We Have a Chance to Obtain Peercoin.org, but it will Cost us

General
1

So people have been bugging me on Reddit to get back in touch with the guys that own Peercoin.com and Peercoin.org to see if we can work out some kind of deal. Just for a little background, we own Peercoin.net, but not these two domains. The guy that owns Peercoin.com tried charging us 300k PPC for it and the guy that owns Peercoin.org felt it was worth between $5-$25k. This was back in October.

I tried getting back in touch with these people. The guy that owns Peercoin.com, his email is no longer working. I’m thinking maybe he sold it to somebody else, which is why it is now pointed at Litecoin.org. I looked up the current owners information and emailed them. I’m just waiting for a reply. I did however get a reply from the owner of Peercoin.org…

Hi,

I still own the domain.[/quote]
Our community has grown since the last time I emailed you. We could barely afford to pay for our logo design contest back then. If it means getting the .org domain back, it’s possible we might be able to raise a couple thousand dollars if we promote it through our social media accounts. I’m not sure until we try it though. Would this be acceptable to you or do you need more? We’re trying to contact the owner of Peercoin.com also. If they accepted, we could raise funds for both domains at the same time. What do you think?[/quote]
Hi,

/rant
I didn’t like how I was described in the Peercoin community, first as
cybersquatter and then of being associated with Litecoin. FYI 1) I have
no formal association with any other coin project; and 2) I have been
hand-registering crypto-currency related names since early 2010 and (to
the best of my knowledge) your project didn’t adopt ‘Peercoin’ as a
brand until months after peercoin.org was registered. I own hundreds of
generic .com/.net/.org domains describing names that were eventually
adopted by new coins and start-ups in the Crypto ecossystem - would
these entities be entitled to owning their names in other extensions too
despite having arrived later? I don’t think so.
/endofrant

Regardless, I can sell you peercoin.org. It became a traffic monster and
I am quite happy with its affiliate revenue performance, but I am
willing to depart with it for net $15,000 payable through Escrow.com. If
you agree, you don’t need to wait until you have the funds - I can point
it to your nameservers for up to a month or until you are ready to
proceed.

Please note that my offer reflects the current state of the Peercoin
project. In the future, if the project is even more successful, the
domain will likely generate more traffic, and I will have to adjust the
price again.

Regards,[/quote]
I believe you might be talking about this thread on Reddit…

[b]http://www.reddit.com/r/peercoin/comments/1wfwd0/peercoin_sites_going_to_bitcoinlitecoin/[/b]

Somebody on there was confused, thinking you owned both Peercoin.org and Peercoin.com. The person who owns Peercoin.com tried charging us the insane price of 300k PPC, which is about $1.6 million dollars right now. When they didn’t get what they wanted, they pointed Peercoin.com to Litecoin.org to upset our community. That’s why people are furious. I corrected the person in question in that thread and explained that the domains were owned by two different people and that you were actually more reasonable to deal with.

I will take this to the community though and see what they think. I can’t make any guarantees, because a lot of people are upset about it. Many are saying they’ll refuse to pay anything for it. Maybe some large PPC holders can squeeze out some money to help us out. I’ll let you know.[/quote]

So the price is $15,000 and he says that it has turned into a traffic monster. If his claim here is true, all that traffic should be going to the main website, not somewhere else. I know people are holding out until my Peercoin trademark goes through, but honestly, I have no idea if it will be accepted. I hope it will, but we have no way of knowing. If it doesn’t, then we’ll be back to square one and the price of this domain will be even higher.

Maybe our best course of action is to raise the funds and pay for it. We could promote it through Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and the forum. We could use Fuzzy’s forum donation link, which will help spread awareness about it in the process. People will then know they can go to the forum link to donate…

[b]http://donate.peercointalk.org/[/b]

If for some reason we can’t raise enough funds then we’ll just use what we did raise for other Peercoin projects. I think we might be able to get some of the big PPC holders to donate. They could take care of this pretty quick. If we did decide to do it though, I’d like to wait a couple days to see if the owner of Peercoin.com responds with an offer. What do you all think?

2

I’d be happy to chip in some funds if everyone thinks we should, otherwise more pressing issues should be addressed first

3

If we’re raising 15k for anything it shouldn’t be that. What a waste. So many other things we could spend 15k on that would be so much more useful. Maybe some day.

