alert The fund can't be withdrawal from Epik.com via Masterbucks wallet

[enamebroker]

It happened on 23rd Aug 2022 and this matter lasted almost one month without any process. Masterbucks.com declined my fund withdrawal and disabled the button of fund withdrawal. And I contacted Epik.com and got no further action even if Rob Monster got involved in it for two weeks. All the time I was told in email by management review.

What is wrong with Epik.com? Do you think it is normal to disable fund withdrawal? How can I get back my fund from Epik.com? Thanks for your suggestion.

 

[NicTraders]

Yeah, I get it. He was trying to come up with fancy consulting lingo for basically the idea of slow organic growth, experimenting and learning on the go from your own mistakes etc.

Rob always liked to develop his projects on the fly. Plenty of stuff was 'crowd-developed' using feedback from this very forum. It wasn't an approach I was keen on, because it wasn't at all crawl-walk-run-fly. It was much more like run - trip - fall - get up - run - fall - crash and burn. Or some other similar process. I think about the only project that got off the ground and actually did well for a while was NameLiquidate. Once all the kinks were ironed out at the start it actually worked pretty well. But it is basically history now too.

 

[Derek Peterson]

Language warning but classic "bust out" examples. A Bust Out is when a creditor takes over a company and strips it of all assets instead of filing lawsuits and forcing it into bankruptcy It'd be hilarious if not for so many innocent people getting hurt in the process and legit creditors being repaid but sadly there are many victims, even little ol me. I want my 10 USDC back and I'm going to get my 10 USDC back.

In the case of Epik I think that Monster, being the degenerate criminal mastermind he is, stripped Epik of all assets preemptively, which was very little beyond the money he defrauded investors and customers out of and transferred it into personal crypto holdings. It appears, since no creditors are making any money or being repaid, that Monster is running his own bust out against his own company, with the help of Royce. Since Epik didn't have any inventory to sell off or credit to extend they are just stealing from customers (credit or sorts, I guess) for their bust out.

However, it will probably end about the same for him and Epik. Sadly, it appears that Rob Monster has indeed hidden millions in crypto with no concern for all the people he hurt or even his poor wife whom he forced to take a mortgage out on her home to pay off his fake debts and just might live out a degenerate life in Thailand with his crypto stash once he finally admits to himself that he is not saved and just accepts what he really is and always has been, a monster. Imagine the type of guy that would trick his own wife out of money instead of being a godly example and provider. What a giant POS Rob Monster is!

Jill Monster's brother:

Summary:

Others:

BTW - This is what the central banks are currently doing with the global economy.

Here is a good article describing macro bust out using $BBBY Bed Bath and Beyond as an example.
https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-united-states-of-bed-bath-beyond/

 

[Derek Peterson]

You've been smelling rats for ages Derek. I suggest you get some baits and deal with the issue.

Ratters don't use bait. They hunt.

 

[Arch]

This should be an Epik ad.

 

[Derek Peterson]

Epik Bust Out

Let's take a look at just the victims created since the Bust Out began in early 2022, when investors demanded their money back and converted shares to debt. This does NOT include all the victims prior to that through epik ponzi, masterbucks payments, etc. and is certainly not a comprehensive list of a post bust out victims.

Escrow victims: ~$2,000,000 - Adkisson, Kathleen, Igor, etc etc.

Domain victims: ~$2,000,000 - this is an interesting one because it is ongoing. As far as bust out schemes goes it is pretty sweet. Let's do the math.

500,000 (DUM) / 365 (days) = 1,369 domains renewing/day
1,369 domains renewing/day x $10/domain = $13,369 /day in "revenues" with a minimum take of $5,000,000, actually much more because many reports of people paying multiple times trying to renew thinking it was something on their end and many renew for more than 1 year. This is fraud, intentional, premeditated fraud.

