Once again, cryptocurrency is a hot topic. The Bitcoin bull run has catapulted the value of one Bitcoin to close to $50,000, on the back of heavy investment from the likes of MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, and Tesla’s Elon Musk.
With a bullish cryptocurrency market, crypto-related domain names can be considered to be hot property. In the 2017-2018 bull run, for example, the likes of Tokens.com, CryptoWorld.com, and CryptoBank.com sold for six figures each.
In the 2021 run, it seems crypto names are trending again. Recently, Media Options’ CEO Andrew Rosener took to Twitter to announce that the company sold the Crypto.org domain name, brokered on behalf of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
We @MediaOptions have now sold https://t.co/SFWsyLiboE! Congrats to buyer and seller. This domain is now #OffTheMarketForever
Who’s next? #DomainNames #DigitalAssets
— Andrew Rosener (@andrewrosener) February 11, 2021
The Crypto.org domain, which at one point had an asking price of $1.5 million based on a cached Google page, changed hands in a deal facilitated by Escrow.com, according to WHOIS history.
WHOIS has now updated to show the name is registered to a privacy-protected GoDaddy account. Who is the buyer?
Based on my research, the buyer could be Crypto.com, the cryptocurrency payment platform that rebranded to Crypto.com from Monaco in 2018 when the company acquired the Crypto.com name for an undisclosed fee, rumored to be $12 million.
Unfortunately, Media Options could not confirm the buyer’s identity, but I believe there are some telling similarities linking the domains.
The .ORG extension is popular within the cryptocurrency and blockchain communities, with numerous prominent companies opting to set up on the .ORG TLD. One example is Project Q, a decentralized ledger that acquired Q.org for $500,000 in 2018.
As of publishing, Crypto.org resolves to an error page.