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A Trio of 6-Figure Sales Led by Year's Largest ccTLD Sale to Date and a Flood of .AI & .IO Domains Shake Up New Sales Chart

The past couple of weeks have produced one of the most diverse slates of high end sales we've seen all summer. A trio of six-figure sales, each representing a different TLD, led the pack with strong support from a horde of solid sales in two increasingly hot re-purposed ccTLDs - .ai and .io. One of those, a $250,000 sale of chart topper NPC.ai at Sedo, is the biggest ccTLD sale reported so far this year

Industry veteran Markus Schnermann (who was profiled in a 2009 DNJournal Cover Story) filled the #2 slot with a $160,000 sale of NFC.com. The buyer was Nathanael Garlington from ContactWearables.com who bought the domain for a new wearable product line that will utilize NFC chips.

The six-figure club was completed by #3 Hero.io at $125,000. James Booth at DomainBooth.com sold the domain via SquadHelp while Arif Sengoren at  SecretBrokerage.com, representing the buyer, used the combined resources of Escrow.com and CryptoExchange.com to finalize the transaction.

Those big sales of NFC.ai and Hero.io were just the beginning for .AI and .IO as they jointly went on went on to pile up nine entries on our latest all extension Top 20 Sales Chart, including five of the top 10. .AI, riding the towering artificial intelligence wave, accounted for seven of those, including LegalBrandMarketing.com's $40,000 sale of #4 Blaze.ai at $40,000. .IO, a long time favorite in the start-up and tech community (with its natural association with input/output) took a second top 10 entry with the $27,500 sale of #8 DN.io brokered by Mark Ghoriafi at MrPremium.com

Most newcomers to the domain business (and many buyers) likely don't know that .AI and .IO were both created with no connection at all to the fields they have become associated with. They are both country code domains (ccTLDs) with .AI representing the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla (an island in the Caribbean) and .IO representing the British Indian Ocean Territory (an archipelago made up of 58 islands). Of course, both of those TLDs have grown far beyond their humble beginnings and their current usage has become so widespread it has given them a new identity that looks to be here to stay (though the governments behind those TLDs still retain ultimate control over how they are administered). 

Before we go to the new chart,  a major domain sale from a year ago has become public. As detailed by Elliot Silver in a post at DomainInvesting.com, the CEO of Retention.com revealed he paid $800,000 to get that domain name. We have added it to the 2022 Top 100 Sales Chart in our Domain Sales Archive where it is tied with BankFirst.com for the #12 position. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           By Ron Jackson

Now - back to the business at hand - here is how all of the leaders stacked up for the two weeks ending Sunday, August 13, 2023:

The DN Journal Top 20 
Highest Reported Domain Sales - Mon. July 31 - Sun. Aug. 13, 2023
(Foreign currency to U.S. Dollar Conversions Based on Rates in Effect August 16, 2023)

 

Domain

Sold For

Where Sold

1. NPC.ai $250,000 Sedo
2. NFC.com $160,000 Markus Schnermann
3. Hero.io $125,000 DomainBooth/SquadHelp/
SecretBrokerage/
CryptoExchange
4. Blaze.ai $40,000 LegalBrandMarketing
5. IHA.com $38,500 SnapNames