Cryptocurrency. The buzz word that made into the headlines in 2017 is not actually just disrupting the worldwide financial industry but it may also have an effect in the domain names as well.
Bitcoin, one of the most popular cryptocurrency has changed the way technology works and made early adopters possibly billionaires. Bitcoin mining has evolved from mining using your computer into setting up a dedicated mining rig to earn a decent passive income.
But with the popularity of Bitcoin, many “altcoins” or “alternative coins” has been aspiring to be the “next” bitcoin or most probably “defeat” Bitcoin along the way and be the “de facto” of Cryptocurrency. It’s a long long battle we should look out for!
While there are many coins out there popping out from left and right, there’s something in this age that amazes me: Domain Names.
The ICO Boom
Everyday you might have heard of the word “ICO” or “Initial Coin Offering”. It’s where coin developers offers a “Pre-Sale” of their coins before being listed in to top coin exchanges. It’s pretty much like buying a stock in an “IPO” or “Initial Public Offering”. Proceeds from the sales will help fund the coin project and launch it to reality.
So how do you get investors? They need a website!
The .IO Revolution
This is all gets interesting.
Historically the .IO domain was created for the British Indian Ocean Territory. But since the word “IO” has a deeper meaning in computer science: “Input/Output“, so it’s not obvious that it’s also a marketing tool in Facebook ads to check it out.
Interestingly, An .IO domain doesn’t comes cheap as the .COM domain. A .IO domain usually costs a $100 VS the <$12 .COM domain that you can get. Surely, that $100 doesn’t cost that much when you can convince investors in investing to your next big “Coin Idea”.
So with a lot of ICOs being offered from day to day, we should expect more .IO domains as well. The questions is, would the future of Cryptocurrency become the “Dot-com Bubble” but in the face of the .IO domain?
Only the future could tell.