Of course the daily take will decrease as people leave but not as much as people think because I think most of the domains that have left thus far didn't transfer out but rather expired because Epik is just keeping the money and not renewing but the reporting is delayed and from what I have been told by some industry experts, not very accurate. So the daily number of victims stays about the same for full 1 year cycle but the wake of yesterday is a giant hole. So by the end of the year there will be no more DUM but about an extra $5,000,000 in revenues. Assuming the credit card processors keep processing, which I am working on and others should be as well.

Let's not forget Rob Monster had a windfall of about $17,000,000, much of which he embezzled and has since hidden, so it is not like he really needs to do this. He could have easily repaid all his creditors and NOT created any new victims but that is not the kind of guy he is.

 

[silentg]

Just like Epik 2.0 - FTX 2.0

https://twitter.com/x/status/1660979115514576898

 

[Daniel Owens]

I accepted an offer for $100,000 on the platform and was conversing with the buyer and my communication was suddenly cut off. I did not get an authorization code and did not unlock anything to transfer it to the buyer. I was not aware that I authorized Rob/Epik to do this for me, but it may have been a part of the process that was agreed to when I accepted the offer on Epik's marketplace. It was then put under Anonymize for privacy and I could not tell whose name it was under or if a transfer had been made to the buyer. A friend in the industry was able to find out who the buyer is for me, despite the privacy, so I got lucky, and he got me her contact information. I called her in New Zealand and got copies of all of her receipts for the domain. She did pay $100,000 for the domain, and then Epik actually sent her another invoice and told her that she owed them another $10. (Seriously?) I am glad she got the domain, in fact I was so relieved that it was not still stuck at Epik. I just need to be paid for it. It happened right after Critical Net published the below story. She said the domain was put in her name on September 28th. She was told that there was some kind of hold on the domain and she could not transfer it out of Epik. She kept waiting and waiting. It was over 4 months before she was able to move it to GoDaddy.

https://www.criticalhit.net/technol...fer-to-steal-50000-of-kathleen-kalafs-100000/

Sorry for your loss how is the case going any update lately?

 

[Daniel Owens]

What about the breach of peoples cc at epik why is that not discussed more as it effected non-domainers too?

 

[NicTraders]

Sorry for your loss how is the case going any update lately?

I'm certain it will be reported far and wide if there is any positive update on Kathleen's case. She's probably trying not to think about it at present as I'm sure there is nothing good to report.

What about the breach of peoples cc at epik why is that not discussed more as it effected non-domainers too?

The Epik breach was done to death in a different thread when it happened in 2021. There are 155 pages to read. There's not much point rehashing it here again.

 

[jmcc]

500,000 (DUM) / 365 (days) = 1,369 domains renewing/day
1,369 domains renewing/day x $10/domain = $13,369 /day in "revenues" with a minimum take of $5,000,000, actually much more because many reports of people paying multiple times trying to renew thinking it was something on their end and many renew for more than 1 year.

It isn't a linear domain names per day model because a lot of Epik's registrations and transfers were bursty in nature. There would be a burst of inbound transfers and new registrations closely linked to the promotions that Epik was running at the time. The other part of this is that there's a cost for each new registration or renewal that has to be paid and the registries have to be paid. The profit margins on domain names are not great so the whole "introductory rate" thing is fine for roping in the registrants but the renewal fees are where the profits should, theoretically, increase. The registrars have some latitude over the auto renew grace period and can set it from 0 to 45 days. The way that Epik changed this was not a good sign especially coupled with the way that paid-for renewals were not being applied instantly.

The domain name market itself changed in the last year or so and it has become a lot tougher. The Covid registrations are washing out of the zones. The .COM has had one of its roughest trading periods for some time. The real problem for Epik is that its business model has been focused in domainer sales. In a booming market, that's fine. The speculative registrations keep rolling in because everyone wants to get rich. The problem is that as a set, speculative registrations outside the premiums don't renew well. When the market changes, the non-renewal rates on speculative registrations skyrocket. Anyone who wants to understand what happens when a market changes should watch the movie "The Big Short".

