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The Lowdown
October 2022 Archive
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Welcome to the The Lowdown from 
DN Journal
- your source for notable news 
and information from all corners of the global 
domain name industry! 

The Lowdown is compiled by DN Journal 
Editor & Publisher Ron Jackson.


ICA Releases Preliminary Agenda for January Event in Las Vegas - Monday is Last Day for Early Bird Ticket Deal

Earlier this month I told you about the Internet Commerce Association's decision to stage their 2023 Member Meeting at  Hilton's Resorts World in Las Vegas January 22-24. Plans for the big event are continuing to come together nicely with the ICA releasing a preliminary agenda today via a blog post from Executive Director Kamila Sekiewicz. Kamila noted that the agenda is expected to continue evolving in the weeks ahead but this will give you a good idea of what to expect.

Some of the early highlights include an Opening Dinner Reception Sunday evening (Jan. 22), a Policy Briefing from ICA General Counsel Zak

Muscovitch Monday morning and an Ask Me Anything session with GoDaddy President for Domains Paul Nicks Monday afternoon. That day will also feature a panel discussion covering UDRP Reform Proposals. Networking opportunities and multiple social events will also be part of the appealing three-day mix. 

If you want to go, time is running out to take advantage of an Early Bird ticket offer that will knock $100 off the price, cutting it to just $199 (members can buy a ticket for a plus-one guest too). On Tuesday, November 1 the price goes up to the standard $299. That's a great deal but here is one that is even better - a free ticket for for anyone who joins the ICA and pays for an annual membership. If you are a professional in this industry you really should be a member of this 15-year-old non-profit organization that has consistently demonstrated its ability to effectively fight to protect domain owner's rights. Like the early bird deal, you will need to act fast to take advantage of the free ticket offer as Monday is the last day for both promotions.

One other thing, the ICA announced they have been able to add more rooms at Resorts World to the ICA block that will allow you to book your room for just $100 a night (+ taxes and fees).  If you are looking for a great way to kick off the New Year and get your domain enterprise off to a fast start, the ICA Annual Meeting is just the ticket!

(Posted October 26, 2022) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2022/dailyposts/20221026.htm

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Good Aftermarket News, a Great New Book, the Rise of Radix, Sunrise for .Giving and Epik's New CEO! 

I normally like to do an individual post for each item in The Lowdown, but I have had so many interesting items come in I decided to bring them all together for this end of the week wrap up. I'll give you the basics about each item, along with a link to get full details - information that I hope will set you up for some very enlightening weekend reading.

For starters, with all of the turbulence in the general economy, domain investors are paying close attention to aftermarket results in an effort to get a handle on how domain sales are being affected. The latest Liquid Market Report from GGRG brokerage (the 23rd quarterly issue in this series) covering the 3rd quarter of 2022 included some encouraging news for at least one important segment of the market. 

"Liquid Domains" is GGRG's term for short acronym and numeric domains that, due to steady demand, tend to have more liquidity than most other domain categories. These are .com domains comprised of 2-4 letters, 2-5 numbers or a combination of 2-3 characters mixing letters and numbers. GGRG Founder Giuseppe Graziano reported sales disclosed by

ShortNames.com doubled from $10 million in the previous quarter  to $20 million in Q3-2022. Not only that, sales volume at Escrow.com went up from $5.5 million to $23.2 million, a remarkable 313% increase!  Be sure to check out the full report for a detailed breakdown of how the individual categories within the liquid class fared.

Now, if you want to dig into some serious reading about the current tenuous state of geopolitical cybersecurity, a well-known figure in our space, Khaled Fattel, Chairman and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Multi-Lingual Internet Group (MLi Group) has a best selling new book out. The synopsis for Survivability (Confronting the Unprecedented Risks of Today’s Geo-Poli-Cyber™ Threatened World to Competitively Thrive in the 21st Century) notes "In 2020,the COVID-19 pandemic exposed western democracies’ systemic failure to prepare for a precedented threat. This cost too many lives that could have been saved. Moreover, it exposed grave malfunctions in the current global world order—and its economic, legislative, regulative, and democratic models and institutions. It also crystalized that cyber security defenses and designs accepted as gospel are no longer fit for the purposes of defending the nation, businesses, and protecting the citizen.

