Report: Identity.com Acquired by Crypto Company

Elliot Silver
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Yesterday evening, CoinDesk published an article that touched on what seems to be a major domain name acquisition. According to the report, a company in the crypto and blockchain space called Civic (which owns and uses Civic.com) acquired the Identity.com domain name for an undisclosed purchase price.

According to my records, Media Options was recently brokering Identity.com via its domain sales newsletter. On May 3rd and on July 5th, Identity.com was listed for sale with a $1.5 million asking price. The description for the domain name listing was: “A titan of a brand, once in a lifetime opportunity for a domain like this!” It sure seems like Vinny Lingham, co-founder and CEO of Civic, felt the same way about Identity.com.

I reached out to Civic to see if the company could comment on the acquisition.

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BuyDomains Now Owns Famous DCLeaks.com Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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If you read or watch the news, one domain name is likely to stand out in the reporting: DCLeaks.com. For those who haven’t been following the news reports, here’s information from the Wikipedia entry about DC Leaks:

“DCLeaks (also known as DC Leaks) is a website that was established in June 2016. Since its creation, it has been responsible for publishing leaks of emails belonging to multiple prominent figures in the United States government and military. Cybersecurity research firms say the site is a front for the Russian cyber-espionage group Fancy Bear. On July 13th, 2018, an indictment was made against 12 Russian GRU military officers; it alleges that DC Leaks is part of a Russian military operation.”

Interestingly, it looks like DCLeaks.com is now owned by BuyDomains, and the company has it listed for sale. The asking price of DCLeaks.com is $3,288. The company currently has it parked, where it is showing politics-related PPC links. It would be very interesting to know how much traffic the domain name gets with its notoriety – and how much money the domain name earns from PPC advertising.

I looked at NameBio, and I do not see any

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Did Weight Watchers Acquire WW.com? (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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In my morning DomainTools Domain Monitor email, I noticed that the WW.com domain name transferred to a different registrar. WW.com had been registered at GoDaddy, and the domain name was transferred to SafeNames. George Kirikos pointed this out in a tweet this morning:

As George rightly states, because of GDPR, it is currently unclear who the current registrant of WW.com is. A domain transfer doesn’t necessarily mean the domain name sold, but as George also pointed out, Safenames is a pretty big corporate domain name and brand management company, so it could indicate that WW.com was sold. In 2014, I previously reported that

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Cheddar Report: Monaco Paid $12 Million for Crypto.com

Elliot Silver
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An article by Tanaya Macheel on Cheddar has pegged the sale price of the Crypto.com domain name at $12 million. According to the article, “Monaco, a Swiss payments and cryptocurrency platform start-up, paid $12 million for the URL as part of a rebranding strategy, Cheddar has learned.” I am not sure whether or not this has been confirmed by the buyer or seller.

If the sale price was $12 million, it would easily be the largest domain name sale of the year, well ahead of the $1.2 million sale of Super.com, as charted by DNJournal. The sale of Crypto.com would also rank as the 9th largest public domain name sale of all time, according to GoDaddy. A $12 million sale would rank below the $13 million sale of Sex.com and above the $11 million sale of Hotels.com.

Interestingly, although

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Coins.com Domain Name Sold and in Escrow

Elliot Silver
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Late last week, I wrote about the sale of Crypto.com, a domain name that was acquired by a crypto-based credit card company called Monaco, which is rebranding as Crypto.com. I have been tracking quite a few exceptional domain names that would appeal to cryptocurrency companies, and I can exclusively report the sale of the Coins.com domain name.

According to Whois records, Coins.com is currently registered to IP attorney Stevan Lieberman. The domain name had previously been registered to Stacks Bowers, a company that conducts auctions of rare coins and currency. I contacted both the new registrant via the Coins.com contact form as well as Stevan, and both confirmed the domain name was sold and is currently in escrow via Escrow.Domains, a secondary site of Greenberg & Lieberman.

The new registrant of Coins.com is Adam Perzow, who was previously associated with Investing.com. Adam is one of two co-founders of MD Insider, Inc., a machine learning data company in the healthcare sector. He also previously sold his domain, Invest.com, in late 2014 to Singulariteam, a private equity group based out of Israel.

I reached out to Stacks Bowers to see if they could offer a comment about the sale of Coins.com with no reply.

From what I understand, the acquisition of Coins.com was made

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Matt Blaze Comments About Crypto.com Sale

Elliot Silver
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Matt Blaze owned Crypto.com for many years. In March, he reportedly told The Verge that the Crypto.com domain name was not for sale. Whether Blaze fully intended to keep the domain name or was stating that as a negotiating tactic, Crypto.com was sold to a company called Monaco, which quickly rebranded as Crypto.com.

When news of the deal broke, I do not believe Blaze offered a comment about selling the domain name. In a blog post published on MattBlaze.org, Blaze offered some commentary about why he sold Crypto.com. The full blog post is worth a read, but here is an excerpt that discusses why Blaze ultimately decided to sell the domain name:

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