If a registrar's market is not diversified when the market then they are, not to put too fine a point on things, screwed. Epik had been showing signs of trying to diversify with various acquisitions (hosting, BitMitigate etc) but it has been overtaken by events. Domainers were an essential part of Epik's business model. Without that part of the business, Epik is vulnerable to other larger registrars who are more than able to compete for the same registrations and offer renewal discounts. I don't think that any large registrar has started to offer specific Epik transfer deals yet.

The only obvious asset (leaving aside any crypto funds that may or may not exist) that Epik has at the moment is its registrar business and from the RICO lawsuit, there does seem to be a trade sale (to another registrar) in the works. The one thing that the journalists covering this don't understand is that once domain names go though their first renewal, they tend to keep renewing. The journalists focused on the froth like the hack and the politicisation of Epik's marketing. In doing so, they miss the bigger picture. The bigger picture is always about the money.

Those 662K registrations (January 2023 figures) are concentrated in .COM. Without Monster doing the marketing, Epik has to hope for a change in the market or there may be pressure from its creditors to accept a trade sale of its registrar business.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Derek Peterson]

Justin Tabb was the founder and CEO of Substratum, a poop-coin that raised like $13M in an ICO (initial coin offering) most of which disappeared shortly thereafter at the exact same time he bought a new home and then did a 2nd IPO, which is super sketchy. He was also the CEO of Amplify, a crypto exchange joke of an app. Both of these "companies" were purchased by Monster during his spending spree. AND this grifter clown also ran the development of the social app Monster was suppose to build for the investors, for $4M and NEVER delivered. I can not express how much I despise Rob Monster, Justin Tabb and everyone of their ilk, they are curse to humanity.

Look at this idiot claiming to have worked on the social using hundreds of people. It is total lies, they forked NodeBB, the node version of the old phpBB, which was an incredibly dumb idea but I guess makes for easy scam since you can put a new skin on super cheap and trick owners into thinking you are building. Also, you only need a team of 3 or 4 really good guys to build a great social. I know exactly what it takes.

Tabb is pure grifter scum, like his buddy Rob Monster. He has done things like, lied about past work experience, lied about customers, lied about partnerships, paid a magazine to put him on cover and then later posted that he was humbled about the praise being thrown at him, which he secretly paid for, they lied about their tech from top to bottom. The whole concept of substratum is dumb and fake and is not possible. anyone with the slightest understanding would figure it out in seconds - you can't distribute databases, you can't encrypt node IPs, You can't ask people in tyrannical countries to run a node, especially when their IPs are public for anyone also running a node can see, which every evil nation would do if such dumb project ever got any traction. I can't imagine the number of people these 2 losers would have hurt with more funding and time. Thank the Lord the investors pulled out and demanded their money back or these men would have done much more damage then what they were able to do.

Monster is massive fraud, liar and all around POS but he is not stupid. He had to know substratum was vaporware so the question is why did he pay them millions for substratum and amplify? Did he just want to give this loser Justin Tabb a nice present? Of course not, almost certainly Monster got massive kickback in crypto. Here is a very generous video breakdown of substratum and justin Tabb. If you do a search for "justin tabb substratum" you will fine many more not so kind from people who got burned in their massive rug pull.

 

[Derek Peterson]

It isn't a linear domain names per day model because a lot of Epik's registrations and transfers were bursty in nature. There would be a burst of inbound transfers and new registrations closely linked to the promotions that Epik was running at the time. The other part of this is that there's a cost for each new registration or renewal that has to be paid and the registries have to be paid. The profit margins on domain names are not great so the whole "introductory rate" thing is fine for roping in the registrants but the renewal fees are where the profits should, theoretically, increase. The registrars have some latitude over one of the auto renew grace period and can set it from 0 to 45 days. The way that Epik changed this was not a good sign especially coupled with the way that paid-for renewals were not being applied instantly.

The domain name market itself changed in the last year or so and it has become a lot tougher. The Covid registrations are washing out of the zones. The .COM has had one of its roughest trading periods for some time. The real problem for Epik is that its business model has been focused in domainer sales. In a booming market, that's fine. The speculative registrations keep rolling in because everyone wants to get rich. The problem is that as a set, speculative registrations outside the premiums don't renew well. When the market changes, the non-renewal rates on speculative registrations skyrocket. Anyone who wants to understand what happens when a market changes should watch the movie "The Big Short".

