As leveraged assets go down in value, the leverage multiples go up. Adding to that multiple is the falling dollar and the fact that these assets are in reality debt deposits, not cash deposits, that were passed on in different forms to be leveraged over and over.
In the mid 90's, Chris Clark, of Washington D.C., bought the web domain Pizza.com for $20. Earlier this month, he sold it for $2.6 million. What's in a dot com name? Apparently, millions and millions of dollars.
In the early days of the Internet, smart investors and web entrepreneurs knew that domain names would one day be worth big money. Topping the list? You guessed it. Sex.com, which went for $12 million. Following closely behind is Fund.com, which went for $10 million. Fortunately for Clark, when he first tried to sell Pizza.com, the Pizza Huts (YUM), Dominos (DPZ), and Papa Johns (PZZA) of the world weren't listening.
"At the time, we were explaining what the Internet was to them… It didn't catch on quickly," he reported in the Washington Post. But just a decade later they did, and Clark is now a millionaire.
But the salad days of domain name selling are just about over. In fact, now that all the straight-forward names have been purchased, more and more Internet companies are forced to use names that sound like… well… gibberish. Like what's Orgoo.com? Or Zipidee.com? Or Google.com (GOOG)?
As Hoofy and Boo find out, there's a lot more to naming the net than meets the i.
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