Domain Observer Domain Observer

Don’t get excited about the next round of new gTLDs launching any time soon. That’s my takeaway from recent correspondence between ICANN’s chair and brand-owners who are apparently champing at the bit to get their teeth into some serious dot-brand action. Maarten Botterman warned Brand Registry Group chair Cole Quinn …

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/domainnamewire/DNW339.mp3Will a drop in cryptocurrency prices impact the domain aftermarket? Crypto markets had a wild ride last week. My guest this week, Amanda Waltz of Saw.com, discusses the impact that cryptocurrency prices have on domain name sales. Even if you don’t own cryptocurrency, your domain investments might do better when …

Turakhia’s latest started is now a unicorn. Bhavin Turakhia Bhavin Turakhia’s latest business has raised a $250 million Series C investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, valuing the company at $1.45 billion. Zeta is a banking technology company, offering a cloud-based technology stack to banks and FinTech companies. Turakhia built …

Who said competition in the domain drop-catching space was dying? Domain registrar Sav.com, which has been emerging as a bit of a favorite among domain investors over the last year or so, has just formed 50 new registrars with ICANN accreditation to power its drop-catching service. ICANN records show the …

James Booth sold Porn.co back in March for $120,000. This is the fourth highest reported .co domain name sale behind, O.co, Eth.co and Link.co. Porn.co sold in 2019 for $22,109 at Sedo. Porn is one of the most popular keywords for exact match domain name sales. The asking price was …

Quite the bidding battle over at DropCatch for Alcove.com. The domain name closed at, The domain name was registered in 1996 and owned by a French company, The Hidden Alcove. In French it’s written, alcôve. Alcove is registered in 76 extensions. With about 500 other names using Alcove as the …

Hello and happy Friday It’s a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco and like many of you, I’m looking forward to winding things down after a busy week. Recently a reader made a suggestion for a weekly or monthly post covering my most popular articles and I thought it was …

Here’s a case to write home about. Wendi Weiner, who promotes her writing services at WritingGuru.net, has been found to have tried reverse domain name hijacking TheWritingGuru.com in a UDRP. Charles Euchner registered TheWritingGuru.com in 2006 and has uses it to promote his writing coaching services. Weiner filed for a …

TL;DR — I made about $3,700 selling Tucows shares. I’ve never been much of an investor in anything, largely because I’ve never really had the disposable income. However, back in 2006, when I lived in the US, I opened an online share-trading account and bought around $1,000 worth of shares …

ICANN is planning to auction off .wed, the first new gTLD from the 2012 application round to fail. The TLD has been running on Nominet’s Emergency Back-End Registry Operator platform since late 2017, when former registry Atgron suffered a critical failure — apparently planned — of its registry services. After …

Newfold Digital, by my reckoning the second-largest registrar group, has officially announced itself with a new logo and branding. The company was formed in February when Clearlake Capital merged Endurance International with Web.com, bringing dozens of domain and hosting brands under one roof. The company now acts as an umbrella …

Celebrities and holders of unregistered trademarks are now able to buy porn domain blocks from MMX. The company’s subsidiary, ICM Registry, has broadened its eligibility criteria in order to shift more units of the product, upon which it is banking much of its growth hopes. Previously, to get an AdultBlock …

Drop-catch registrar Pheenix has had its registrar contract terminated by ICANN after apparently going AWOL. ICANN has been chasing the company for breaches related to Whois and access to registrant data since October 2019, but hasn’t heard a peep out of the outfit for a year. As I noted when …

Last week NFTDex.com sold for $25,000 at Sedo. Very impressive for a hand reg that was only 15 months old. Thursday saw another impressive sale on a two month old hand reg. CenterNFT.com sold for $4,999 at NamePull.com. The domain name registered at GoDaddy looks to have already moved to …

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about Handshake and written about how much I like the community and how I think there are some super interesting things happening in the space. When I first started to dive into the world of Handshake my thinking was – I’ll split my investment …

This Phoenix won’t rise from the dead. ICANN is terminating its accreditation agreement with domain name registrar Pheenix. The domain name overseer sent a breach notice to the registrar on April 25 and followed up with a termination notice today. Pheenix hasn’t been paying its accreditation fees and hasn’t responded …