Would You Accept Bitcoins for a Domain Name Sale?

chartThere has been considerable news about bitcoins and the rising value of bitcoins. There was an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, and other publications have written extensively about bitcoins. You can search Google News and see hundreds of mainstream articles about bitcoins and bitcoin values.

I know a few people who have been involved with bitcoins and bitcoin mining, but I haven’t gotten involved yet (as you can see from the QR code I added with 0 BTC). I’ve considered putting a few domain names up for sale in exchange for bitcoins, but I still have a number of questions about them before being willing to accept bitcoins for valuable domain names. Volatility is an issue for me; I wouldn’t want to sell a domain name for $10k worth of bitcoin and see the value drop 30% before I collect the funds. I assume some buyers would have the same issue, too.

Namecheap is one domain registrar that accepts bitcoins for payment. This proved to be a smart move for the company, as the value of a bitcoin has increased tremendously since announcing this.  I assume other domain registrars and domain service companies will follow suit, although I don’t know when that is going to happen. I love the idea of it though.

I am curious about you. At this point in time, would you consider selling a domain name for bitcoins? Please vote in the poll below and feel free to share feedback.

 


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

29 COMMENTS

  1. I have literally been thinking about this all weekend.

    The value fluctuates so wildly, but it is very intriguing.
    I am very curious to see what price it stabilizes at — or if it ever will stabilize.

    To me, it fluctuates too wildly to be a currency — imagine how panicked everyone would be if the dollar doubled in value one day and then droped 50% the next.

    BUT, it’s becoming more and more accepted for payments, which DOES make it act like currency (except in China) 😀 It’s really interesting.

    I do like that they are limiting the total to 21,000,000 units.

    In short, YES, I’d probably do that.
    I’m kicking myself for not picking up some when they were $100.

    It’s a gamble, but to me it would be diversifying my holdings a litte bit more
    (real estate, gold/silver, domains and bitcoin).

    It’s worth the gamble for me.
    I probably wouldn’t take $500,000 in Bit Coin.
    Maybe $50,000.

    Aron

    • Let me give you some advice from my perspective.

      Stay away from anything that even comes
      close to gambling. Stick to something
      you can control where you have the edge.
      Don’t get lured in by the chance of hitting
      it big or missing out. You don’t read about the
      deals that the big domainers have passed up only
      the ones that have succeeded and only their success.

      If you want to buy a domain and develop it
      where you have control
      and you evaluate the downside and upside of that
      choice (say to develop or sell) you have control
      and you have evaluated the risk in what you have
      done. And you have taken a calculated gamble.

      Otherwise you are just throwing money out. Long term
      that is. Short term anything can happen.

      One thing I hate about this business is the
      gamblers.

      Elliott talked about how he likes to go to
      a casino and gamble (maybe you do as well).

      I don’t.

      I like things where I can use my brains to gain
      an advantage.

      It takes no skill at all to sell a domain name
      by simply holding out for a big offer. It takes
      skill to know when to sell when an offer comes
      along. Or wait another 10 years till the next offer.
      Go try and sell to a domainer when you need to. You won’t
      be able to.

      You might be able to buy some bitcoin and
      make some money. But you will take the same risks
      on other things and lose.

      Stick to things you have an edge at. Deciding to buy bitcoin
      one day you have no edge over the other guy who decides
      to sell bitcoin that day.

    • Well put.
      I do tend to shy away from things I have no idea about.
      I’m not much of a gambler — I’m just intrigued by BitCoin and I do realize I should have jumped in a year ago.

      Reminds me of the S. Florida real estate boom (then bust). By the time I wanted to get in, the market was at its peak.

      Aron

    • No idea 😀
      The guys that dreamed up the idea have limited the total that can be “mined” to 21,000,000 (from what I’ve read).

      “They” are not a governing body or a bank though.
      And “they” didn’t back the currency with anything like the economic performance of a country.

