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Rick Schwartz Responds to Digital Citizens Alliance Report

Bill Hartzer wrote an article about a report issued by a group called Digital Citizens Alliance that was critical of domain investing. This is not the first time this organization took domain investing to task. In fact, Andrew Allemann wrote an article about it in 2020.

When looking at the report and the organization’s website, I noticed the Executive Director of this organization is Tom Galvin. The website notes that “Prior to founding 463 Communications, Tom served as Vice President of Government Relations and Communications at VeriSign, where he was responsible for driving strategy with policy makers regarding homeland security, Internet security and telecommunications policy.

This caught my attention because of a recent NTIA release that alluded to prices charged by domain investors and domain registrars. “We also recognize that prices at both the wholesale level and downstream, including prices charged by resellers and substantial markups by warehousers, need to be addressed,” the release stated.

My opinion is that VeriSign is unhappy when a discussion about competition to manage the .com registry comes up, and the company would prefer to have the focus be on (unregulated) domain investor and domain registrar pricing.

Sponsor our 2025 PMC Domain Industry Jersey

John Berryhill, my wife Karen, and I are raising funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute via the 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August. Together, we are hoping to raise $30,000 for Dana-Farber this year, and that will allow us to surpass the $200,000 lifetime fundraising mark.

Each year on the second day of the PMC, we wear a customized cycling jersey with the logos of domain industry sponsors/supporters. This year, Andy Booth generously donated to each of our fundraising campaigns, and his business, Cognitive.ai, is the lead sponsor of our jersey.

We are looking for additional supporters! We have two sleeve sponsorships available for a donation of $1,500/each (these spots are now taken). We have between 16-18 additional logo spots available on the back of our jersey for a donation of $500/each. We can also offer two spots on the sides of the jersey for logos that are white (the logo will be place vertically on the black background) for a $1,000 donation for each side.

For tracking purposes, you can make a donation to my fundraising page found by navigating to CancerStinks.com, and I will distribute them to John and Karen. Please email me to confirm availability before donating, particularly for the two sleeves.

I hope to finalize the jersey design this week.

2025 Domain Industry PMC Jersey Sponsors:

Atom.com Transfer Center Status Meanings

I frequently see people posting screenshots of their domain name sales on Atom. There are different messages overlaid on the images of the logo and sale price. I thought I would share what each means so people understand the status of a sale that is shared publicly. This can help people understand if a domain name was purchased outright or with a payment plan.

There could be additional messages I haven’t seen before or don’t recall seeing, but here’s a list of Atom.com Transfer Center Messages and what I believe they mean:

Escrow.com: 2025 Master of Domains

Escrow.com announced the winners of its 2025 Master of Domains awards. The awards are typically given out during NamesCon, but the conference isn’t being held until November. The Master of Domains award is given to the 10 highest grossing domain brokers measured by the size of the deals they closed via Escrow.com during the prior year.

Andrew Rosener won this year’s award for the seventh consecutive year. He and his brokerage, Media Options, have been on the list for nine consecutive years. This is an impressive achievement.

Notably, if you look at the top domain name sales of the year in DNJournal and NameBio, many of these brokers are under represented. This illustrates just how many undisclosed large domain name deals are closed each year.

Congratulations to these award winners.

Odyssey.com is Braden Pollock’s Largest Domain Name Sale

Andrew Miller from Hilco Digital Assets announced that his company oversaw the sale of Odyssey.com on behalf of Braden Pollock. According to the LinkedIn post, it is Braden’s largest domain name sale.

Commenting on the sale, Braden praised Andrew for helping to make the deal happen. “Andrew had to be creative to get this deal done. In the end it was a win-win,” he told me.

$50k .AI Sale is Now Just Noteworthy

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Tim Hargis alerted me to a LinkedIn post by Kushal Byatnal announcing that his company, Extend, had acquired the Extend.ai domain name for $50,000. The company had been using Extend.app, but it chose to spend mid-five figures to acquire the .ai domain name. You can see the rationale in the LinkedIn post:

Instead of covering this acquisition with a standalone article, I opted to post about it on X. I think this domain name sale was noteworthy, particularly because the Founder shared insight about the domain name and its importance to the company rather than simply sharing the acquisition price.

Recent Posts

Rick Schwartz Responds to Digital Citizens Alliance Report

4
Bill Hartzer wrote an article about a report issued by a group called Digital Citizens Alliance that was critical of domain investing. This is...

Sponsor our 2025 PMC Domain Industry Jersey

0
John Berryhill, my wife Karen, and I are raising funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute via the 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August. Together, we...

Atom.com Transfer Center Status Meanings

0
I frequently see people posting screenshots of their domain name sales on Atom. There are different messages overlaid on the images of the logo...

Escrow.com: 2025 Master of Domains

1
Escrow.com announced the winners of its 2025 Master of Domains awards. The awards are typically given out during NamesCon, but the conference isn't being...

Odyssey.com is Braden Pollock’s Largest Domain Name Sale

0
Andrew Miller from Hilco Digital Assets announced that his company oversaw the sale of Odyssey.com on behalf of Braden Pollock. According to the LinkedIn...