November 11, also known as Singles Day, the largest global ecommerce shopping day largely celebrated in China has become Spending Day.

Much of the buying takes place online. On November 11th last year, Alibaba, an e-commerce company, sold 57.1 billion yuan ($9.3 billion)-worth of goods; the first 10 billion yuan-worth was sold in just 38 minutes. This far eclipsed the $1.5 billion spent online by Americans on “Black Friday”, the day after Thanksgiving, which in the United States has become the biggest spending day of the year online, thanks to steep discounts.

Close to $10 billion in GMV in 38 minutes. Astonishing.