Today In Data: Consumer Spend, Venture Capital And Bitcoin Reach Record Highs

Today in PYMNTS’ data, consumers are spending billions on holiday preparations, venture capital (VC) funding is helping luxury eTail expand, subscription-based fitness class models are helping gyms fill classes and fitness enthusiasts try new things, bitcoin is projected to reach newer and higher heights and accounting practices are investing more resources to increase advisory services in coming years.

Here are the numbers:

$682 billion | Amount that consumers are expected to spend on presents and other holiday preparations this holiday shopping season, with retailers going the extra mile to meet them where they are in a simpler and faster way. That means upping mobile and online shopping experiences, offering a buy online pick up in-store model and launching services like curbside pickup and better shipping options.

$165 million | Value of VC funding raised by luxury eTail brand Moda Operandi. The round was led by Adrian Cheng (the Cheng family is the third-richest family in Hong Kong) and Apax Digital, a fund mainly dedicated to internet companies advised by private equity giant Apax Partners.

$70 million | Amount of funding recently secured by ClassPass, a subscription-based model that matches fitness-conscious consumers with fitness companies in large and mid-sized cities across the U.S. The subscriptions include packages of classes for local studios and gyms, helping fitness centers book open spots that might otherwise go unfilled and lowering friction at the commerce level.

$19,000 | Highest value that a single bitcoin has hit. After hitting $10,000 a little over a week ago, bitcoin rapidly shot up through $12,000 to $15,000 and eventually made it above $19,000 on some exchanges. Though it seemed it might actually hit and cross the $20,000 milestone, it wasn’t to be — the cryptocurrency retreated to around $18,000 by the end of the day on Friday (Dec. 8). Twenty-four hours later, the price of bitcoin dropped by 9 percent to roughly $13,000.

76 percent | Portion of accounting practices that said they will be investing more resources to increase advisory services in the next year or two, according to a benchmarking report from Xero. For the businesses that are already including advisory services in their offerings, practices report 69 percent more revenue generated per employee than practices that provide only accounting and bookkeeping services.