No one can say with certainty that the buyout is over right now.
I think people are clutching at straws with this, it reminds me of a year ago when names would sell for $20 and people would argue at length that the minimum was actually $30. The buyout is very obviously over.
Overall though this is sad and historic day and now the second time the LLLL.com buyout has failed (the first having failed after the last boom (~2001).
At the start of the year I would have thought this result to be unlikely and the speed of decay in this market has surprised even me. Ultimately though it comes down to cash and LLLL.com owners voted with their credit cards on these names. Most have no confidence in this market and the people whose confidence has held up no longer have any cash. The end result is the buyout failing.
The buyout probably made sense in the booming market of 2007 but the huge rise in early 2008 made no sense at all in a backdrop of a suddenly falling domain market and general economy going into recession. The only other major part of the domain industry still rising by that time was LLL.com and that was another disaster story (though not the scale of declines as LLLL.com of course). Those who saw the writing on the wall and got out early obviously made out like bandits and those who got greedy and believed all the hype (7000/26 = $269 anyone?) ultimately become those people’s exit strategy.
I think over the next few months we’ll see tonnes of drops in this area as people continue rid themselves of the burden of reg fees on names with no real revenue potential. It wouldn’t surprise me much if in a years time there was 50,000 available. I personally don’t think the end of the buyout will be short term simply because of the scale of renewal money required to hold it up. It isn’t like LLL.mobi or .us where a couple of people can save the day with a few thousand dollars, it is a very different proposition. I have fairly major concerns for the higher quality LLLL.com’s right now, personally I wouldn’t want to be holding these names over the next 6 months as the unregistered numbers grow.
The upside
On one side today is a dark day for LLLL.com, on the other hand today is a good sign for the health of the domain market generally in my view. After several years of unsustainable business models based on flipping to the next guy, we are now have seen the market “clean itself”, market forces are working and the days of hot potato are well and truly over. I expect over the next few years people in this area will either focus of a model which makes money from outside sources (not making money from other domainers) or leave the industry. That will be a good thing for those people and the overall market, the domain market is now on a much more stable footing than two years ago.
Overall though there isn’t a heck of a lot more to say about these names, I suspect if this areas booms again it will be years (last time they took 6 years to come back), be very careful with what you are paying reg fees on.
