Since
the current domain sales boom began
(soon after the start of the global pandemic that
forced countless businesses to create or
strengthen their online presence) we've gotten
used to seeing big sales in an increasingly wide
variety of TLDs. While .coms continued to
command the most money, TLDS like .io,
.co, .xyz and and a few others have
flirted with, or even surpassed the six-figure
mark. Now,
in the biggest .US sale we have ever been
able to verify, the ccTLD for the United
States of America (and the first ccTLD created
on internet in 1985) has thrown its hat into the
ring. Veteran domain investor Keith Trost
just sold Drive.us for $99,999 in a
Buy It Now transaction on the Afternic
platform (we've seen the documentation). |

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Keith,
who had the year's 4th highest reported domain
sale in 2020
with NAS.com at $720,000, doesn't
yet know who the Drive.us buyer is. As of this
writing, the domain is resolving to a GoDaddy
parking page, however the public WhoIs record now
shows a registrant email address tied to Mark
Monitor, a firm well known for managing domain
asserts for some of the biggest companies in the
world. So, odds are good the new owner's name,
when it is revealed, will be one that is already familiar
to a lot people.
The
$99,999 paid for Drive.us is a big jump from what
the highest publicly reported .US sales fetched last
year when Yellow.us and
PPE.us went for $20,000 each and Task.us
attracted $18,000. With the bull market
sending prices for one-word and short acronym
domains in .com into the stratosphere, short
domains in some other TLDs will likely continue to
attract buyers who either can't afford the
term they want in .com or can't get it at any
price due to it being in use and off the
market. The rising tide may not be lifting all
boats, but it is certainly lifting a lot more
than it used to. |