NamesCon Europe 2021 had been tentatively planned for the Summer, with the hope the conference could be held in Hungary if the trajectory of the Covid pandemic changed. While things seem to be improving in some places, it is still not safe enough to hold an in-person conference.

This morning, NamesCon organizers announced the Europe conference has been cancelled for 2021. Here’s the announcement I received a short while ago:

Chad Hurley is the co-founder and former CEO of YouTube, which was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion. I understand that Chad is now an angel investor, and he also has ownership stakes in the Golden State Warriors (NBA) and the Los Angeles Football Club (MLS).

In the last couple of days, Chad made some interesting comments about domain names on Twitter (with additional comments in the replies):

In early September, I saw that Sedo domain broker Derick Clegg was brokering the sale of Confirm.com. When I inquired about buying the domain name, he told me they were in the agreement stage of a deal and couldn’t tell me the asking price as a result. Derick later reported that domain name was sold:

CONFIRM .COM SOLD! One or two of you picked up on it pretty quick 😉Congratulations to buyer and seller. @Sedo #domains #domain #sedo #domainnames pic.twitter.com/07YWfGPjhz

— Derick_Clegg @SEDO (@Derick_Sedo) October 5, 2020

Jag Singh retweeted a DAN.com tweet from July of 2018 that shared the prior week’s sales stats and a bit of additional details about the sales that were closed on the platform:

Last week $480,000 worth of domains sold at Undeveloped!

Some interesting stats:

1: The top sale was a ccTLD
2: The runner-up a .io domain (Installed Sale)
3: The third highest sale was a Crypto related .com (Crypto related domains are 🚀 again)#NewRecord #DomainMarketplace pic.twitter.com/tioJ5nBeIt

— DAN.COM (@Undeveloped) July 23, 2018

The tweet caught my attention because the revenue number seemed like it was lower than I expected. I quickly noticed that the tweet was nearly two years old, so that explained why the revenue number seemed low to me.

Like many other businesses, the domain industry is likely going to see some contraction in the near future due to the coronavirus outbreak. This evening, Bodis shared a note to its parking service customers that might come as a pleasant surprise:

Due to COVID-19, people and families may be facing financial difficulties. As a result, we will be processing payments a few days early during the next pay cycle. Bodis already supports the fastest payouts. In April payments will go out even faster: on the 3rd rather than 7th.

— BODIS (@bodis) March 14, 2020

I just went through a frustrating time suck dealing with two outbound transfers at Register.com, and now that it has been resolved, I want to share it with you in case you come across the same issue.

I won two domain names at NameJet – SmartSpread.com and LegalVentures.com. The domain names were provisioned to my Register.com account. I generally try to consolidate my domain names at one registrar, so I unlocked these domain names and received the EPP authorization codes for transfers. I then initiated transfers to GoDaddy, which were denied due to the vague reason of “Unable to Verify Registrant Identity.“