Consider governmental failures to prepare for a pandemic they were warned about. Will yours be ready for cyber terrorism? Election meddling? Fake news? How about 

sinister exploitations of IOT, AI, and quantum computing? Overall, is your government prepared to mitigate Geo-Poli-Cyber™ attacks? This book explores those certainties and new paths forward."

You can get Khaled's timely new book at Amazon

As most of our readers know, new gTLD domain registry operator Radix is currently commemorating their 10th anniversary with a big We Are X celebration. The latest twist in the party is a trip down memory lane by way of a 10 Years of Radix infographic (.pdf file) the company built to highlight Radix's milestones and key achievements over the past decade. It all began in 2012 when Radix applied for 31 new TLD extensions. They emerged from the competition with the 10 solid TLDS that have underpinned Radix's rapid growth - .online, .tech, .site, .store, .host, .website, .fun, .space, .press and .uno. Happy Anniversary Radix!

 

Speaking of new TLDs - another one just launched this week! The latest newcomer is .GIVING, a new TLD launched by the Public Interest Registry (PIR), who is already known far and wide as the administrators of .ORG. .GIVING entered Sunrise Thursday (October 13, 2022), giving holders of a trademark that has previously been verified by the Trademark Clearing House an opportunity to secure their name before General Availability begins on January 20, 2023.

.GIVING can be used by any mission-driven organization – including for-profit entities – to establish a standalone website dedicated to a specific fundraising effort, serving as a complement to its primary website. For example, a for-profit entity could create a separate website or microsite using the .GIVING domain 

for a purpose-driven fundraising campaign conveying a strong, dedicated commitment to supporting mission-driven purpose distinct from their for-profit operations.

Last but not least (though definitely late on my part), I want to share the news that was released during NamesCon Global last month about domain registrar Epik getting a new CEO in veteran technologist and entrepreneur Brian Royce. Brian steps in for Epik Founder and previous CEO Rob Monster who decided to move into a non-executive role as Chairman of the Board. Rob noted that Brian had joined Epik earlier this year as EVP Operations and quickly made an impact across several areas of the business. You can expect Brian to keep Epik on the proven track that Rob blazed. Brian said, "We are committed to our mission of helping entrepreneurs and domain investors make a profit and be successful!”

I had actually gotten the news about the changeover directly from Rob when he introduced me to Brian at an evening social event at NamesCon the night before the official press release went out. I was tied up covering the show that week so didn't have a chance to write about anything else until after the conference. Then, shortly after I had gotten home and started catching up, Hurricane Ian

 

Brian Royce
CEO, Epik

appeared in the Gulf of Mexico, heading north and predicted to smash directly into the Tampa Bay area where we are located. We started battening everything down for the storm that we all now know took an unexpected early turn into the Fort Myers area, 75 miles south of us. We wound up being unscathed here but our hearts ache for our friends and fellow Floridians further down the coast who have been devastated by Ian. It will be a long road back for that beautiful part of the Sunshine State but the region and its people, working together, will get the job done. 

Wishing you all blue skies and a great weekend and we'll be back here next week, same time, same channel!

(Posted October 14, 2022) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2022/dailyposts/20221014.htm

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CryptoExchange.com Introduces Crypto Domain Escrow + Crypto to $ Conversion for Secret Brokerage Sales

In one of our bi-weekly domain sales reports last month you may recall seeing three of the top ten sales jointly credited to SecretBrokerage.com and CryptoExchange.com - Rake.com at $175,000, Hot.co.uk at $99,500 and Stretcher.com at $35,000. In addition to being impressive sales, I noted in that report that in each case the buyer wanted to pay with cryptocurrency but the seller wanted to receive US dollars.

