Do you think .AI will be replaced?
I think there will be a lane for each. Which eventually holds the majority it is too early to say. Currently the wider lane by far is .ai
However, two men with outsized personalities with pulpits are opening a lane for .si
The width of that lane is as of yet, unknown.
I think this lets the steam escape from .ai at the lower end of the .ai market.
imo, many subpar .ai names were being priced too high because there were no more good hand-regs and Ai was hot. I do not believe this affects the higher end of the .ai market (e.g., 200+ TLDs taken)
Ai remains hot, but .si now offers another option for businesses. As a startup or small/med size biz I'd prefer TrueNorth.si at $10k vs TrueNorth.ai at $100k+. As the prices converge, I believe they would prefer .ai.
Obv that can change over time, but currently I believe .si should be priced from ~10-25% of .ai to ensure businesses choose it. btw, this is similar for .ai and .com. As .ai prices converge towards .com, businesses choose .com. It's a nuance that many non .com investors miss. They focus on the SLD and less so on the TLD. I've done this in the past as well, and am working towards ensuring both are equally strong.
If a domainer prices .si in the neighborhood of .ai, I think the business chooses what they and their customers know, which today is .ai
Personally I'm excited about the future of .si and think it will carve out & keep a lane (unless the gov't or registry do something to f it up, which is not a nil chance). Since I do not want to sell my best names at 10-25% of .ai, they are not on the market. I will wait some years until the market pricing (aka end user demand) catches up so I can price my .si at a more appropriate level. If I'm wrong and it was all hype - I will write off the loss. I've got no way to catch a moving train and will not spend great efforts trying.
Carry costs, at the moment, are low. I do not believe that stays true over time. Where money exists, people & companies want more of it. Prices will rise, and likely substantively. I keep that in mind as I decide what to hold and what to sell quickly (by assuming carry costs will rise substantively). I also want to keep dry powder avail to bid on the inevitable drops next Fall when domainers gripe they didn't sell their .si names in <1 year. Personally, I think if you don't intend to renew your names, price low, and price them to move.
