This afternoon, I received an email from Stefan Palios, who is responsible for Marketing and Communications at Coinsquare. He wanted to make me aware of an update to Diamond.com, a domain name that was sold earlier this year in a private transaction.

If you visit Diamond.com, you can see a coming soon page announcing that Diamond.com has the goal to become “the world’s #1 cryptocurrency exchange.” There is also a message about listing ICOs via Diamond.com along with some contact information.

Here’s a screenshot of the landing page:

I’ve been on vacation and saw quite a few people wearing preppy needlepoint belts. Most of the belts I noticed had nautical themes (flags, anchors, fish…etc.), local designs, or other fun themes. I thought the belts were nice looking, but aside from the patriotic designs, nothing really resonated with me enough to make a purchase.

I did a bit of searching via Google and Etsy, and I found a company that could custom design and make a needlepoint belt just for me. Here is the design I approved for production:

Yeah, a .com belt might be a bit silly, but I bet it will be a good conversation starter. When I am wearing my belt at a party, a restaurant, or even at a conference, I am sure people will ask me what it means. I will be glad to tell people I am a domain investor and .com domain names are my specialty.

i should have it just in time for ICANN Barcelona in October.

I read the well deserved platitudes towards Laurie Kirk after she announced her retirement this past week. One of the reasons Laurie is so appreciated is because she became the NameJet point person for so many people. If there was any technical or other issue, Laurie has been the person to contact. I know if I contacted her, she would fix the issue, get me an answer about something, or put me in touch with someone who could take care of the issue.

Every company in the domain industry should have a point person to contact. This has to be a tough job, but I think it is very helpful to customers and promotes goodwill within the domain industry.

One thing I have noticed is that people tend to fire away on domain forums if something goes wrong (or if they think something is going wrong) rather than trying to resolve an issue privately. Perhaps this is because of historical problems with companies, distrust, language issues, or a

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours at a family event. For part of that time, I was chatting with a friend of the family who is Rabbi. I had not spoken with this Rabbi for quite some time, and of course he asked what I do for a living. I told him about my business.

The Rabbi knew a bit about domain names because of an experience he had. He told me he owned Rabbi[Name].com for several years but accidentally let it expire. By the time he realized what happened to the domain name, it was too late to recover it. The domain name is now owned by a large domain investment company and is listed for sale for a little under $3k. The Rabbi couldn’t understand why it would be worth that much money to someone, and he opted to register the .net domain name instead. I briefly explained to him about the business of domain name investing, and he understood the basics.

The Rabbi didn’t pass any judgement about domain name investing, but I felt a bit guilty about what I do. I am sure I buy domain names at expiry auctions that were the result of an accidental expiration. On a rare occasion, I will