Both the Bitcoin.com domain name and its registered trademark have been put on the market following the bankruptcy of Japanese exchange company MtGox.
While bitcoin as a currency still exists, MtGox was the biggest company exchanging this digital currency. In February 2014, MtGox announced its bankruptcy and announced the loss of 744,000 bitcoins belonging to customers.
The loss was valued at around AUD$451 million at the time and made up 6% of the bitcoins in circulation.
Now, MtGox’s parent company, Tibanne, plans to sell assets including Bitcoin.com and the Bitcoin registered trademark, with the bundle valued at around ¥100 million (AUD$17 million).
Is The Bitcoin Domain Name Bundle Worth It?
Bitcoin is an extremely young digital currency. Released as open source software in 2009, it has gradually gained popularity in some commerce circles since then and has also received a lot of media attention.
The collapse of MtGox – one of bitcoin’s biggest champions in the past – predictably led to speculation of the death of the currency, but experts have said otherwise.
“MtGox filing for bankruptcy is not the end of bitcoin but it is the beginning of the end of bitcoin in its current form,” currency trader Alistair Cotton of Currencies Direct has told The Guardian.
“Over the last year we’ve seen ever-increasing usage and with it huge volatility in value and blows from banks and regulators. These are growing pains as the currency evolves in front of our eyes and the MtGox bankruptcy is part of that.”
Regardless of what happens to bitcoin as a currency, the trademark and .com domain name could be valuable investments.
For example, those invested in it will still want to check websites connected to it and people curious about bitcoin will still search for information about it online. With .com domain names still ranked highly on search engines, buying bitcoin.com gives some guarantee of traffic straight away.
What will be really interested, however, is to see who decides to invest in this domain name and trademark bundle and what they do with it. Will Bitcoin.com be a website for trading in the e-currency? Or will it be a resource for and about bitcoins?
The possibilities that come from a sale like this are really only limited by the strategies and creativity of the buyer. So now it is just a matter of the right person seeing value in Bitcoin.com.