George Hong
Founder & CEO
Guta.com

In 2018, many high value transactions have been publicly reported as crypto or blockchain related end users acquisitions. A buying spree from crypto companies drove up prices and demand for generic domains such as one-word dictionary .com, 2-letter .com and 3-letter .com domains. The buying spree slowed down in the second half of the year.  

English dictionary word domain name transactions increased worldwide; many high value sales, such as ice.com, prime.com, ring.com, art.com, duck.com, coins.com, meet.com and files.com, were reported.  

As noted in our new Guta Premium Domain Sales Observation Report, Chinese buyers dominated in 2018, accounting for the majority of domain name purchases in LL.com, NL.com, LN.com, NN.com, NNN.com and NNNN.com categories.  

The following highlights from Guta's 2018 sales help illustrate the purchasing power of Chinese buyers:

●     Guta brokered 8  2-letter .com domain sales, all purchased by Chinese buyers. 7 of those were let go by sellers in the U.S.

●     Guta brokered 86 4-number .com domain sales, all purchased by Chinese buyers. Sellers were from several different countries.

●     Guta brokered 2 3-letter dictionary .com domain sales to Chinese buyers. One was sold for 7 figures in USD and another sold for high 6 figures in USD.  

Finding who owns a domain through looking up Whois records became difficult in 2018 because of GDPR. Individual buyers were relying more on domain companies, such as brokerage firms with international connections, to buy domain names on their behalf.  

George Hong looking ahead to 2019... 

We witnessed a surge in premium domains sales in 2018 with quite a few of the domains being bought by end users. I expect end user acquisitions of premium domains will continue to grow at a fast pace in 2019. However, Coming into 2019, there are storm clouds globally: a bear market in stocks, a bear market in crypto, a weakening economy, a number of issues with the global economy including a messy Brexit and the ongoing trade tensions between China and the US. Quite a few issues will have a direct or indirect impact on domain market. As a domain professional, we need to constantly remind ourselves that we are operating in a world that is full of uncertainty.

I think investors will be cautious in 2019. It might not be a bad idea to hold some cash under this kind of economic condition.  

Some governments are implementing strict foreign exchange controls. We are aware that buyers from many Asian countries are experiencing difficulty converting from local currencies into USD and then wiring out the funds. In the future, many buyers of high value domains may no longer be able to use USD to fund purchases. Buyers and sellers might be forced to seek alternative payment methods, such as Bitcoin.  

At Guta, we value collaboration—within our team, and with our partners. Guta has been co-brokering high value deals with many partners in recent years. Three different brokers worked with Guta to close USD 7-figures transactions in 2018. We would love to collaborate with existing and new partners to get more deals done in 2019.

Brooke Hernandez
Senior Domain Broker
Uniregistry.com

With the passing of another year, it is always interesting to see how things played out in the domain industry. Certain trends continued such as number domains, 2, 3, 4 character domains selling at a rate more than years past with Crypto domains remaining popular. The new trend that I found interesting to watch unfold was the popularity of cannabis or cannabis related domains. It certainly should not be a big surprise to see some domains such as canja.com to not only be used to promote cannabis products but a lifestyle. 

We did see certain gTLDs have large sales with buyers taking an unconventional marketing path with the non .com domains. I found it refreshing to see many companies purchase gTLD domains for brand protection as well, like Cars.Digital did. Yet .com domains are still the strongest domain purchases we saw.  

The coming year I believe there will be more cannabis domains sold as more states start making it legal for recreational use. I think we will start seeing more “social/political movement” domains selling due to current affairs worldwide like Brexit and social justice campaigns which are hot topics in the press. Sometimes a hashtag 

just isn’t enough. The .com will continue to rule supreme but I do look forward to seeing some more new gTLD sales take place and used for alternative marketing strategies.

Ryan McKegney
CEO, DomainAgents.com

In 2017 we all watched Bitcoin and crypto explode and, along with it, interest in crypto and blockchain domains. However, as the price of crypto fell, so did some of the enthusiasm for the related domains, but a lot of money had been made and we saw some of that reinvested back into domains.  

.ai domains had a moment in 2018.  At DomainAgents, we saw the number of inquiries on .ai domains increase by over 1,000%.  Much like .io before it, .ai is popular with technology startups and the domains provide an instant level of branding.  

