Nothing new, people lose their minds when their thinking (.com or bust) is challenged, specially by data.
It used to be cctlds over a decade ago, when Ray started the .TV forum or when I started the cctld forum on NP, most laughed. cctlds only accounted for 3% of all registered domains. Today cctlds account for 40% of all registered domains. 7 of the top 10 tlds by number of domains registered are cctlds.
Now it's newgtlds, specifically .xyz and DNGear because they're the one making bank and getting recognition for it. Are all ntld sales suspect? So many registries provide actual data on premium sales totaling millions of dollars, think Radix showed over 20m in sales, are they suspect too?
DNGear has shown sales on afternic to a third party, Reza confirmed their Dan sales, why do you have such a tough time believing them? They targeted the right market for the tld they invested in, good for them, shows anyone can come in at any time and make a mark on this industry, huge positive if you ask me.
I've sold names in .org, .tv, .pro, .one, .ag, .im and a lot of other tlds which most of NP users ignore, in fact I stopped reporting sales for exactly this reason. Everyone wants you to provide proof, yet the same yardstick isn't held for .com, because all those sales are real of course.
In any case, what someone sells or doesn't / should not affect your journey, that is completely reliant on your own portfolio, dyor, buy names where the domain itself has value, irrespective of what anyone else says. Unless you have a time machine or a large budget you're not going to be able to achieve the same success in .com as the incumbents.
.com is the top tld by a long shot, almost anything works with the .com right of the dot, not true for any other tld, which is why it is most popular, but if you keep buying names that no one else wants in .com, it's not going to help you either.
Stop wasting time looking at what someone else is doing, it doesn't affect your performance, only your own names do, spend time researching names, go read the methods used by the top investors, but concentrate on getting the best names you can, that's what's important. Good Luck!