If a registrar's market is not diversified when the market then they are, not to put too fine a point on things, screwed. Epik had been showing signs of trying to diversify with various acquisitions (hosting, BitMitigate etc) but it has been overtaken by events. Domainers were an essential part of Epik's business model. Without that part of the business, Epik is vulnerable to other larger registrars who are more than able to compete for the same registrations and offer renewal discounts. I don't think that any large registrar has started to offer specific Epik transfer deals yet.

The only obvious asset (leaving aside any crypto funds that may or may not exist) that Epik has at the moment is its registrar business and from the RICO lawsuit, there does seem to be a trade sale (to another registrar) in the works. The one thing that the journalists covering this don't understand is that once domain names go though their first renewal, they tend to keep renewing. The journalists focused on the froth like the hack and the politicisation of Epik's marketing. In doing so, they miss the bigger picture. The bigger picture is always about the money.

Those 662K registrations (January 2023 figures) are concentrated in .COM. Without Monster doing the marketing, Epik has to hope for a change in the market or there may be pressure from its creditors to accept a trade sale of its registrar business.

Regards...jmcc

None of what you said has anything to do with the point I was trying to make.

1) When dealing with a large data set created over many years you can figure on an even spread, even factoring in multi year purchases or renewals.
2) The registry fees don' t matter, Epik isn't paying them, they are keeping all the money. That is the whole point of my post.
3) The domain extensions don't matter, I just calculated with average price of $10 /yr.
4) I have heard that their hosting business is worth more than their domains under management but who knows what to believe with so many liars in the mix. In any case, hopefully Monster will be forced to sell all and pay everyone back but he seems to be trying to super greedy. I hope it costs him a couple decades of his freedom or his life.

I don't think that any large registrar has started to offer specific Epik transfer deals yet.

I tried to encourage namecheap to do just that but they said they didn't want to publish anything like that publicly but have offered some great transfer deals as have others AND namecheap said that if anyone with large portfolio calls them and tells them they are with Epik they will give them special deal, as I have posted previously.

 

[alcy]

None of what you said has anything to do with the point I was trying to make.

1) When dealing with a large data set created over many years you can figure on an even spread, even factoring in multi year purchases or renewals.
2) The registry fees don' t matter, Epik isn't paying them, they are keeping all the money. That is the whole point of my post.
3) The domain extensions don't matter, I just calculated with average price of $10 /yr.
4) I have heard that their hosting business is worth more than their domains under management but who knows what to believe with so many liars in the mix. In any case, hopefully Monster will be forced to sell all and pay everyone back but he seems to be trying to super greedy. I hope it costs him a couple decades of his freedom or his life.



I tried to encourage namecheap to do just that but they said they didn't want to publish anything like that publicly but have offered some great transfer deals as have others AND namecheap said that if anyone with large portfolio calls them and tells them they are with Epik they will give them special deal, as I have posted previously.

u cant call namecheap
honestly tho NC is terrible choice
... poor ui.and their renewals will burn your wallt... go to sav for best ui and prices...or dyna for good prices and good ui... everyone else is distant tie for position 100. including Nmecheap

 

[jmcc]

None of what you said has anything to do with the point I was trying to make.

1) When dealing with a large data set created over many years you can figure on an even spread, even factoring in multi year purchases or renewals.

Most renewals are one year renewals and the percentage of multi-year registrations and renewals on a registrar is much smaller than those of one year new registrations and renewals. The effects of registry and registrar discounting are quite obvious in the data for registrars. Whenever there's a spike in new registrations, it is followed approximately a year (typically up to 14 months later) by a corresponding increase in deletions. Epik drove a lot of its sales through discounting offers.

2) The registry fees don' t matter, Epik isn't paying them, they are keeping all the money. That is the whole point of my post.

