Last week, the Global Domain Summit in Hangzhou closed with the biggest domain name auction of all time. According to reports from eName and TLD Investors, the auction finished with over $46mm in domain sales, with banana.com being sold at around $3.4mm and miss.com being sold at around $865,000. These are impressive sales, but are these sales figures real?
The Global Domain Summit was a conference in China that has largely gone under the radar of Western domain news outlets. In attendance were over 1,000 people, including some of the biggest investors and domain company owners such as Deijing Kong, the president of eName. The conference included many talks and "closed door meetings" covering subjects such as five letter .COM and six number .COM investment strategies.
One of the most anticipated events was the auction, which promised to deliver impressive sales numbers, and according to reports, it did just that. Whilst we haven't got a list of all domains that were auctioned, eName have published a small list that includes:
In that auction of December 2015, both HG.com and Banana.com were two of the names that attracted large bids of 16mm Yuan and 13.2mm Yuan respectively. According to WHOIS records, these names didn't sell at last year's conference, and so far haven't changed records almost 1 week after the Global Domain Summit auction. So far, we have no accurate knowledge of the status of the other names in this auction.
We also do not know whether buyers at this event were able to back out by paying a small fees, as with the December auction. But we do know that false domain sales do get reported, and whilst it happens worldwide, it's a problem that seems to occur more regularly in China.
Why do sales fail to go through? According to a comment made by @Doron Vermaat of Efty.com,
Hype, vested interest and artificially increasing the value of a domain (or a type of name) are three of the major reasons why many sales, especially at auctions, are reported but never go through.
If you make investments based on recent sales, do you trust domain auction data? Do you carry out your own due diligence to check on legitimate sales?
The Global Domain Summit was a conference in China that has largely gone under the radar of Western domain news outlets. In attendance were over 1,000 people, including some of the biggest investors and domain company owners such as Deijing Kong, the president of eName. The conference included many talks and "closed door meetings" covering subjects such as five letter .COM and six number .COM investment strategies.
One of the most anticipated events was the auction, which promised to deliver impressive sales numbers, and according to reports, it did just that. Whilst we haven't got a list of all domains that were auctioned, eName have published a small list that includes:
- Banana.com: 22.4mm Yuan ($3.4mm)
- HG.com: 18mm Yuan ($2.7mm)
- 73.com: 13mm Yuan ($1.97mm)
- 345.com: 11.1mm Yuan ($1.68mm)
- Miss.com: 5.7mm Yuan ($865,000)
- HN.com: 6.75mm Yuan ($1.02mm)
In that auction of December 2015, both HG.com and Banana.com were two of the names that attracted large bids of 16mm Yuan and 13.2mm Yuan respectively. According to WHOIS records, these names didn't sell at last year's conference, and so far haven't changed records almost 1 week after the Global Domain Summit auction. So far, we have no accurate knowledge of the status of the other names in this auction.
We also do not know whether buyers at this event were able to back out by paying a small fees, as with the December auction. But we do know that false domain sales do get reported, and whilst it happens worldwide, it's a problem that seems to occur more regularly in China.
Why do sales fail to go through? According to a comment made by @Doron Vermaat of Efty.com,
Unfortunately this type of behavior is very common in China with some examples being tech startups intentionally misrepresenting their funding rounds to look bigger or more successful than they are, websites buying fake web traffic to mislead advertisers and undoubtly [sic] there will be domain name investors (in both China and outside China) that are reporting fake or bloated sales because they are heavily invested in a certain niche of the liquid domain market.
Hype, vested interest and artificially increasing the value of a domain (or a type of name) are three of the major reasons why many sales, especially at auctions, are reported but never go through.
If you make investments based on recent sales, do you trust domain auction data? Do you carry out your own due diligence to check on legitimate sales?