      I need to research it more too.
      From what I know, “they” is/are a guy or two.

  2. I wonder how many companies / individuals that accept bitcoin actually hold them for any amount of time. I know there are payment processing services that allow you to accept bitcoin, but covert it to your currency of choice (almost) instantly. If I were to accept bitcoin as payment, this is what I would do. I might miss out on a jump in value, but I protect myself from a dip.

  3. “They” is the anonymous person who programmed/created bitcoins. There will reach a point in time when no more bitcoins are created (i.e. it becomes capped).

    IMO bitcoins will eventually fall to next to nothing. There have already been quite a few issues of people losing bitcoins (to scams, to the way some platforms that use bitcoins work, etc.) and many more issues. They don’t work because there is no oversight to protect you, because it was purposely built that way.

    It is a pump and dump. It will last longer then most pump and dumps because of the mainstream media attention. Think of Bitcoins like .mobi. Flowers.mobi went for what and then it went for what the next time it sold.

  4. A wise man I spoke to last month said if you can’t buy groceries with it, then it will probably be a fad.

    That said, I wish I had the guts back in March to get in at $80. Getting in at the current level is suicidal which is what you are doing accepting them for the first time.

  5. Hi, Inspired by Mike Berkens post about a bitcoin he had been given, I researched and wrote an article about bitcoin and its relation to domains here:

    Bitcoin Domain Sales Parallel Current Events
    emergingdomains.com/bitcoin-domain-sales-parallel-current-events

    including a video and some references at the bottom.

    Supposed to be on this thread, 4k.com sold for 55 bitcoins:

    bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316381.0

  6. ” Many Bitcoin transactions facilitate illegal commerce. The Bitcoin world is not friction-free, or clean.”

    It is for this reason a professional, legal, law abiding business may consider not to be entangled with bitcoins. It will always be the “underground” currency, and thus could project a negative perception about the companies using them. The domaining industry would be better to stay away from bitcoins so it doesn’t become “The pirate Bay”. Trying to lose the “cybersquatter” label is not helped when accepting bitcoins.

  7. Buying them is easy, selling them for cold hard cash, can be difficult, some people wait months for payouts, and there is the risk of having them stolen, or cash frozen. Paypal has some issues with them as well, so you basically have to meet a random stranger to transact, or risk wire into a US bank account thru an exchange. Regulation will make these things go to zero.

    • I actually got an offer on a bitcoin related domain, and these folks were trying to start a community about bitcoining, they wanted to pay in bitcoins, and were under the impression these things were going to $5-10k in a year from now. I think south america, and europe it is a bit easier to transact, but us money laws will make it very hard to cash out.

  8. There really is no reason not to sell domains for Bitcoins. Granted, with a private party transaction you may want to use an Escrow service if you do not trust the other party.

    Since we’ve opened our company offers domains ($11.95 w/ free privacy protection) and nearly 100% of our customers pay with Bitcoin.

  9. Like a few here I could have bought some when they were a lot lower than $100. In fact I saw them for $28. Didn’t want to gamble then, or now.
    If I would sell a domain for bitcoin? Depends on the domain 😉

  10. It’s a huge gamble…
    Like having unprotected sex with a stranger you just met 🙂
    or Russian Roulette.
    I personally wouldn’t risk my money like that.

    Bitcoin is not backed by any central bank or government, or by physical assets. Their value depends on people’s confidence in the currency.
    Bank of France.

    The concept is great I am certain Wall street and other entities/Central Banks are looking at their own version… an alternative with some guarantees and/or backing hence lessening the risks …

    “the trust of the people”
    I don’t want to be there in a stampede “bitcoin run” .

