I was looking at individual name categories, and I noticed that volumes in general seemed to be lower across several of the categories. I decided to take a big picture look at all name categories for which I have data, and the volume change over the past few weeks is quite dramatic (see bonus image). I don’t pretend to know why this is the case.
Maybe the Chinese domain market will end up showing seasonal / cyclical trends like so many things do. In the U.S., and many other parts of the world, this is a time of year when people are on vacation and not paying attention to work and hobbies. Is the same true in China? I don’t know, but I thought that time of year for the Chinese would be in the beginning of February with the Chinese New Year.
This is also the time of year in the U.S. where some investors are trying to wrap up sales and harvest losses for tax purposes. This may also be true in China.
Maybe I’m missing a large enough segment of the data, and I can’t see that sales have shifted to some platform I’m not paying attention to, or the timespan of the data is too short to see that this is normal.
Maybe the float is dwindling as Chinese investors hold tightly to their names waiting for a rise in price.
I don’t know the answer. I’m hoping some of you in the know can tell me (or at least speculate) in the comments below.
Most of the descriptions are easily understood, but just in case there are questions:
N = Numeric
I = Initial (a letter not including a,e,i,o,u,v)
C = Character (any number or letter)
I wish I had played in the numeric space, but didn’t – oh well.
But the one thing that I cannot (ever) understand is the appetite for 6+ strings of numbers, e.g., 83634826.com.
The purpose of being a domainer is to profit from your holdings, whether short-term or long. Check.
And the ONLY purpose of domain names is to serve as a ‘memorable’ online address, which will eventually become a ‘brand.’ Hence the basis for a domain name’s value — otherwise it’s completely worthless, from an intrinsic standpoint.
So while everyone understands the value of building a site on 762.com, or even 6549.com, I’d like someone to articulate how on earth a brand can be built on 274957205.com…?
Maybe you can help me understand WHY the Chinese, or anyone for that matter, is assigning real value to these lengthy strings of non-memorable characters.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks for the comment Gene. Both of the numeric domains that you reference are still available for reg fee, and I suspect that they will be for a long time. I do get what you are saying though. It remains to be seen whether or not 6N+.com names will continue to increase in value. I think that many of them will. In my opinion, a numeric beyond 6N isn’t about the rarity of the number anymore. It is about patterns, and good (some would even say memorable) patterns exist at the 6N and 7N level — 8675309.com was registered in 1997. Of course, on top of all of this are people scrambling to buy whatever they can for reg fee. As with all free markets, supply and demand will take over and we will see what they are really worth soon enough.
These numeric domains are a sort of quasi currency that the Chinese invest in to get it away from the peering eyes of their Government.
This is just my opinion but now since the Chinese Stock Market has picked up, these CHIPS are selling for cheaper, however I believe it won’t last for long as I feel their stock market is being manipulated temporarily. The day the stock market crashes again there will be a huge influx of Chinese investors to these CHIPS in a much bigger way.
Thanks for the comment Clayton. The Chinese government is willing and able to spend vast sums of money to prop up their economy and as an extension, the Chinese market. It may or may not be enough. Either way, I hope that there is a huge influx of additional Chinese investors to CHIPs.
The Chinese stock Market is actually plummeting. Don’t forget, they devalued the yuan recently. New York is down like a stone this morning, largely on emerging market weakness and no good news n commodities.
Yes, today is looking brutal for stock markets all over the world. It will be interesting to see what measures the Chinese government takes this time around. Their new rules for halting trading came into play today.
Low volume might be due to supply drying up, the way short domains were bought up in 2015 it’s amazing there’s any left. Supply has to go down at some point as the longer term investors hold their names. Other reason might be less Western sellers during the holidays. Let’s see what happens in January.
As for numeric domains, I’d say the longer you go, the better the pattern needs to be. I can easily remember 777888, but maybe not 385942 for example. That’s why you see a big premium paid for good patterns in longer numerics.
Agreed on all points @domains. I feel like we need to get past the Chinese New Year to really see what the market looks like for 2016.
Par example
8686666888.com
8686668888.com
8686868888.com
8888686868.com
I happily own 88664422/com and a few others, do I have a problem with the length …….absolutely not because the pattern is good. LOL ..I have a few 5N’s that I can’t remember
Thanks for the comment Numeric Shares. The 5N’s that you can’t remember will probably always be worth more than 88664422.com, but that is definitely a memorable one.
Ask this question a number of times but do not get an reply ? what is the difference between 八8 & 88
八8.cn reg by 阿里巴巴通信技术（北京）有限公司（原万网）Alibaba Communication Technology (Beijing) I can see that the character and numeral is for the home markets, it is accessible via a Chinese mobile and the home markets are massive. Does the character plus numeral carry the same cultural significance ?
Thanks for the question Jonathan. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the answer is. Hopefully a reader who is fluent in Chinese will be able to respond.