Well
@Michael would not be the one to verify a sale like this, he records sales after services he respects have said they verified it.
Exactly this. A sale gets added if it comes from the venue itself (them reporting or us observing), a respected source (like DNJournal or George Kirikos finding an SEC filing), or a party to the transaction reporting to us directly with proof. I don't go chasing rumors trying to find proof.
This is an interesting case in terms of verification. Is it enough that the Weibo-verified CEO of a company which raised $100 million in February (according to CrunchBase) has apparently said he bought the name for $1 million?
If an American CEO announced via his verified Twitter account that he had purchased Example.com for $1 million, would that be enough for Namebio or DNJournal?
Not at all, especially not when doubling the previous new gTLD record on an extension that is a few weeks old. They could say $1 million and mean a lot of things, like $xx,xxx plus a lot of worthless stock options, or agreeing to pay $1 a year for a million years, etc. Could even just be pure fiction.
I don't even think I would add it if the CEO emailed me a screenshot directly and said it was all-cash paid at once. I would still want some further verification, like Escrow.com confirming, or a respected broker having been involved and confirming the price, etc. If none of that could be provided I wouldn't add something this unbelievable based only on a screenshot, because those are easy to fake.
The Escrow.com screenshot provided on Twitter was pretty funny. Random non-sensitive things blurred out, including buttons and general instructions (and the domain itself). And it was obvious from the screenshot that the current status of the transaction was "Both parties have accepted the offer, awaiting buyer payment." so it wasn't even paid for at that point and can't even be verified who the "buyer" was since it was blurred. Could have been someone opening up a transaction with another one of their own accounts and agreeing to it.