencyâ.
Bitcoin Black Friday saw a range of sites offer discounted products. Alongside BitPayâs bigger merchants, it seems the deals at Adafruit won consumers over.
âDuring our recent Bitcoin Black Friday, Adafruit was one of our top selling merchants,â said Stephanie Wargo, VP of Marketing at BitPay.
BitPay processed just over 6,000 bitcoin transactions on Bitcoin Black Friday â up from just 99 during the inaugural event last year.
âThe bitcoin space is growing each and every day; as more people acquire bitcoins, and more merchants accept them,â said Wargo.
Featured image:Â Collin Cunningham