Aside from owning SSSN.com and PRRR.com, I no longer own many domain names that seem to be in great demand to Chinese domain name buyers. I suppose I don’t fully understand the rationale for these purchases and am concerned that if I jump into that market right now I will end up losing money.
I read Shane Cultra’s list of domain names coming up for auction, and he highlighted one that was intriguing to me. In this morning’s post, Shane said, “XXWW.com OK this is the best name on the board. Maybe not in the future but right now.” I clicked through, and I see XXWW.com is up for auction on Sedo right now. The current high bid is $10,000 and the reserve has been met.
To be totally honest, I was surprised when I saw that it was at $10k. I know the market for those kinds of names is hot, but I would have guessed lower. I really shouldn’t be surprised these days I suppose.
I am curious what you think XXWW.com is worth. We will see what the market will bear in a few days, but your comments are welcome.
I did not do a Whois search for this domain name, so I am not sure who owns it (nor do I care).
pure hype. these kinds of domains won’t be worth 10k in 5 years time as i believe the chinese money in domains is largely temporary.
Spot on JZ. I would hate to be the last one without a chair when the music stops, and bubbles, like the ‘Chinese Investor’ business model will eventually run its course.
My gut says you will be proven dead wrong although not into the new craze
World govs are printing paper fiat money like its going out of style
There are 1.4B people in China. It’s a 4 letter .com. Any other extension would agree but never bet against .com.
What happens when there is a .88 or .YY extension? All other extensions besides .com will most likely lose value. We saw it happen with .net when new Gs hit the market.
I doubt that a 4L .com will be less valuable in 5 years than it is now. Even a 6N.com is limited to under one million variations. There is a proven scarcity value for .com.
I have been doing a lot of research in this area; I have come to the conclusion that this isn’t a bubble.
The numerals, even 7N, 8N, 9N, 10N, 11N and beyond with patterns (Meaningful combinations of lucky numbers, palindromes, and repeaters), are especially sought after.
The Chinese seem to have developed a numerical language and combinations of lucky numbers. They are not afraid of long numbers and even the dreaded “4,” as long as it appears in a lucky combination, such as “54,” “348,” etc.
There are also some LL (all consonants) combinations that have special meanings and are often combined with other LL combinations (hence, the LL LL combos to form LLLL .com).
The sleeping dragon is rising.
🙂
I forgot to respond to the actual domain:
AFAIK, none of these letters (XXWW) have any special meaning in the LL LL combos, but they are consonants and are repeaters.
Next to meaning, pattern is an important aspect of Chinese culture; they see it in nature, life, structures, and culture.
The domain also has Western appeal: easy to remember.
The price doesn’t surprise me at all.
@Jen
You are spot on.. exactly my observations as well over the past months.. this is something huge that is happening as we speak and just gaining momentum in domaining, in turn changing the whole domaining industry/landscape into something more liquid and similar to a stock market, working with scarcity and certain niches and “trading” between investors..
that is going to be completely different and unconnected from the typical domaining market of exact match & keyword & brandable domains for endusers which will continue as usual..
it really defeats the point of domains, to just hold and trade with no meaning whatsoever besides lack of availability to gauge value. there are so many other things they could do this with and domains will probably just become one of a few things. the chinese doing this have no understanding of domains or the domain industry, they just want to stick money somewhere. just like a stock market can fall, if some big investors start pulling out values drop but unlike the stock market there would be no reason for it to go back up if the chinese decide to put their money elsewhere.
Such numerical and LLLL (and so on) Domains are just being used as a relatively safe and convenient investment vehicle by most Chineses, out of reach to the Chinese government and easy to be bought and sold off anywhere in the world.. plus the nice effect of their values appreciating as long as more people join this game..
nobody said you can only acquire domains if you put them to use.. it’s really the same like trading cards, just on a higher level and globally done.. this is a process irreversible and will continue to pour in more and more investment money, overshadowing the classical domaining as we know in terms of monetary value..
this is where big bucks can be made even by folks who are late to domaining but know where to invest in and when to buy and sell..
I get many emails for the 4 l domains
I thought my English is “bad” but theirs is badder
Hello my kind friend
You want my good domains
You must have money
US money good
Chinese one no good
You got lots of US money we can talk
We no talk if you have no US money
I talk you if you have lots of US money
Okay my friends
Love it when I replied to them.
Yea, told you, all my 4L domains bought real cheap 4 yrs ago are bringing in big $$$$$$
Let me guess, your Chinese is fluent?
I think there’s still plenty of potential for these names to go a fair amount higher. A numeric in that pattern (AABB) would probably fetch somewhere in the low six figures. They were already >50k 6 months ago. I’d say the letters will follow suit, maybe not to the same degree, but definitely at an accelerated pace versus standard Chinese four letter combos.
It’s worth noting that the most favored patterns (letters and numbers apply) would rank in the following order from a Chinese buyer’s perspective:
AABB
ABAB
ABBB
AAAB
Obviously I left out AAAA but there’s probably not many of them on the market.
I agree with Andy. I see these only increasing in value. At present, I’d be expecting this one to go for $20k+ IMO
ZZRR.com sold for $6,100 recently on Sedo. The AABB pattern seems to fetch the highest prices after AAAA.
Team Up here. Although I hate to see it get such a high bid as I am trying to buy similar and they just went up after seeing this
I wouldn’t have even known about it had you not publicized it yesterday morning!
funny you do the same thing to people every single morning lol
Nobody really saw the Chinese money coming or knew how fast prices would rise. Even experienced domainers were caught off guard and only had the ‘right’ domains for other reasons, or sold too early.
.xyz is even getting Chinese interest and why not, it’s all premium Chinese letters. Who is going to get the .888 gtld??
Short & memorable are understandably good. Companies using very short names seem authoritative & established. But what’s such upper limit on length? And will Chinese firms grow to embrace their own characters? IDN.com and IDN.(Asian text) are still relatively inexpensive. Yes, they were late to the domain game, but short IDN have some advantages such as input not needing to toggle between keyboards.
Domains are just a vehicle, for currency, they serve very little purpose for the chinese, other than being able to purchase million dollar homes in AU, and CA.
But we can find at least some domains being adopted by Chinese end-users. Is China’s end-user/investor ratio so extremely different from ratios elsewhere?