A few days ago as the West.cn .XYZ auctions were concluding, I reached out to the .XYZ Registry team to ask if they could share the results once the auctions close. Shayan Rostam, Global Director of Registry Operations at the .XYZ Registry, emailed me this evening to share that the registry “officially announced the results of the auction last night based on confirmed payments.”
The largest reported sale of the auction was 1.XYZ, which sold for $182,922 USD. 66.XYZ was the second largest sale at $65,315 USD, and the third largest sale was 51.XYZ, which sold for $46,327 USD. YM.XYZ was the highest grossing letter domain name, and that sold for $39,563.
Based on the “confirmed payments” part of his quote, I presume this means the sales have been transacted and payments have been received by the auction house and remitted to the registry (or owners of the domain names that sold if not the registry). In total, 159 .XYZ domain names were sold in the auction, and the auction grossed a little over $800,000 USD in total sales.
I have not independently confirmed any of these sales nor have I looked at Whois records. I would imagine Ron Jackson and NameBio will publish the sales numbers once they confirm that the deals have been transacted. Once confirmed, the 1.XYZ sale will land at #2 on the year to date sales chart on DNJournal, just ahead of the $170,250 sale of 9.XYZ.
Listed below are the sales from the auction that closed above $10,000:
DOMAIN RMB USD
1.xyz 1,180,000 $182,922
66.xyz 425,000 $65,315
51.xyz 300,000 $46,327
11.xyz 278,000 $42,998
ym.xyz 256,000 $39,563
98.xyz 232,000 $35,790
hk.xyz 224,000 $34,535
vip.xyz 214,000 $32,874
35.xyz 200,000 $30,885
52.xyz 158,000 $24,212
fw.xyz 152,000 $23,350
dp.xyz 150,000 $23,110
hx.xyz 124,000 $19,032
zt.xyz 93,000 $14,374
ck.xyz 92,000 $14,201
163.xyz 82,000 $12,642
If you’re not confirming the sales, or whois, or anything then why publish this in the first place?
1) They were already published.
2) When other auction houses (such as Sedo and their Great Domains auction) report sales, I don’t confirm them or do Whois lookups either.
Was 8.xyz for sale in this auction?
Or if it wasn’t, what do you think it might have sold for if it was instead of having been sold back in September 2015: https://www.namepros.com/threads/8-xyz-sells-for-more-than-80-000.878977/
No idea.
I don’t follow the non .com market closely, and I wouldn’t even speculate.
It’s interesting to note that now the XYZ Registry is using the term “Confirmed Payments”.
Why? IMHO because someone, including myself, has publicly called many (if not all) big-ticket xyz domain sales as fake, fabricated, providing some proof and circumstantial evidence.
I’m still sticking to my view. Why? Because IMHO here the statement “Confirmed Payments” means nothing, less then nothing. Why? Because if someone has already agreed to fabricate a transaction, using third parties and partners, including “puppets”, “straw men” and nominee entities, going through an escrow is just to try to (falsely) validate, legitimize a (fake) deal.
It’s a misleading statement, targeted on purpose to confuse and deceive people.
As I wrote before, “Unfortunately for them, having gone through an Escrow transaction does not make a sale legitimate. I could agree with someone to send him 100,000 USD, instructing him to purchase a specific domain from me for the very same 100,000 USD , in exchange for a little commission. We could agree to start an Escrow transaction for it, paying as low as 0.89%.” Would that be a legitimate transaction? Not at all.
Keep in mind that there are many technical ways to fabricate sales (and not only sales), and these days the Chinese market is almost the ideal location (even virtual location) and “environment” where engineer fake transactions and scams, as I’ve already mentioned in a quick line on LinkedIn titled “China, Scams and Money Laundering, How China has become a universal, international gateway for all manner of scams”, where you can read an interesting article from The Associated Press.
Let’s analyze the “buyers” of those names:
– 1.xyz, officially reported as sold for $182,922: according to Whois, current Registrant is a “Lin Shi Mo Ban”, based somewhere (in “sm”) in Fujian province, China, no street address. If you search for the listed phone number, +86.15159172773, you get no results. Same zero results if you check the Registrant email, which is the same phone number plus the @163.com. But if you check for “Lin Shi Mo Ban”, you will find that this “guy” (or “entity”) is one of the biggest Registrant of new gTLDs by number of Registrations (over 113,000 names as “Mo Ban Lin Shi” and further 39,871 names as “Lin Shi Mo Ban”, according to Ntldstats.com), but with a different email, whoisagent@west263.com and a different address, now in Chengdu, Sichuan. This “buyer” email corresponds to the Whois Privacy Protection Service Of Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co. Ltd. The weird thing is that the Whois Protection protects only the email, but not all the other Registrant data. The phone number (+86.02886263960) is shared with and it’s the same of many other different Chinese Registrants, also located in other Chinese cities, and associated with many other email address as well.
