Before NFTs, Domain Names (DNS) were utilized. A GoDaddy domain auction caught Sheppard’s eye, so the web developer decided to join in the fun himself. His curiosity led him to search the internet and purchase a few domain names that he plans to resell.
A lot of professional shifts have occurred since that time. It cost him $59 to buy gallaz.com, and he made $1,575. For Funnelsecrets.com, he spent $550 for the domain name. When he and his investment partner bought Solvent.com a year later for $7,600, they were able to sell it for $60,000. When it comes to domainers (domain investors, investors, and speculators), he’s only one among many.
Recently, NFTs and cryptocurrencies, an alternative asset class to traditional assets like real estate, equity, and bonds, have seen a boom in popularity. In looking at these headline-grabbing visuals and virtual money, you may trace their history to domains—the first digital asset.
Domain Names Are Similar to Virtual Property
Domain names aren’t like real estate, you can’t touch them. Despite this, many people think they’re good investments. Memorable domain names help businesses stand out. Domain names appear to be in high demand. Every day, new businesses require websites with their logos and email addresses.
They’ll often pay a premium for them. Consider Amazon’s $1 billion acquisition of Ring, in 2018. For the domain name ring.com, Jamie Siminoff paid $1 million for it in 2012. Despite their potential brand value, easy-to-remember names get a lot of traffic via manual website entries. Some domainers may slap digital adverts up it, hoping for flyby traffic to help them. Google’s ubiquity hasn’t slowed growth.
The industry is loaded with ambiguity – and potential for improvement
Buying an unregistered domain name for a few bucks a year is the easiest approach. Hand registering is a commercial term. Buying a domain name has limited options. The best items are gone, thus the secondary market booms. When a domain name expires, you may backorder a replacement online. Yours if no one else wants it. If no one else does, the registrant sells the name to an auction house for the highest price.
An annual auction is conducted to sell domains that have expired or whose owners want to return their investment. Some of the biggest transactions are stuck there. Buyers’ agents deal with domain owners. Brokers find a seized domain name. Brokerage transactions are seldom mentioned in the media.
The basic goal is to recoup your investment in a domain name. It’s not as well-documented as real estate. The domain market ecology includes domain registrars and drop-catchers (the name for individuals who utilize software to scoop up just-expired domains).
The Domain Market Expanded
Domain investors like Sheppard have new avenues for investment now that ICANN, the regulatory body in charge of supervising the internet’s domain name system, has begun accepting proposals for new generic top-level domains (com, org, net, and so on).
This was ICANN’s goal. Many good ones were already taken. The extension gave fresh meaning to the sentences to the right of the dot. In contrast, to.com denotes a generic term, TLDs like. Club, shop, and beer are now available.
Pundits worried that unscrupulous players would grab branded domain names and blackmail corporations. Not all domain investors were convinced. Many have acquired scarce premium digital materials. But the rise encouraged other domainers to pay more.
Then NFTs Showed Up
In spite of the increasing investment opportunities given by the expansion of top-level domains (TLDs), there has been a shift in industry enthusiasm. One of the world’s most popular online investing platforms, immediate-connect.com, has been around for many years.
According to Cahn, many of the NFT holders and distributors, he knows are also domainers, as well. For him, it’s nothing new. Domain investments have made NFT investments more acceptable in several ways.
Money Is Always Available in the Domain
Despite the present interest in other digital assets, long-term domain investors remain confident in their worth. Whatever you’re offering is always in demand. Most people don’t have an internet connection, according to Statista. In spite of India being the world’s second-largest market for the internet, more than half of its population does not have access. A growing number of websites, applications, and email accounts will need domain name registration.
