The godfather of cryptocurrency domain names - ‘Crypto.com’ finally sold
Tuesday, July 10, 2018 IST
Cryptocurrency debit card company, Monaco has acquired the valuable domain-crypto.com from owner Matt Blaze for an undisclosed fee.
This sale of the domain comes as a surprise since owner Blaze was reluctant to sell the domain to any cryptocurrency company, despite multiple offers.
As per a report by Techcrunch, following the purchase of crypto.com, Monaco has decided to rebrand itself as “Crypto.com.”
Crypto.com was registered in the year 1993, by Blaze, a prominent cryptology researcher and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Since the boom of cryptocurrency, potential buyers have been knocking at his door, however, he has publicly informed the buyers that the domain wasn’t for sale.
Blaze is also known to be a strong critic of the word ‘crypto’ being used as an abbreviation for ‘cryptocurrency’, instead of ‘cryptography'. He added that it would have “bad consequences for both cryptography and cryptocurrencies.”
The University of Pennsylvania professor has refused to comment on what made him ultimately change his mind. However, Monaco CEO Kris Marszalek believes that is was not about money.
"If it was only about money he’d have sold it a long time ago,” he told Techcrunch.
While the fee remains undisclosed, speculations have suggested that Monaco paid anywhere from USD 5 to USD 10 million to acquire the valuable domain. This is significantly higher than the sale of other popular cryptocurrency-related domains sales; for instance, eth.com was sold for $2 million.
Monaco, the buyer firm, is a well-established name in cryptocurrency companies. However, it faced strong criticism last year for advertising Visa-branded cards, even before getting the approval by Visa. The company that was founded in 2016 in Switzerland, also has an automated cryptocurrency investment system and a mobile wallet app.
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