OnlineDomain has attracted attention of domain community to .XYZ domain again. It’s reputation wasn’t flawless since the beginning. For example, fantastic growth in the number of registrations since it was launched, as it soon turned out, could be explained by the fact that domain names were given away for free. Moreover, registrants could have been absolutely unaware that they own a domain name in .XYZ zone.
All of this, however, did not prevent .XYZ from becoming the largest and, perhaps, the most famous among all new gTLDs. Lately it has regularly announced that some of its premium names had been auctioned off for a very high price. However, the post in OnlineDomain suggests that all these deals look quite suspicious as well. After checking some of them the journalist came to this conclusions. Domain 9.xyz that was sold on an auction in December last year for $175 thousand (one of the largest deals in the history of new gTLDs) today belongs to some Chinese investor Cui Kai. His name is associated to over 12 thousand other names in new gTLDs. Lion’s share of them is registered in .XYZ. The most interesting is that when you open 9.xyz you get automatically redirected to the page of the very .XYZ registry itself. The same is true for domains yy.xyz and 22.xyz, which were auctioned off for 38 and 26 thousand dollars respectively.
All of this allows suggesting that “record deals” are probably just another attempt of the registry to stir interest in its domain zone and to inflate it’s own worth. It’s possible that the domains are “bought” by people and companies associated with the registry on it’s money. In this case auctions for selling premium names of .XYZ are just putting the money from one pocket to another.
