Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter in August to have his say on domain extensions. According to Vitalik, .IO and .ME are hot whilst .COM is “stale and boring”. Cryptocurrency, in general, is a hot topic at the moment, and Vitalik’s comments made us think.
Does the rest of the cryptocurrency industry share Vitalik’s sentiments on .COM being a stale, boring extension? What type of domain names and domain extensions are crypto companies really using?
To find out, we downloaded data from over nine-hundred companies listed on Crunchbase in the “Bitcoin” and “Cryptocurrency” categories. Below, we’re going to analyse the domain names used by these companies to see what conclusions we can draw. We'll look at the extensions, the keywords and aftermarket sales of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency domain names from our Crunchbase Pro list, which will hopefully offer an insight to those domainers interested in cryptocurrency domain names.
The Companies
Data for this article comes from a total of 909 companies listed in Crunchbase under the two categories mentioned above. From those companies, 252 showed up as receiving funding with $2.5 billion invested in these companies overall, working out at an average of $10.2 million per company. This funding may have come through conventional means such as venture capital, or via the currently popular Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
The Extensions
Which is the most popular extension amongst cryptocurrency startups? It should come as no surprise to you that the majority of companies own .COM domains. In fact, a total of 63% (573 companies) are listed as operating on a .COM domain.
This is less than we’ve seen in previous editions of Domain Data, where our tests have typically shown between 70% and 90% .COM adoption rate.
The most popular alternative to .COM looks to be .IO with 8.8% (80 companies) using a .IO name. This is followed by .CO, .NET and .ORG, which have an adoption rate of around 4% each.
Interestingly, one of Vitalik’s preferred extensions, .ME, occurs just eight times, equating to a 0.88% adoption rate.
The Keywords
Looking through the list of domain names supplied by our Crunchbase Pro license, it was incredible to see the amount of companies using keywords related to cryptocurrencies. Based on these stats, it seems that if you own any “coin” related .COM domain names, a startup may be interested in buying it. However, that’s not a prompt for you to start registering as many “coin” names as possible.
Out of the 909 companies listed, 102 domain names started with the word “coin”. These include popular companies such as Coinbase and Coindesk.
The second most popular keyword is “bit”, with eighty-one companies using the “bit” keyword at the start of their domain. This doesn’t include those using “Bitcoin”, which adds a further forty to that number.
Other popular keywords include “block”, “crypto” and “btc”. The list also includes the domain BTC.com, a name that sold back in 2014 for $1 million.
Aftermarket Sales
Aside from the $1 million sale of BTC.com, were any other domain names in this list purchased on the aftermarket? According to NameBio, yes, there are several. Ranging from five-figure sales through to low four-figure sales:
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Unfortunately, we are unable to share the original data since it was procured using a Crunchbase Pro license.
Does the rest of the cryptocurrency industry share Vitalik’s sentiments on .COM being a stale, boring extension? What type of domain names and domain extensions are crypto companies really using?
To find out, we downloaded data from over nine-hundred companies listed on Crunchbase in the “Bitcoin” and “Cryptocurrency” categories. Below, we’re going to analyse the domain names used by these companies to see what conclusions we can draw. We'll look at the extensions, the keywords and aftermarket sales of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency domain names from our Crunchbase Pro list, which will hopefully offer an insight to those domainers interested in cryptocurrency domain names.
The Companies
Data for this article comes from a total of 909 companies listed in Crunchbase under the two categories mentioned above. From those companies, 252 showed up as receiving funding with $2.5 billion invested in these companies overall, working out at an average of $10.2 million per company. This funding may have come through conventional means such as venture capital, or via the currently popular Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
The Extensions
Which is the most popular extension amongst cryptocurrency startups? It should come as no surprise to you that the majority of companies own .COM domains. In fact, a total of 63% (573 companies) are listed as operating on a .COM domain.
The most popular alternative to .COM looks to be .IO with 8.8% (80 companies) using a .IO name. This is followed by .CO, .NET and .ORG, which have an adoption rate of around 4% each.
Interestingly, one of Vitalik’s preferred extensions, .ME, occurs just eight times, equating to a 0.88% adoption rate.
The Keywords
Looking through the list of domain names supplied by our Crunchbase Pro license, it was incredible to see the amount of companies using keywords related to cryptocurrencies. Based on these stats, it seems that if you own any “coin” related .COM domain names, a startup may be interested in buying it. However, that’s not a prompt for you to start registering as many “coin” names as possible.
Out of the 909 companies listed, 102 domain names started with the word “coin”. These include popular companies such as Coinbase and Coindesk.
The second most popular keyword is “bit”, with eighty-one companies using the “bit” keyword at the start of their domain. This doesn’t include those using “Bitcoin”, which adds a further forty to that number.
Other popular keywords include “block”, “crypto” and “btc”. The list also includes the domain BTC.com, a name that sold back in 2014 for $1 million.
Aftermarket Sales
Aside from the $1 million sale of BTC.com, were any other domain names in this list purchased on the aftermarket? According to NameBio, yes, there are several. Ranging from five-figure sales through to low four-figure sales:
- BITCOIN.CO.UK - $30,000 (2016)
- BITCOIN.COM.AU - $35,182 (2014)
- BITCOIN.DE - $21,420 (2011)
- BITT.COM - $6,995 (2014)
- BITY.COM - $2,702 (2011)
- BTCC.COM - $58,000 (2015)
- COLU.COM - $10,000 (2016)
- FLEXCOIN.COM - $1,001 (2016)
- OKCOIN.COM - $2,295 (2013)
- SWARM.CO - $2,500 (2016)
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Unfortunately, we are unable to share the original data since it was procured using a Crunchbase Pro license.