The extra hoops that creates can derail a deal but all three sales were completed in friction free escrow protected  transactions thanks to a partnership SecretBrokerage (SB) 

+

Founder Arif Sengoren formed with Crypto Exchange. As part of that agreement, Arif also became Senior VP of a new Domain Division at Crypto Exchange.

This is the kind of service a lot of people have been looking for since the Covid-fueled boom in domain and digital asset sales began a couple of years ago. That surge resulted in a lot of veteran domain owners who weren't sold on crypto finding themselves in a marketplace where crypto-rich buyers wanted to use their preferred currency to diversify into domains. That is where Sengoren, who is intimately familiar with both camps, saw an opportunity to team up with Crypto Exchange (CE) to help currency of both kinds flow smoothly through this increasingly busy intersection of old and new. 

Arif Sengoren
Founder, SecretBrokerage.com

I've now had a chance to circle back around to Arif and get more details on exactly how the service works. It starts when a CE client who has set their sites on a particular domain decides they also want SecretBrokerage.com's (SB) help to acquire that domain. In that case, if the buyer wants to pay with cryptocurrency but the seller will only accept US $, SB pays for the domain in dollars from their own account, with that transaction typically done through Escrow.com. Then, effectively becoming the seller, SB accepts cryptocurrency payment from the buyer through CE who also provide a new cryptocurrency escrow service to protect both parties.

Arif noted, "SecretBrokerage uses CryptoExchange.com (CE) for our crypto transactions and CE sends us their clients who want to acquire domains. Rake.com was a good example of this. The CE client wanted Rake.com and we were able to acquired it for them and allow them to pay for it with cryptocurrency."

As most of our readers know, crypto prices have fallen significantly this year, so we had to wonder if that has impacted the number of domain transactions SB and CE are handling. Sengoren said, "No,  the price of crypto hasn't affected the volume of transactions we do. People buy or sell domains with crypto for several reasons. One bears repeating - Privacy Privacy Privacy! Two, it is difficult for a lot of people to cash out crypto. Three, taxes. In a lot of jurisdictions using crypto to buy a domain creates no tax on the crypto profit. Four, diversification of their assets while keeping them digitally based. In the end, it is the overall economy that decided how many transactions are being done."

CryptoExchange handles transactions involving physical goods as well as digital assets. Their Bitcoin Marketplace allows consumers to buy products with bitcoin and product owners to sell their items for cryptocurrency. While domains have been the top sellers at CE, watches are a strong number two, followed by cars and real estate. Most transactions remain private, so the few domain sales that have been reported from SB/CE have been made public only because both the buyer and seller allowed the information to be released. 

You can learn more CryptoExchange.com and SecretBrokerage.com on their respective websites. Also, as someone who has never owned or used cryptocurrency, I found the Learning Center at CryptoExchange.com to be a very useful resource. It covers every aspect of cryptocurrency, including definitions of the dozens of terms the crypto field has spawned.

Image from Bigstock

(Posted October 12, 2022) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2022/dailyposts/20221012.htm

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ICA Returning to Las Vegas for 2023 Meeting in January With Free Ticket Offer for New Premium Members

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA), the non-profit organization that fights for domain owner rights, will be returning to Las Vegas January 22-24 for the group's 2023 Member Meeting. The upcoming event will be held at the new Hilton-owned Resorts World complex that opened in June 2021, just a few months before the ICA hosted their 15th Anniversary meetup at the Green Valley Ranch in nearby Henderson. 

Early bird tickets for the 2023 Meeting are $199 through the rest of October but will increase to to $299 on November 1. If you are not yet an ICA member, you can get a free ticket to 

the event by joining at any of the premium membership levels, including the Individual level. That offer also expires at the end of October.

 

You can also now book your discounted hotel rooms at Resorts World for just $100 a night + taxes and fees. The cut-off date for booking rooms in the ICA room block is December 30th, however space is limited and could sell out before then. 

The ICA has designed their annual meetings to be fun events that include networking opportunities, educational sessions, member meetings and social activities. All industry participants are invited to join and attend and if you go you can count on a warm welcome from current members and the ICA staff.

(Posted October 4, 2022) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2022/dailyposts/20221004.htm

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