The largest bitcoin exchange in the U.S., Coinbase, added about 100,000 accounts around Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday, to a total of 13.1 million Friday, data shows.
Bitcoin rose more than 8 percent to a record high of $9700. Another digital currency, ethereum, also hit an all-time high of $485.19 Saturday, according to CoinMarketCap.
"The move appears to be retail driven," said Brian Kelly, a CNBC contributor and CEO of BKCM, which runs a digital assets strategy.
The largest bitcoin exchange in the U.S., Coinbase, added about 100,000 accounts between Wednesday and Friday — just around Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday — to a total of 13.1 million. That's according to public data available on Coinbase's website and historical records compiled by Alistair Milne, co-founder and chief investment officer of Altana Digital Currency Fund. Coinbase had about 4.9 million users last November, Milne's data showed.
Source: Alistair Milne, CNBC analysis of Coinbase data
"Anecdotally, everyone I have talked to in the cryptocurrency community has said that Thanksgiving table discussion was all about bitcoin, and that inspired many family members to buy bitcoin," Kelly said. "I suspect that pattern was repeated across tables everywhere."