Because of Escrow.com’s unique position of transacting many private domain name deals, the company is privy to aggregated domain sales data others do not have. Escrow.com published its Domain Investment Index Report for the first quarter of 2022. It can be accessed via this Google Drive link the company shared with me.

In the first quarter of 2022, more than $130 million worth of domain name transactions were completed via Escrow.com. This is a substantial jump from the $110 million in domain name sales transactions the company managed in the first quarter of 2021. It is also a decrease from the $158 million in sales transacted in the fourth quarter of 2021. This is the fifth consecutive quarter Escrow.com achieved over $100 million in sales.

For most of my domain names listed for sale on Dan.com, I have a Buy It Now (BIN) price, a Lease to Own (LTO) option, and a Make Offer option. IThe majority of prospects choose the Make Offer option and submit an offer that is close to the minimum permitted. The next most popular option selected on my names, I would guess, is the LTO option.

In the last month, I’ve come across an issue two separate times on Dan.com. Prospective buyers made offers that were accepted and then stated they want to pay over time. In one case, the prospect accepted a counter-offer, and in the second case, I accepted the initial offer. Both prospects then asked the Dan.com agent handling the deal if they can use a payment plan to buy the domain name.

FTX is a leading cryptocurrency exchange that owns FTX.com but operates in the US on FTX.us. The Economist published an article about FTX Founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. The article mentioned that Bankman-Fried is “widely known as SBF.”

It appears that Bankman-Fried recently acquired the SBF.com domain name. If you visit SBF.com, you are forwarded to FTX.com/foundation and then land on the FTXFoundation.org website. Whois records for SBF.com show the domain name is currently registered to Domains By Proxy, LLC, GoDaddy’s Whois privacy proxy service.

Companies that own domain names and operate websites on sub-optimal domain extensions are often the most likely candidate to purchase the better domain name when they can afford it. Squadhelp CEO Darpan Munjal shared a new feature offered by his platform to help make sellers aware of similar developed domain names:

Knowing when other TLDs for your domains have been registered = Good

Knowing when other TLDs for your domains have actually been developed = Even Better

We will now proactively start notifying sellers when someone develops a website for their domain in a different extension

— Darpan (@darpanmunjal) June 30, 2022

According to its founder, Testimonial, is “a platform that helps businesses collect, manage and distribute testimonials in a single place.” The company has used the Testimonial.to domain name for its website. According to Testimonial founder Damon Chen, the company just acquired Testimonial.io for $35,000 via SquadHelp:

I spent $35,000 on a domain. Here is why 👇https://t.co/rBh9N31RT7

— Damon Chen (@damengchen) June 24, 2022

In the tweet, Damon linked to a blog post he published on the Medium platform with insight about his domain name acquisition. I’ve heard of many different reasons for a domain name acquisition, but this one was fairly unique.

At the time of publication, Testimonial.io still resolves to a SquadHelp landing page. Based on the Whois record, it does not appear that the domain name has transferred yet.

Once the $35,000 sale of Testimonial.io is archived by NameBio, it will rank in the top 50 public .io domain name sales of all time.

Thanks to Jag for calling out this tweet and blog post.