.Rich picked up 3 registrations yesterday which is notable since it represented an addition of 8% to its registration based which increased from 46 to 49.
.Rich has the highest cost of any new gTLD with a regular, non-premium registration fee as high as $3,000 per domain name registration.
What makes it even more notable is who registered the three new .Rich domain names.
These are three new registrations were:
Jingdong.Rich
PaiPai.Rich
Vixun.Rich
Jingdong which purchased then changed its name to JD.com, was formerly known as 360Buy, and is one of China’s largest B2C online retailers and now listed on NASDAQ with a $30 Billion dollar market cap.
PaiPai is another company owned by JD.com which is described as a paypal type of service, and seen as a possible competitor to Alibaba.
Vixun is another company that JD.Com acquired from another giant Chinese company, Tencent.
Unless you have been leaving under a rock in the domain industry you know that the Chinese have become huge players in the domain space not only acquiring some of the most expensive publicly announced domain sales on the aftermarket but in the new gTLD space.
Chinese IDN, New gTLD hold 4 spots in the top 30 new gTLD’s in terms of registration plus .Wang which is predominately registered by those in China is the 4th most popular new gTLD with over 77,000 registrations and one China based registrar has over 100,000 .XYZ registrations putting it right behind Network Solutions for the most registered .XYZ domain names.
And the benefit to JingDong from these 3 .RICH domains is … ?
$9k for a blip of publicity in perhaps no more than one domain blog? That wouldn’t be rational.
Marketing within China? Using the English word “rich”? Doubtful.
Conspicuous consumption? $9k isn’t enough to impress.
Superstition? That’s my hunch. As if use of .RICH could confer good luck and future wealth.
What other explanation is there?
It could be a defensive registration because PaiPai is taken in almost every new GTLD.
Vixun and Jingdon is available in almost every GTLD so not sure why they would secure so many with one company but not with the others.