5

He’s lost the opportunity to benefit from the domain, in my opinion. It sucks that the community doesn’t have control of the domain, but as mentioned before, there are a lot better uses for $15k than paying off this jackass.

With SEO and globally accessible search engines, TLD domains are nice, but not critical.

6

I’ll go along with whatever you guys decide. The community knows best! :slight_smile:

7

I’ll have comScore traffic numbers in a few hours. At that point, we’ll have a better idea of the value.

8

$15k is a lot of money. Would it maybe be cheaper to apply for the trademark to Peercoin and then hire a lawyer? (just want to be sure all options are considered)

9

Check the first post. I already mentioned that.

10

Sorry, I missed that. :frowning:

You might not need a registered trademark. The owner of the unregistered trademark (Sunny King, FuzzyBear, Peercoin Developers?) may be able to apply to ICANN to get the domain name turned over.

11

It’s a lot of money but if we believe in peercoin we should buy it ASAP. It won’t get cheeper when peercoin increases in popularity.

12

I hate the thought to give those a… money for stealing us the domains.

I will donate if someone starts getting the domains via lawyer.

13

Thank you for finding more information Sentinelrv. I guess we know the owner is not of this community. (Or at very least a greedy member.)
It may be more beneficial to use funds of that magnitude in getting a Peercoin centralized exchange or even funding development on a hardware wallet. These would be well worth the $15k and create a lot more value for the Peercoin as a whole.
Even just funding that money and donating it a charity would probably have more of a positive effect then buying the domain.

14

[quote=“Hibero, post:13, topic:2007”]Thank you for finding more information Sentinelrv. I guess we know the owner is not of this community. (Or at very least a greedy member.)
It may be more beneficial to use funds of that magnitude in getting a Peercoin centralized exchange or even funding development on a hardware wallet. These would be well worth the $15k and create a lot more value for the Peercoin as a whole.
Even just funding that money and donating it would probably have more of a positive effect then buying the domain.[/quote]

+1. There are better use with the funds.

15

[quote=“redlee, post:14, topic:2007”][quote=“Hibero, post:13, topic:2007”]Thank you for finding more information Sentinelrv. I guess we know the owner is not of this community. (Or at very least a greedy member.)
It may be more beneficial to use funds of that magnitude in getting a Peercoin centralized exchange or even funding development on a hardware wallet. These would be well worth the $15k and create a lot more value for the Peercoin as a whole.
Even just funding that money and donating it would probably have more of a positive effect then buying the domain.[/quote]

+1. There are better use with the funds.[/quote]

I agree - 15k can be use better instead of buying the domain such as marketing or pr.

16

maybe a poll should be started?

17

at his point I dont think we need it.

I think we should get as many other domain names as we can…

18

I can donate 10 PPC if we do this. But I also think that $15k is a lot of money which can be better spent elsewhere.

19

Why do we actually need Peercoin.org? We have Peercoin.net

So long as search engines pick up Peercoin.net on search of the word “peercoin”, we are sorted

20

I have asked in the LTC forum, if some how someone in power can redirect incoming peercoin.com

21

Just a note, the owner of Peercoin.org is watching these discussions and has known about people telling me to use the trademark against him. Something to think about…

[quote=“Peercoin.org Owner”]Just a heads up.

I see some people arguing that if your Peercoin trademark is accepted
you can ask ICANN to give you the domain back. I have some 15 years of
domaining experience and I can tell you this route isn’t going to end
well for you. You can’t apply for a trademark after a domain was
registered and claim it was registered in bad faith. In order to take
over a domain, you have to prove bad faith registration as per UDRP
rules. The only things you’ll ever gain from such a move is having your
name inserted here: www.hallofshame.com, not to mention it will deeply
upset me and put any reasonable negotiation to an end.

My asking price of $15,000 is pocket change for many wealthy
Peercoiners, and is in the lower end of premium domain sales in general
(see www.dnjournal.com). Domains are unique and valuable virtual assets,
and it was actually for knowing this fact since 2000 that I realized in
2010 Bitcoin would be the next big thing.

Regards[/quote]