BitPay's Commercial Breakout
BitPay announces it is processing payments for over 1,000 active merchants, proving the viability of the 'Bitcoin Payment Processor' model.
By November 20, 2012, BitPay confirmed it had surpassed 1,000 active merchants, a milestone that effectively validated the business model of the "crypto payment processor." Throughout 2012, BitPay had been aggressively onboarding small businesses—from hot sauce vendors to alpaca sock merchants—giving them a way to accept Bitcoin without holding it on their balance sheets (BitPay instantly converted the BTC to Fiat).
This was a crucial infrastructure bridge. Most businesses could not take the risk of Bitcoin's volatility, nor did they understand how to secure a wallet. BitPay abstracted these risks away. Reaching 1,000 merchants was a "proof of concept" that allowed them to pitch larger entities later (like WordPress and Microsoft). In the context of 2012, where spending Bitcoin was famously difficult, BitPay's directory was the yellow pages of the crypto economy.