The high value Moonshine.com domain name has been acquired by Bacardi & Company Limited. The domain name transferred from GoDaddy to CSC, a corporate domain name management company. The acquisition was first reported in a tweet this morning from Jamie Zoch:
Bacardi & Company Limited have acquired Moonshine․com and now I love them (I don’t drink though)! The domain name was for sale but past owners are unknown due to whois privacy on the domain prior. The memorable domain name has been registered since 1994. #moonshine #bacardi
— Jamie Zoch (@DotWeekly) May 20, 2020
Prior to Bacardi’s ownership of Moonshine.com, the domain name had been owned under Whois privacy protection at GoDaddy. From what I can tell using the Whois History tool at DomainTools, the domain name appears to have been registered under Whois privacy since 2010. Archive.org does not show much development on the domain name for many years.
At the time of publication, Moonshine.com does not resolve to an active website, so it is unclear how Bacardi intends to use Moonshine.com.
I looked through my email history to see if the domain name had been listed for sale via broker or elsewhere, and the only thing I can find is that Moonshine.com was included in the 2008 TRAFFIC domain conference auction. NameBio does not show any sales history for Moonshine.com, so it is unlikely that the domain name sold in the auction.
While Bacardi is primarily known for its rums, Bacardi Limited also owns a number of other spirit brands. In looking through its webpage with information about its spirit brands, I do not see any mention of a moonshine brand. It will be interesting to see how Bacardi uses Moonshine.com. It’s a great domain name. Update: As Finlead pointed out on Twitter, Bacardi acquired a brand called Stillhouse, which makes moonshine.
Moonshine.com was one of about million owned and operated Oversee.net name in 2008 and we did not sell at the Traffic Auction, it was a Pass in the Live Auction at the time. Not sure if they moved it / sold it after I left.