It has to pay the fees for renewals or the domain names are deleted. What Epik has been doing is adjusting the grace period to lessen the impact of large numbers of renewal fees having to be paid on a small number of days. It effectively changes from a small number of large payments to a larger number of smaller payments and that, if it is what Epik is doing, helps Epik's cashflow situation.

3) The domain extensions don't matter, I just calculated with average price of $10 /yr.

They do. The majority of Epik's registrations are in .COM and that has a strong blended renewal rate and Epik's blended renewal rate for .COM is in line with other US registrars. The other gTLDs are much more problematic because their renewal rates are nothing near those of legacy gTLDs. Most of the new registrations in the heavily discounted new gTLDs will not be renewed. That means that many of the new gTLD registrations will drop and will not continue to be a long-term source of revenue for registrars. They may make the numbers look good but the real money is in the renewals of the legacy gTLDs like .COM/NET/ORG because the typical blended renewal (all years) is around 70%. For some heavily discounted new gTLDs, the renewal rate for the first year can be under 5%.

4) I have heard that their hosting business is worth more than their domains under management but who knows what to believe with so many liars in the mix. In any case, hopefully Monster will be forced to sell all and pay everyone back but he seems to be trying to super greedy. I hope it costs him a couple decades of his freedom or his life.

Epik is simply outclassed on hosting. When you look at hosting, you have to break it down into the various types of hosting before you can establish a value. The basic type is shared hosting. Most of the Web is on shared hosting. That's where a single server may be shared with hundreds of accounts. Then there's dedicated hosting which is essentially one customer per server. It is more expensive. There's also Cloud hosting but that requires a lot of investment and the large players in that market (Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google) dominate it.

The thing about hosting that is not immediately obvious is that most websites do not get much traffic. Only a few will reach the traffic limits per month. The customers keep paying but in terms of resources, they are quite efficient. They can make money but it is a highly competitive market and there are larger companies that do it much better than Epik.

I tried to encourage namecheap to do just that but they said they didn't want to publish anything like that publicly but have offered some great transfer deals as have others AND namecheap said that if anyone with large portfolio calls them and tells them they are with Epik they will give them special deal, as I have posted previously.

Most large registrars like Namecheap don't want to get involved in price wars or the mess that Epik has created. Apart from the political angle, any large registrar operator interested in Epik would want to take the registrar business from Epik (and perhaps dumping the brand) rather than pick off a few domain names at a time. There's also the public relations angle in that the negative press that Epik has received has made larger registrars wary of getting involved in any deals targeting Epik domain names.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

These are the raw .COM numbers from the registrar report for January 2023.
Registrar - IANAID - domains - nameservers - new[1-10 years]
Epik Inc. - 617 - 552,798 - 2,298 - 2,436 - 55 - 26 - 2 - 13 - 2 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 14

Renewals:
1yr ---- 10yr
23,970 - 174 - 48 - 23 - 39 - 2 - 4 - 4 - 26 - 0

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/com-2014-03-04-en

The multi-year new registrations and renewals for most retail registrars are much lower than those of the one year registrations and renewals.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Derek Peterson]

These are the raw .COM numbers from the registrar report for January 2023.
Registrar - IANAID - domains - nameservers - new[1-10 years]
Epik Inc. - 617 - 552,798 - 2,298 - 2,436 - 55 - 26 - 2 - 13 - 2 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 14

Renewals:
1yr ---- 10yr
23,970 - 174 - 48 - 23 - 39 - 2 - 4 - 4 - 26 - 0

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/com-2014-03-04-en

The multi-year new registrations and renewals for most retail registrars are much lower than those of the one year registrations and renewals.

Regards...jmcc

Again, none of what you have said in the last 2 posts has anything to do with the point I and others are making. It seems you are intentionally trying to obfuscate the very simple fact that Epik isn't paying registries or ICANN anything, they are simply keeping ALL the money and giving customers nothing. In some cases, when customer complains enough, they been given masterbucks as credit for the real money they spent watching their domain expire.

No one has seen any real numbers on the hosting services they purchased in the last couple years so best not to speculate on value of it. I do know Epik had no significant hosting income prior to investment round because they didn't include it on the document they produced for investors, which was full of massive lies, that justified a $140M valuation or something like that.

