In 2018, domain investor Braden Pollock sold the domain Q.org for $500,000, which still ranks as the second-largest .org domain sale of all time, according to NameBio.
For over two years, the identity of the Q.org domain buyer was unknown. Visiting Q.org didn’t help much, either, with the domain holding a simple overview of the forthcoming Q project.
Earlier in 2021, however, Q.org launched the Q Blockchain, an open-source project that is building on Ethereum technology in order to produce a blockchain that is “a public, open, decentralized ledger with governance concepts that have been tried and tested in established legal systems.”
More details of the Q project can, of course, be seen at Q.org, but who owns Q.org?
The domain is owned by the Q International Foundation’s subsidiary, Q Development AG, a company registered in Liechtenstein.
Based on my research, Q Development AG was registered as a company in September 2020 and its directors are Ute Dürtscher, Martin Schmidt, and Nicolas Biagosch. Biagosch is a managing partner of Postera Capital, a professional advisory firm that focuses on investments in blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Q International Foundation, the parent organization, was registered in Liechtenstein in August 2020, almost two years after Q.org was purchased for $500,000.
Despite knowing that the domain is owned by the Q International Foundation and Q Development AG, I believe the identity of the key figure(s) behind the Q project has been hidden through the use of Euro Treuhand, a company formation service.