  11. I missed out on the Bitcoin bonanza even much worse than how I missed out on the early days of .com’s. I say worse because the former happened right in front of me and I was kind of looking at it a bit (and of course wish I had looked into it more), whereas with domains I wasn’t even paying attention and didn’t notice anything until it was too late for me. In fact, I was even recommending using Bitcoin as a way of storing one’s money for those in Greece because of the turmoil there at a time years ago now when I myself wasn’t willing to go near it with a ten foot pole and still didn’t bother learning as much about it as I know now. Unfortunately I just wasn’t willing to risk anything on that. If I had, however, I think when it first caught my eye I could have put in a really tiny amount of $ that would be worth close to $100,000,000 now, and later on could have at least jumped in modestly for a gain of perhaps around $9-10million on $xx,xxx to low $xxx,xxx. So, do I regret anything here? Any takers? Lol. 🙂 P.S. For me this is not about the love of money, but about what I could have done had I just jumped in. Now I still wouldn’t jump in with the high prices and feel there could be a bubble or some other splash of negative volatility or dilution of value. I don’t know, but hopefully I won’t be regretting not jumping in again if it goes to $10K or more. Oh well… 🙂

    • Oh I guess not. Too bad, was a big post that I don’t want to retype now and didn’t bother copying first. Anyway, long story short version: I was recommending Bitcoin years ago for the turmoil in Greece even when I wouldn’t go near it with a ten foot pole. If I had jumped in when I first started noticing news of Bitcoin, I think I could have turned perhaps around low $xx,xxx into near $100 Million now, and later something like $xx,xxx to low $xxx,xxx into at least around $9-10 Million, but I never jumped in. Now I wouldn’t, so hope I don’t regret that later too. I regret it, but for me it’s not about the love of money or wealth or luxury or nice things, but merely about what I could have done in terms of some sensible options and helping some others with that kind of gain. So for me it’s like I missed out worse than for the early days of .com, because this time around I was actually somewhat aware of the phenomenon, whereas with .com I only really noticed after it was much too late.

    • Looks like the blog software is a little bit buggy today because it’s putting my posts in limbo except for the one that just appeared. Oh well…

      • Lol – too funny, and I’m with you 100% on that, but thanks for digging me out, lol. Anyway, recently I did just that for a purchase inquiry – gave that option in cash or Bitcoin with a multiple. Cheers and keep on bloggin’ 🙂

  12. One more try, then I’m “adjourning”:

    Oh I guess not. Too bad, was a big post that I don’t want to retype now and didn’t bother copying first. Anyway, long story short version: I was recommending Bitcoin years ago for the turmoil in Greece even when I wouldn’t go near it with a ten foot pole. If I had jumped in when I first started noticing news of Bitcoin, I think I could have turned perhaps around low $xx,xxx into near $100 Million now, and later something like $xx,xxx to low $xxx,xxx into at least around $9-10 Million, but I never jumped in. Now I wouldn’t, so hope I don’t regret that later too. I regret it, but for me it’s not about the love of money or wealth or luxury or nice things, but merely about what I could have done in terms of some sensible options and helping some others with that kind of gain. So for me it’s like I missed out worse than for the early days of .com, because this time around I was actually somewhat aware of the phenomenon, whereas with .com I only really noticed after it was much too late.

    Cya.

  13. Okay, let me just see if I can squeeze this post in, food for thought, since my other posts won’t post: yes, I would take Bitcoin now, but here’s my recommendation: if they pay in Bitcoin, let it be something like $ * 1.5 to 2 in Bitcoin.

  14. Just because you take BitCoins for a domain doesn’t mean that you have to hold them for ever. If they are up from what you received that at after 1 week you can sell them. Yes it’s definitely sketchy as a long term investment. But if you just want to try and make a little more money this could be a good way. Pretty good upside to it with short term in mind.

  15. It anyone wants a primer or boot camp about Bitcoin from a domainer just come to Atlantic City. I do Bitcoin full time and I set up a meetup.com group. I am setting up several Bitcoin-related sites, I mine Bitcoin, trade Bitcoin, and I write a Bitcoin blog. These comment sections are full of misinformation and misunderstandings and most people have it all wrong. This translates to great business opportunities.

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