.com is still king, of course, and the high end of the market did very very well in 2018. new TLDs are still struggling to find a place in the secondary market as many of the premium domains sold were not from investors but from the registries themselves.  Hopefully we have reached the end of the nTLD hype cycle and the days of $0.01 domains are behind us.  

GDPR was the biggest story of 2018.  While it wasn't the apocalyptic event that some feared,

it made life more difficult for everybody. While GDPR and the Whois should reach some sort of resolution this year, I would never bet against gridlock at ICANN.  We will probably still be talking about it in 2020.

Reza Sardeha
CEO, Undeveloped.com

At Undeveloped we strongly believe that old processes and structures are preventing our industry from reaching its optimal potential. For example, a timely announced new privacy policy like GDPR wasn't handled accordingly at all by our industry, causing some ad hoc processes to determine the end implementation across the board.   

This has caused the market to become even less efficient and caused some serious problems making domains harder to transfer from one party to another. We shouldn't take this lightly, the harder we make it for domains to transfer, the less liquidity we'll see in an already illiquid market. In almost all other internet industries we see continuously increased efficiency by the adoption of new technology and or innovation. But not in our industry. Unwanted and unnecessary lock-ins are unfortunately still the norm at the biggest registrars.  

It's time we stop accepting some of the old processes that aren't relevant anymore for the sake of the progress of our industry.

Looking ahead to 2019...

We're most excited about launching our blockchain powered Domain Automation Network in early 2019.  With the Domain Automation Network, we're solving some of the most significant problems in our industry by creating a new backend infrastructure to handle both simple and complex domain transactions and transfers, fully automated.   

We aim to offer access to this network to anyone via a simple API. The Domain Automation Network has its own registrar to keep domains in escrow and its own payment gateway. You could see the Domain Automation Network us as the Stripe of the domain industry. Anyone can easily build their own domain marketplace for example and use the Domain Automation Network's API to handle all their domain payments & transfers from one person/registrar to another.  

Another unique solution we've built is to use our public ledger to showcase how we'd like to see WHOIS evolve. In what we dubbed as WHOIS 2.0, our system will know and show if a domain is under a payment plan or is currently rented. This way the owner of the domain from a legal point of view isn't liable for the content on the rented domain anymore but the rentee is.  

Our Domain Automation Network also introduces an entirely new WHOIS functionality where domains can have multiple legal owners. This introduces new opportunities for domain investors to sell for example 10% of their entire portfolio to external investors, or crowdfunded domain purchases. By introducing fractional domain ownership, we want to attract more capital to our industry by turning all steady revenue generating portfolios into great and accessible investment vehicles.  

All features mentioned will be available at Undeveloped in early Q1 of 2019, while in Q3 we'll open up our Domain Automation Network for anyone to leverage the core technology that we've built. Some partners might use the network already before that timeframe. By introducing this powerful but open network, we believe we can accelerate innovation in our industry, create more value to all stakeholders in the market and make the market more efficient by replacing and automating manual processes.

Kate Buckley
Founder, Buckley Media

2018 felt a bit like “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride." Bumpy, chaotic, and unbelievable—yet with great adventures and phenomenal outcomes along the way. Most notably for our industry, generic .COM domain sales surged to regain their rightful place as supreme virtual real estate/IP assets with a vast field of six and seven-figure domain sales (think: jump.com, ice.com, yes.com, GoTo.com, and many, many more).   

Why? There are mass defections from prominent social media platforms such as Facebook, and monoliths like Amazon are increasingly understood to be dangerous monopolies. Companies who want to stand out from the clutter and free themselves from the tyrannical shackles of walled-in social (why would you want to send traffic to build someone else’s company instead of your own?), and over-inflated ad words are investing in the prime real estate of great domains. I saw this myself with $1M+ sale of sleeping.com and snoring.com. A premium domain owner already (CPAP.com), the buyer knew without a doubt that these premium domains would help him further carve out his own empire. 

