BitPay has processed its largest ever single transaction – $1m for bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer Butterfly Labs.
This means that, at the current price of $192 per bitcoin, Butterfly Labs received an order for around 5,208 BTC-worth of mining equipment. BitPay then processed this order, depositing the equivalent in fiat currency in Butterfly Labs’ bank account.
Despite the size of the order, the cryptocurrency payment processor processed it in their usual one-business-day timeframe.
Tony Gallippi, co-founder and CEO of BitPay, said: “The speed, reliability, and certainty of payments over the bitcoin network is expanding at a rapid pace, and in many regards has already surpassed the functionality of our 60-year old credit card networks.”
Butterfly Labs is notorious for missing delivery deadlines, so bitcoiners awaiting the delivery of their mining equipment may be hoping this large transaction will allow the company to speed up its production and delivery.
“Butterfly Labs can now ship this merchandise with confidence that there will be no reversibility or chargeback of the payment, which is a significant risk when accepting credit cards online or PayPal,” said Gallippi.
Jeff Ownby, vice-president of marketing at Butterfly Labs, said his company was confident all along that BitPay would be able to process such a large transaction.
“The $1m payment with bitcoin is only a down payment of a much larger institutional order for 28nm product, and is not related to 65nm production,” he added.
Ownby went on to say Butterfly Labs has quadrupled its 65nm production in the last six weeks and has doubled its production staff.
“Funds received for 28nm Monarch products are used for production of our 28nm Monarch cards only. We expect to begin delivery of Monarch cards in December,” he concluded.
The latest update from Butterfly Labs was at the start of September when the company announced customers could transfer their orders to another person. Customers can do so using the classified ads section located at the top of every page of the forum for hardware sales.
Do you think Butterfly Labs will now speed up production? Let us know in the comments.
Disclaimer: CoinDesk founder Shakil Khan is an investor in BitPay.