 

[jmcc]

Again, none of what you have said in the last 2 posts has anything to do with the point I and others are making. It seems you are intentionally trying to obfuscate the very simple fact that Epik isn't paying registries or ICANN anything, they are simply keeping ALL the money and giving customers nothing. In some cases, when customer complains enough, they been given masterbucks as credit for the real money they spent watching their domain expire.

The ICANN registrar reports, even though they are delayed by three months, show that Epik is renewing some domain names.

The expansion of the auto-renew grace period seems to be to aid Epik's cashflow by spreading the fees they would have to pay the registries over a longer period. Instead of having a lot of renewals fees having to be paid in a month, the adjusted grace period would allow the renewals to be staggered over a month and a half or so. The date on the WHOIS may not update immediately as it would do if the renewal was applied immediately but the registrant's domain name stays working and in the zone file. As NameLiquidate was partially based on sending expired domain names to auction, it would be extremely difficult to operate an adjusted auto-renew grace period and NameLiquidate at the same time. I am not sure exactly when expired Epik registered domain names used to shift to NameLiquidate.

Even based on the January 2023 figures, if they were not renewing 20K or so domain names per month, the number of deletions would correspondingly rise because the registries would delete those domain names unless the registrants could transfer them out of Epik. The non-renewal of over 20K domain names would be noticed even by ICANN Compliance.

These are the .COM total new, total renews, deletions for Epik from May 2021 (202105) to December 2022 (202212).

Registar - Month/Year - New - Renews - Deletions - Transfer Losses

| Epik, Inc. | 202105 | 7,318 | 36,806 | 7,360 | 3,186 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202106 | 8,203 | 35,874 | 8,008 | 4,361 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202107 | 6,546 | 28,530 | 5,425 | 5,832 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202108 | 8,533 | 37,685 | 8,877 | 4,312 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202109 | 8,390 | 37,437 | 5,026 | 4,973 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202110 | 8,416 | 22,718 | 4,374 | 6,296 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202111 | 10,254 | 22,273 | 4,908 | 4,058 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202112 | 7,612 | 24,423 | 5,084 | 4,695 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202201 | 8,272 | 45,564 | 4,686 | 1,666 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202202 | 7,540 | 27,746 | 3,556 | 2,494 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202203 | 9,822 | 30,290 | 4,381 | 2,881 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202204 | 7,531 | 28,935 | 4,645 | 3,736 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202205 | 6,611 | 30,818 | 5,370 | 2,448 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202206 | 7,237 | 28,254 | 7,850 | 2,714 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202207 | 6,101 | 31,318 | 5,530 | 5,871 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202208 | 15,383 | 42,509 | 6,345 | 8,712 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202209 | 5,670 | 51,651 | 9,292 | 15,149 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202210 | 3,893 | 35,011 | 6,017 | 14,646 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202211 | 3,776 | 31,054 | 9,498 | 13,439 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202212 | 2,878 | 27,250 | 11,255 | 19,404 |

In November 2021, there was a spike in new registrations. There is a spike in deletions in December 2022 which may be connected to that.

The new registrations start to fade after August 2022. The number of transfers out from Epik also beginst to increase after August 2022. Some of those would have been up for renewal so that may explain some of the declining numbers of renewals. The deletion numbers also start to rise after August 2022. However, domain names are being renewed. If all renewals were not going through then ICANN Compliance would have grounds to move in on Epik because it would not be fulfilling its obligations as a registrar.

New registrations begin to fall after August 2022 but the crucial element for Epik's survival as a registrar are the renewals. They generate money for Epik and are more reliable and predictable than new registrations.

No one has seen any real numbers on the hosting services they purchased in the last couple years so best not to speculate on value of it.I do know Epik had no significant hosting income prior to investment round because they didn't include it on the document they produced for investors, which was full of massive lies, that justified a $140M valuation or something like that.

