Liquid domains market: $18M domain sales reported by escrow.com in Q4 2017

Escrow.com sales volume went down 25% from $24M to $18M. According to Escrow.com, the most traded category in Q4 was 3C .com domains ($6.4M), followed by 4Ls at $4.6M and 3N .com domains at $3.97M, boosted by the record 3N portfolio sale by Rick Schwartz.

GGRG Brokerage Consulting and Giuseppe Graziano published the 4th quarter of 2017 Liquid Domains Market Overview partnering with Escrow.com and Estibot’s parent company Intelium and ShortNames.com.

This report is focused on 2017 Q4 and presents key statistics of the domains that are considered liquid in the domain name aftermarket. There are separate sections for each liquid domain name category: LL.com, LLL.com, LLLL.com / NN.com, NNN.com, NNNN.com, NNNNN.com / CC.com, CCC.com.

The report provides the percentage of domain name ownership of major regions (US, Europe, China, Rest Of the World, Private), development percentage, turnover, public sales volume, Escrow.com sales volume.

You can download the complete 18-page report here: http://ggrg.com/industry-report/

Here are some of the most interesting parts of Giuseppe Graziano’s executive summary:

DEVELOPMENT INDEX AND OWNERSHIP DATA
Following the trend in our past reports, China continues to be the largest net gainer of liquid domains, adding over 10,000 domains (1.64%) in Q4. China now owns 31.17% of all liquid domains, with Chinese registrants controlling over 50% of the 5Ns (a 5% increase from last quarter), 45% of the 4Ns and 42% of the 2Ns. The United States is a distant second at 17.51%, after losing 10% of the 2Ls and 8.28% of 3L domains in Q4. This loss could be explained by a rather large 9% increase in private registrations for 2L domains. Privacy also went up almost 5% on 5N .com domains, helping to reach a total of over 139,000 (21.67%) liquid domains under privacy. The rest of the world and Europe are stable at the 4th and 5th place, respectively with 7.64% and 7.13%. European owners represent approximately 10% of registrants in the most developed categories (2Ls, 2Cs and 3Ls), which suggests that liquid domains are perceived as brands rather than investments in the EU.
[…]

SALES DATA
In Q4, the disclosed transactions for liquid domains, as reported by ShortNames.com, nearly doubled from 5.4M to $9M. The total liquid domain turnover went up from 0.56% to 0.85% (3,449 to 5,256), confirming that there might be a negative seasonality factor in the 3rd quarter for liquid domain sales. At the same time, Escrow.com sales volume went down 25% from $24M to $18M. According to Escrow.com, the most traded category in Q4 was 3C .com domains ($6.4M), followed by 4Ls at $4.6M and 3N .com domains at $3.97M, boosted by the record 3N portfolio sale by Rick Schwartz.
[…]

FORECAST
Q1 is typically a slow quarter, with fewer transactions due to a decrease in activity around the Chinese New Year. It is possible that the fall in the crypto currency prices could generate additional liquidity from the investors who are looking to hedge themselves from high volatility. The performance of the equity markets could also influence the liquidity flowing into domain names. While the market is still uncertain, the overall negative trend is likely to continue even if a few large transactions in the most valuable categories might keep the overall sales volume high.

You can download the complete 18-page report here: http://ggrg.com/industry-report/