Over-developed? Crash? Chinese Domain Market is Suffering Storm!

Since yesterday the temperature began to drop, "late spring coldness" finally arrived and the "late spring coldness" also struck in domain market. Recently, the domain prices have been all the way down, especially 4-letter and 5-letter domains. In such a market, the domain name group is also full of undercurrents. Just as a domainer describes that there are fierce battles in forum and bloods in market.

Chinese investors are asking what is wrong with the market after the report said 2016 is the golden period of the domain market?

Market downturn causes panic spreading in domainer group and a variety of arguments begin to appear----all name types reaching the bottom line, 5-letter domains collapsing, market-makers running. Some big players also reached commitment not to register a new domain name this year. Behind these signs, what is the real cause of the domain name market slump? We could simply discuss about it.

Domainers say there may be two possibilities. 1. Market-makers intentionally sell names in a price which is much lower than the market price firstly and when some domainers follow this trend, these market-makers will buy these domains at a low price at the same time secretively. At last they will sell these domains again at a high price and make a profit in this way! 2. Too much hype in 4-Letter and 5-Number domains makes no next buyers. When some investors want to cash, the prices fall down. Taking all these views into consideration, the biggest problem is “capital”---- fund shortage in domain market capital pool.

On the one hand, the current market funds is not enough because of the booming of so many new gTLDs domains and bulk registering long .com names.

Taking 5N.com for example, there are almost 1454991 names, according to the current situation the market value is about CNY 181 million. If the average price is CNY 20 for each new gTLDs name, there would be about CNY 0.12 billion in about 30 gTLDs ( in the near future, there are a larger number of new gTLDs). These funds are all from domainers.

Under the current investment environment, the domain capital pool is relatively fixed, and the fund between mainstream and non-mainstream domains is like a seesaw----a head rises, another head will decline. More and more domainers begin to invest new gTLDs and the fund for mainstream names would decrease undoubtedly.

On the other hand, the problem is from capital source----end-users. Domainers’ capital poured into market are relatively limited, which could only be considered as tributaries, the end-users’ funds to the market is the source of capital flows. When so many new gTLDs domains and bulk registering long .com names are so flourishing, domainers becomes the last buyers and the capital in the pool couldn’t flow and the pool could be expanded anymore consequently.

When investment deviates from the "domain’s application value ", it virtually restricts the market expansion and the market weakness is inevitable.

Of course, in addition to capital, it also contains some reasons listed above. As a saying goes, "the braves get much more than the cowards." Market crash wouldn’t happen only if the capital is in the pool. Adhere to the rational investment! This "late spring coldness" will be a market reshuffle. The survival of the fittest---- after the storm, it will be a more healthy and prosperous market!

http://www.amq.com/jingyanjiaoliu/1327.html

Declaration: this is an informative article that do not represent official investing advice, with no intend in misleading readers.Please be open-minded and objective. Welcome varied discussion below.Thanks!

 

Cynthia-another great article-thank you. A few months back there were MANY "experts" saying that the stock market crash in China ( we own a hedge fund-trust me it was a crash) wouldn't have an adverse effect on domain names "it's different this time". We posted that thinking was nonsense and we got the hate mail/comments. China is no different than anyplace else simply bigger. As to new extensions-why bother? We are buying the .ch extension-which may have a great chance in China with end users ( a Chinese domain brokers words not ours)-and we now own the pinyin words in that extension for "real estate" "wealth" etc. and all are 10 year old names. When Mr Schwartz is selling a name like 989.com for over $800K to China it's time to sell not buy.

 

It's an artificially created and manipulated market with little to no real world value. It is/was bound to come crashing down.

 

The real problem is some people are still afraid to face with reality and still in love with the names.

People need to do the research by themselves and stop listening to all the hypes especially using some of the sites as the guidelines for pricing: chaomi, namejet, etc...

Names are not stocks and you should not rely on these sites.
This is juts my opinion. If you can still make money then it's good but don't drag your fellow domainer to become a bag holder with your hype.

My 2 cents.

 

Thanks for the article .

 

So forget all those 4 letter, 4 number, 4number/letter combos, 5, 6 and so forth numbers and letters.
Instead.....
Invest in virtual reality domains!
Entire thread here on that niche and the consensus is:
Everyone who has vr domains?
Will be millionaires soon, or in the next year or so.
Or some other time frame (it changes).
And one does not need chinese to buy these domains!!

 

The key point is the money comes from end-users. Any amount of domainer speculation is a bubble from the very beginning. Been saying this all along. As a pure guess, >1% of 4L chips and even less 'numbers' were end user sales within the last year.

4L @ $100 not long ago was undervalued. Someone with a lot of money noticed this and invested heavy and created this rage. Bravo. The fact remains, such a fast and large increased fueled by speculation created a sort of ponzi. Domains can not sustain such a rise because they serve one purpose, right back to the end-user. Domains are not like stocks, and far from an ideal currency, to invest or compare them as such is ludicrous.

Any random 4L chip can potentially be a xx,xxx sale, but only to end user. The determining factor is time. All these 'newbie' domainers now think that domaining is a get rich quick scheme. Everyone is looking for the next big thing. The random 4L and numbers is so far from the reality of domaining that they have no idea even if it were right in front of their faces.

Domaining is slow right now but I expect it will explode again soon, so ya'll better figure out what real good domains really are asap.

All that said I still feel some 3L undervalued lol! Nothing is ever perfectly cut and dry.