Giveth, China can taketh away — What China

Marketplaces cashed in on the Chinese gold rush, but the gravy train has slowed considerably.

Domain name marketplaces were buoyed last year by the market for short domain names.

Marketplaces were winners during the frenzied run-up in prices, playing middle man for a cut of the action.

57% of DomainNameSales.com’s dollar volume of sales last year were to Chinese buyers. China accounted for nearly half of the dollar volume of domain name transactions at Escrow.com. And Sedo’s weekly sales notes were chock-full of short domain names purchased by people in China.

These numbers are staggering. Essentially half of DNS’ and Escrow.com’s domain sales last year were from China.

I don’t know how these firms are doing this year, but I’m sure the volume is down considerably. Sedo’s weekly sales have reverted close to the mean. Domain name brokers have also told me they are seeing less action from China.

And prices of these domain names are dropping.

I don’t know where it will go from here, but I sure hope the firms that benefited from this last year didn’t bake it into their 2016 plans.