Humn, great discussion.
I think the value of the domain industry is exactly where it needs to be and what it is. Comparing it to Crypto or actual real estate for that matter is quite silly.
Let's all remember none of us actually OWN the names... we just get to use them as long as we pay renewal fees. Crypto, stored in a cold wallet, different story. Even actual real estate... we own the house, but we merely own the ability to hold the land as we are still paying taxes on it, and you certainly don't have air rights. =P
In either case, as a business owner, a good .com name is a GREAT thing to have, but no one actually needs it. Whether a company succeeds or fails, has little to do with the domain name, and whether it is Q.com or theletterthatcomesafterP.xyz. It has to do with managing the company. Most companies look at the domain name as merely an expense and cost of doing business... the exception of course being domainers and investors.
Beyond that, there is little SCARCITY in the domain world, new names can be created... and of course, the reason why the industry is as small as it is, in terms of value, is that registrars are all to happy to come out with a new TLD.
IF the only choice was .Com, .Org, .Net and .Gov.... for sure, the value of each name would be substantially more valuable, and the industry would be quite a bit more serious.
As far as .com versus others... well of course .com. And probably for the next two decades for sure, until the original internet generation starts aging and dying off.
Put it this way, I can put in any term in the browser bar and hit "control + enter" and it will automatically put the www in front and .com after. Until we can do that with .pro, .xyz, .tv etc... .com will always remain king and people willing to pay more for it.
35 years in, we have seen some great maturity, some amazing ROI’s and a small handful of .com millionaires who made their money building value on the idea of internet marketing and .com / and we know that .com has only been around and commercially marketed for the last 30 years ...
This is a young industry, and Verisign whom owns .com has had the opportunity to hold an empire status for a decent amount of time, longer then anyone else in the domain industry ...
As with all great industries, there is a dynamic shift, wether it is salt to coins to paper currency to crypto ... the shift exists, it is inevitable ^
Time and money prove this
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Now compare the domain industry to crypto-currency, VC funds and Banks are not investing in internet domain names ... the liquidity is not there ^ even if you own prime keywords like cats.com or autoloans.com ... these names have been sitting at a few auctions and still have not sold ... petsmart who owns dogs.com passed on cats.com when I was representing the name
Then we see Bird.com which was won at auction for $2.5M (fall through) because the buyer didn’t have the funds to bid at the ROTD auction ... a year down the road, and the Bird.com sells for $10M to Message Bird ...
So we have these “small” examples where multi million dollar .com domains take years to sell (if they sell at all) and GTLDs are still trying to gain the value traction
Meanwhile, GTLD and old world .com investors argue literally over nothing / and we see digital paintings of apes selling for millions of dollars ... just broke the $1B market value cap for BAYC NFT ... O.o
Wait a minute, something ain’t right
...
And it comes down to this,
A great name should not be justified by its .extension ... it should be justified on wether of not its a good name, exact match keyword, plural or non plural, valuable industry, non valuable industry, competitive keyword ? keyword combination ? etc,
sex.com - sold for $13M in 2006
sex.xxx - sold for $3M in 2014
One sold for $10M cheaper ... all by three letters, and the argument that one is better then the other ...
Makes no sense at all, and when you look at how fast the crypto-currency industry has advanced and compare it to domains, we are seriously lacking in building further value on our names, we are sitting ducks
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And you couldn’t sustain the world wide web for the next 10 years with just four internet domain .extensions much less ten ... it’s not feasible, not practical, in fact it would be ridiculous
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If we are discussing technology, artificial intelligence combined with search engine algorithms will dynamically alter the way search engines run and how consumers search for what it is that they are looking for
Programmed “search engines”
Ask >>> database >>> answer
Programmed virtual assistants “siri, etc”
Ask >>> vrt >>> database >>> answer
AI
Ask >>> answer
Unless AI is programmed to read .com as an exception to the rule and given what I’ve seen and know, AI is not programmed, it learns on its own, it thinks before it answers, it knows what you want, what you like, if you wrote a bad review on a company a couple years ago, it will know not to recommend that product even if that product is the most popular ... compare this to a business using Google to advertise its online business ... The highest bidder “the majority of the time” ranks the highest and maintains its popularity ... and that popularity is then further supported by reviews >>> more content ^ more “accurate genuine” content ^ higher rank ...
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And it comes down to this, .com will not be obsolete, it just will not generate the same amount of popularity in the next 25 years / that is if (we) are a progressive species and we know that we are
It’s not a question of value, it’s a question of time ^ and money ^ until the day, AI comes into play and determines that efficiency is the best way to go >>> and what’s more efficient,
Two examples,
twitch.com
twitch.tv
One less code to run = more efficiency - typing in twitch.com redirects to twitch.tv
same keyword, same results > boom
block.xyz
squareup.com
square.com
less codes to run = more efficiency -
And as we know a computer - a machine - is used to generate efficient results for whatever it is that the user wants, “weather” “stocks” “news” “contacts” “emails” etc. - you already see this on your phone / these are just programmed with the ability for you as a consumer to add or delete ^ it is simply tying the knots together ^ Then you have iphones w/ Siri and Amazon Alexa and other virtual assistants, all of which are programmed with commands and voice recognition technology, to play a critical role to listen and determine what you’re saying and what you want or need and to then search its database of the given command and present you with what it was programmed to present you with ...
All this in ^ 15 years ^
what do you think the world will see in another 15 years ...
My advice is to think beyond what anyone else thinks is possible here, those who are naive and have not followed the history of innovation will fail or will not be apart of the future of what is to come
Time will tell