Sedo Reports Weekly Sales of $1.2 Million: High-T.com for $7500

5 Replies to “Sedo Reports Weekly Sales of $1.2 Million: High-T.com for $7500”

1. Could be case of money laundering (like I have said before).

   Selling domains offer a great opportunity to launder money since what would be worthless (cost $8 at Godaddy) to one person can be bought for $7500 by another with nothing more than comments about it being overpriced. There is no way to actually verify if a domain was worth what was paid since it applies to different people differently.

   Example, Person A provides $7500 in drugs to person B. Person A can’t show $7500 on their taxes without showing where it came from. They have to show they are getting an income from somewhere though or the tax man will think there is something fishy going on. They don’t have enough money to use more expensive methods to launder money (buying small businesses like on Breaking Bad) so they come up with a novel idea.

   Person A: Your name is “Bob” right?
   Person B: Yeah, why?
   Person A: Here is the $7500 in drugs. Now I am going to “sell” you this domain name, Low-B.com. You will pay me $7500 for it. People will think that you are crazy for buying it but we all understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This way I can say I made the $7500 off of a domain sale and you can say you spent the $7500 on a domain, not drugs. I’m happy, you’re happy and Mr. Tax man is happy since all income is reported.”

   On a small scale I don’t think there is a better way to launder relatively small amounts of money in the modern day than with domain sales.

   This is a sleeping giant that no one is talking about because it casts a bad light on the “industry” but a person would be a fool to think this is not happening right now all over the place.

   This is why I just shake my head at purchases that seem crazy like the famous PhoneMarket.com for $180,000. I’m not saying it was money laundering, just saying if it happened to be the participants could have done a lot worse.

   Maybe I should be watching my back at this point=)

2. @Troy

   It may sound crazy to some people, but I have
   suspected it for a long time. What better way
   to show an income? The only thing they have to do is develop it and put it on the web, but there have been many cases of valuable names bought for $Xxx,xxx and they are still parked and undeveloped.

3. They don’t even need to develop it. Just put up a parking page and claim it’s an “investment”.

   I would be much more surprised if this was NOT happening then if it WAS happening.

4. @Troy

   That is a very bold, slightly cynical statement but I totally see where you are coming from. There is no doubt in my mind that the larger, category-defining, asset domains are legitimately transacted for the benefit of market ownership or revenue generation, but some of these smaller sales are just too arbitrary to be arbitrary.

   On another note, blown away by the price of OfficeDeskChairs.com at $19k. OfficeChairs.com at $19k+, yes. DeskChairs.com at $19k+, yes. OfficeDeskChairs.com at $19k? Someone in the office furniture business has too much money.

5. Spot On with those comments but if these sales didn’t exist it would be hard to ask the money that most of us ask for our names.
   Overinflated sales = Overinflated asking prices = Overinflated sales and repeats over and over………In the end the absolute bottom line is it helps us get more money from the end user for our names not less!