The biggest challenge I see is the uncertainty of the economy, particularly as relates to venture capital, a major driver behind high value domain sales. Venture capital investments into United States-based companies grew to $99.5B in 2018, the highest level since 2000, according to CB Insights, a data provider (New York Times). Are we at a tipping point? Perhaps, but I don’t see it affecting high quality domain names in any meaningful fashion over the next few years. And I’m extremely bullish on domains for 2019. But not just any domains—the cream of the crop: the ultra-premium .COM aftermarket: high-value, consumer-facing, generic one and two-word .COMs. The domains that make a difference.  

Due to current market factors and bellwethers of consumer behavior, I predict 2019 will see banner six, seven, and eight-figure domain only and domain-centric company sales (think art.com's recent acquisition by Walmart) as companies seek to claw back and stake out their own indisputable territory in both mindshare and market share.   

Another important benefit to owning these mega generic (and geo) premium domains is their inherent trust factor. Particularly in the age of bots—Studies suggest that less than 60% of web traffic is human, and a healthy majority of it is bot—a great domain signals trustworthiness and authority. I can't think of one mega generic or geo domain that was ever abused or fraudulent. There's too much value in the name to ever gamble the asset.  

The bottom line: Great brands tell stories, great brands stand for something, great brands make their customers’ lives easier. A great domain makes all three of those mission-critical factors much more achievable. 2018 saw more and more companies finally understanding this. 2019 will see more of the same. 

Hobi Michalec
Co-Founder, Lumis.com

In the two years since Hobi Michalec and his brother Slade founded the Lumis Group, the company has become one of the continually brightening lights in the domain brokerage business. Their clients now range from Ivy League universities to C-level executives and industry investors around the globe.

As a domain broker we've noticed a strong, healthy, and upward trend in aftermarket domain name sales. A healthy start-up community certainly helps domain sales. However, in addition to this, we're seeing a much stronger understanding from companies with a historic existence acquire powerful and short domain names, effectively removing them from existence.

For 2019 UDRP reform is important for investors and end-users alike as domain names are emerging as an asset class. With higher sale prices and ultimately asking prices, I would not be surprised to see more frivolous UDRP filings.

Andrew Rosener
CEO, MediaOptions.com

2018 was an absolutely incredible year!  Record breaking in fact.  We did more than double our total domain sales in 2018 than we did in 2017, which itself was a record year for MediaOptions! We put our money where our mouth is and we placed big bets in line with our expectation that the best domain names would continue to go up in value and those bets paid off.  Our brokerage business grew exponentially as well, making up nearly 75% of our total sales where historically it was around 40% - 50%.  

The most important macro event of 2018 from my perspective, as it relates to domain names, was the collapse in trust among consumers (and businesses) with Social Media. Businesses need a touch point with their customers and it was only a matter of time until businesses would wake up to the fact that if you don’t own that touch point, you can’t control your relationship with your customer or the data you exchange with them.  

In my prediction last year (2017 looking ahead at 2018) I said, " I believe 2018 is going to be a very exciting year in Domaining!  2018 is going to be the year that companies & brands take back their identity.  Take control of their branding & 

message.  Take control of their customers & data. They will move away from the social media dependence and allowing 3rd parties to control their brand, message & data.  Move away from the “walled gardens” and with that, I believe, they will come to realize the value & importance of premium domain names more than ever before.  This will be reflected in higher valuations, greater scarcity & more deal flow."

Cate Lim
Golbal Investment Consultant
& Domain Broker

What I considered to be one of the most significant events in 2018 is domainers in China are starting to notice and appreciate the value of one-word(.)com. Many Chinese clients message me via WeChat asking "Do you have good one-word(.)coms for sale? Due to language barrier, this market used to be only interested in short-numbers, short-letters, and pinyin domains; so this is a big leap. Blockchain and cryptocurrency relevant domains are also highly sought after in the Mainland, however the demand plunged since the second half of the year.

The value of premium domains will continue to rise but their sales will slow down in 2019. The trade war has caused quite a stir in the global economy since the fourth quarter of 2018, particularly in the US and China; and domain industry will not be exempted from the ripple effect. Market slow down will stop existing businesses from upgrading their website domains to premium ones, while at the same time drive startups to invest in new gTLDs which cost much less. Because of this, we can expect a lot of room for growth in new gTLDs in 2019.