It may be possible to reverse-engineer some of the numbers for Epik's hosting services by matching IP addresses with websites but that would not be a completely accurate approach as it would miss a lot of of ccTLD registrations and domain names without websites being used for e-mail only. Many of Epik's registrations are on auction and sales sites rather than developed as websites.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Derek Peterson]

The ICANN registrar reports, even though they are delayed by three months, show that Epik is renewing some domain names.

The expansion of the auto-renew grace period seems to be to aid Epik's cashflow by spreading the fees they would have to pay the registries over a longer period. Instead of having a lot of renewals fees having to be paid in a month, the adjusted grace period would allow the renewals to be staggered over a month and a half or so. The date on the WHOIS may not update immediately as it would do if the renewal was applied immediately but the registrant's domain name stays working and in the zone file. As NameLiquidate was partially based on sending expired domain names to auction, it would be extremely difficult to operate an adjusted auto-renew grace period and NameLiquidate at the same time. I am not sure exactly when expired Epik registered domain names used to shift to NameLiquidate.

Even based on the January 2023 figures, if they were not renewing 20K or so domain names per month, the number of deletions would correspondingly rise because the registries would delete those domain names unless the registrants could transfer them out of Epik. The non-renewal of over 20K domain names would be noticed even by ICANN Compliance.

These are the .COM total new, total renews, deletions for Epik from May 2021 (202105) to December 2022 (202212).

Registar - Month/Year - New - Renews - Deletions - Transfer Losses

| Epik, Inc. | 202105 | 7,318 | 36,806 | 7,360 | 3,186 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202106 | 8,203 | 35,874 | 8,008 | 4,361 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202107 | 6,546 | 28,530 | 5,425 | 5,832 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202108 | 8,533 | 37,685 | 8,877 | 4,312 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202109 | 8,390 | 37,437 | 5,026 | 4,973 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202110 | 8,416 | 22,718 | 4,374 | 6,296 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202111 | 10,254 | 22,273 | 4,908 | 4,058 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202112 | 7,612 | 24,423 | 5,084 | 4,695 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202201 | 8,272 | 45,564 | 4,686 | 1,666 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202202 | 7,540 | 27,746 | 3,556 | 2,494 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202203 | 9,822 | 30,290 | 4,381 | 2,881 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202204 | 7,531 | 28,935 | 4,645 | 3,736 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202205 | 6,611 | 30,818 | 5,370 | 2,448 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202206 | 7,237 | 28,254 | 7,850 | 2,714 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202207 | 6,101 | 31,318 | 5,530 | 5,871 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202208 | 15,383 | 42,509 | 6,345 | 8,712 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202209 | 5,670 | 51,651 | 9,292 | 15,149 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202210 | 3,893 | 35,011 | 6,017 | 14,646 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202211 | 3,776 | 31,054 | 9,498 | 13,439 |
| Epik, Inc. | 202212 | 2,878 | 27,250 | 11,255 | 19,404 |

In November 2021, there was a spike in new registrations. There is a spike in deletions in December 2022 which may be connected to that.

The new registrations start to fade after August 2022. The number of transfers out from Epik also beginst to increase after August 2022. Some of those would have been up for renewal so that may explain some of the declining numbers of renewals. The deletion numbers also start to rise after August 2022. However, domain names are being renewed. If all renewals were not going through then ICANN Compliance would have grounds to move in on Epik because it would not be fulfilling its obligations as a registrar.

New registrations begin to fall after August 2022 but the crucial element for Epik's survival as a registrar are the renewals. They generate money for Epik and are more reliable and predictable than new registrations.

It may be possible to reverse-engineer some of the numbers for Epik's hosting services by matching IP addresses with websites but that would not be a completely accurate approach as it would miss a lot of of ccTLD registrations and domain names without websites being used for e-mail only. Many of Epik's registrations are on auction and sales sites rather than developed as websites.

Regards...jmcc

This new bust out scam only started about 2 or 3 months ago.

 

[Embrand]

I hope that the hack this unhappy customer refers to is the old one and not a new one...

 

[jmcc]

This new bust out scam only started about 2 or 3 months ago.