66.xyz, 51.xyz, 11.xyz, ym.xyz, according to Whois, as of today, are still owned by the XYZ Registry.
98.xyz, officially reported as sold for $35,790: according to Whois, current Registrant is a “di zhu”, based in Ao Men (Macau, “Aomen” is Macau in Mandarin), China. If you search for the listed phone number, +86.00853288888, you get no results. Interestingly, the phone number looks incorrect, because Macau numbers have the code +86.853 plus 8 digits and number pattern is 28xx xxxx. Since the first two zero are a mistake, that number doesn’t exist. No relevant results if you check the Registrante mail, which is 7697799@qq.com. Same no significant results if you check the address “ao men meng di ka luo qian di 203hao”, which seems to be somewhat associated to someone with a @venetian.com email address, which corresponds to The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.
HK.xyz, Vip.xyz, 35.xyz, according to Whois, as of today, are still owned by the XYZ Registry.
52.xyz, officially reported as sold for $24,212: according to Whois, current Registrant is a “zhang tian jia”, based in Shanghai, China. If you search for the listed phone number, +86.13611808789, you get just a few results, mainly related to xyz domains Whois. Interestingly, this phone number is associated also to other people, including a “tangbaojin”, with email zhuce@runcao and a “Xiao Lin Liu” aka “liu xiao lin”, with email 87063050@qq.com. According to the Whois, the Registrant of Runcao.com is the same “zhang tian jia”, same address in Shanghai but different phone number, in this case +86.13022117211. If you check the Registrant email, 360254@qq.com, is the same you owned by the guy pictured on the Runcao.com website. Furthermore, this email is associated to over 5,900 domains, all of which seem .xyz. Searching for the Registrant name and phone number you get only a Tianjia Zhang, but this one is based in Santa Clara, California.
Fw.xyz, dp.xyz, according to Whois, as of today, are still owned by the XYZ Registry.
Hx.xyz, officially reported as sold for $19,032: according to Whois, current Registrant is the “liu xiao lin”, based in Shanghai, China, the guy that we mentioned before because his previous phone number was the same as the “buyer” of 52.xyz above. Now it has changed it from +86.13611808789 to +86.13615856799, while his fax number has remained the same.
Zt.xyz, officially reported as sold for $14,374: according to Whois, current Registrant is a “liu de quan”, based in Shenzhen, China. If you search for the listed phone number, +86.075587352482, you get no results. If you check the Registrant email, hongxiao.jiangxue@foxmail.com, you get no results as well. We have not found anyone online with that combination of name, email, address and phone number.
Ck.xyz, 163.xyz, according to Whois, as of today, are still owned by the XYZ Registry.
So to summarize, Andrea, you are suggesting that Negari and friends may be trying to Shanghai the market through fraudulent transactions in China?
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shanghai)
(You don’t get many opportunities in life to make a pun like that.)
Do you suggest any further measures?
Exactly! “Confirmed payments” from a registry that no one trusts anyways, means absolutely nothing.
No one?
And my pun?
Andrea , you’re a paranoid crazy lady. Oh wait , you’re a man with a girl’s name. That probably explains your insecurity & jealousy of Daniel Negari
Not so fast, Jason, you’re not going to pull it off that easily after all the material Andrea presented. Plus you’re a complete amateur at what you are trying to do. You have to include the word “conspiracy” or the phrase “conspiracy theory” in addition to “paranoid” in your statement. When you do that, according to the rules of engagement it means the other person you are attempting to discredit used the word “conspiracy” themselves even if they never actually did and it is imputed to them. Consequently, since they went around using a word or phrase like that because you put it in their mouth so to speak, you have proven your charge against them. In time I expect you will learn how to do it better though.
Now as for your other charge about her gender, I know people do things like that sometimes but I hope it isn’t true here. I don’t know her though I imagine others in the industry do.
Jason,
FYI Andrea is equivalent to Andrew in Italian. And if you don’t know Andrea Paladini, obviously you are an amateur. BTW, are you Daniel Negari in disguise??
We should appreciate the trouble Andrea has taken to provide all the details.
Good Day!
.xyz is quickly becoming a good investment. When people talk about beginning and ending, they use abc and/or xyz to explain something. Take for example, abc to begin and xyz to finish.
Numbers are popular in all extensions. The shorter, the better. Moreover, popular numbers and combinations attract widespread interest.
i stick to .com almost exclusively.
You are somehow associated with .xyz. No one talks like that.
Mr. J,
It’s DotCom Industry and DotCom will always be the king. Nevertheless, keep trying..
Believe your instincts.
Elaborate.
John, Just a literal comment, no intrigue.
The Chinese buyers probably weave a secrecy net more to keep away from their government than to hide fraudulent transactions.