The amended RICO lawsuit seems to indicate that a trade sale of the registrar business is possible. Not sure that it is a bust out as it looks more like a company that expanded too quickly and ran into a market that had some of its worst few years for some time. Verisign, the registry for .COM and .NET was warning about problems. It is a listed company so it has to warn investors and detail its financial performance.

Even Godaddy had a tough first quarter and it is a massive operation. It is a difficult market for all registrars.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/godaddy-gddy-q1-earnings-miss-estimates-revenues-rise-y-y-0

Epik has built some of its market share on low first year registration fees and has focused on domainers as a market. That's a perfect storm just waiting to happen because larger registrars can do discounting offers but domainers typically will not renew non-premium domain names if they cannot flip them in a year. And domainers are far more likely to change registrars than a Mom and Pop operation with a single domain name and a developed website.

The first renewal rate for .COM is between 50% and 56%. That means that at most 50% of .COM new registrations will not renew. For speculative registrations as a group, the non-renewal rate is higher. The low first year registrations need to convert into higher profit renewals because that's how the discounting offers work. The registries and registrars understand that fewer than 100% of the discounted new registrations will renew and it is a gamble. With a tougher economic climate, the non-renewals increase so what might have looked OK in early 2022 based on 2021 data might not look so good in 2023.

Some large companies that thought that Covid marked a change in the way that people do business also got burned and thousands of people have been laid off or fired by these companies (Shopify, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft etc). There were also problems with Crypto so rather than being a sound investment, the value of some coins dropped.

The problem for Epik is that new registrations have declined, renewals have declined, inbound transfers have declined and outbound transfers have increased. Of these, the most dangerous is the declining number of renewals because those are the life-blood of any mature registrar. Take them away and they are dependent on new registrations, inbound transfers and whatever value-added services (hosting etc) they have.

Purely on the data available, some of the problems for Epik began in September 2022. Monster's attempts to negotiate with some creditors seems to be an attempt to trade its way out of problems but it would have required the creditors to trust Epik. Some of the acquisitions may not have been the moneymakers that Epik and Monster expected. All this is of no consolation for the people who have lost domain names and money because of Epik.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Daniel Owens]

Any idea after the CC breech and masterbucks issue. Why in the past so many domainers migrated to epik, was it the special namepros discount on transfers Rob was giving?

 

[jmcc]

Any idea after the CC breech and masterbucks issue. Why in the past so many domainers migrated to epik, was it the special namepros discount on transfers Rob was giving?

For domainers, it is often about pricing. While almost everyone in the domain name business would know of Epik's security issues, most people are not in the domain name business and as long as their domain name works, they will stay with the same registrar unless there is a major reason to change registrars. For most non-domainer registrants, a domain name renewal is a yearly event.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Daniel Owens]

For domainers, it is often about pricing. While almost everyone in the domain name business would know of Epik's security issues, most people are not in the domain name business and as long as their domain name works, they will stay with the same registrar unless there is a major reason to change registrars. For most non-domainer registrants, a domain name renewal is a yearly event.

Regards...jmcc

Yeah, I seldom switch register to save like $1 but many domainers do. I guess if they have like 5,000 domains maybe moving to save a buck does. But, I'd rather just wait until expiry to move-out or renew at current register. So is the whole masterbucks issue go to cause epik to go to court over it and even get them sued? Or, is a legal case already in progress?

 

[jmcc]

Yeah, I seldom switch register to save like $1 but many domainers do. I guess if they have like 5,000 domains maybe moving to save a buck does. But, I'd rather just wait until expiry to move-out or renew at current register. So is the whole masterbucks issue go to cause epik to go to court over it and even get them sued? Or, is a legal case already in progress?

Not sure about cases other than the RICO lawsuit. The problem is that the cost of hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit against Epik might be more than the amount some people have in Masterbucks.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Daniel Owens]

Not sure about cases other than the RICO lawsuit. The problem is that the cost of hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit against Epik might be more than the amount some people have in Masterbucks.

Regards...jmcc

Can the masterbucks at least be used for epik renewals?