Over the past months, I have to admit I’ve become more and more worried about the state of the world. I’m a fact-oriented economist, so I hate it when it’s a gut feeling that bothers me rather than a specific scenario. Right now, I couldn’t say that Scenario X or Scenario Y worries me, I don’t have a specific threat in mind but due to the instability that surrounds us, I think it’s time to hope for the best but think about the worst as well.
As domainers, we obviously care about our livelihood.
And let me ask you, on what does our livelihood depend?
Why the good old Internet, of course.
Many domainers who are very successful right now would be absolutely ruined if something were to happen to the Internet for the simple reason that most of their wealth (the overwhelming majority) is tied up in domains. I interact with a lot of domain investors and the #1 financial mistake I witness time and time again is a chronic unwillingness/inability to diversify.
As humans, perhaps we’re wired to think we’ll just wing it.
Or to put myself in the position of the previously mentioned domainers, perhaps they just think that if the proverbial you know what hits the fan, they’ll just liquidate their domain inventory then and that’s it… but what if a cataclysm catches them completely by surprise?
A quick forced fragmentation of the Internet, for example.
Let’s not even talk about full-fledged wars or anything of that nature.
Quite frankly, if such an event catches you off-guard, you’ll be ruined. Even if such people seem downright rich on paper, all of that wealth will evaporate if they become unable to liquidate their portfolio.
I really hate being the downer of the industry but these things have to be said.
The average domainer is completely unprepared for life-altering events, I’m sorry but I feel extremely confident saying this. Completely unprepared. We just expect this Internet thing to continue working properly forever because… well, because it always has, right? We each live in our own little bubble, our energy is consumed by the various day-to-day activities that require our attention and so on. There are lots of genuine excuses but unfortunately, if something bad is to happen, it just will.
Nobody will care that you were too busy to prepare.
Or too caught up in your day to day routine.
Or that you didn’t know.
Or that you didn’t care.
… all it takes is just one cataclysmic event and bam, your life can be ruined. It’s not as if this needs to happen twice a day. It only needs to happen once and your entire world will be turned upside down.
Let me ask you, how resilient is the Internet really?
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the Internet can die of a cold. I do however firmly believe that it’s far less resilient than we consider it and that the likelihood of a disruptive event is far greater than we currently realize. After reading this post, just think. Please, just take 10 minutes out of your day to imagine what would happen if as of tomorrow, the Internet would cease to exist.
I’d love nothing more than to spend time offering actual domaining tips today rather than talk about this. Most of you won’t care about this stuff. Some will ridicule me, call me paranoid or whatever. That’s fine but it won’t stop me from saying something that I think needs to be said and by bringing it to your attention that the average domainer is completely unprepared for disruptive events.
February 20th, 2017 at 7:43 am
Important post, Andrei.
Frankly, most PEOPLE are completely unprepared for bad things to happen – whether those events are financial, geological, or social in nature.
It seems (to me) that the people who could be most caught off-guard isn’t the typical struggling family who lives paycheck-to-paycheck: It’s the corporate executive who has a $2mm 401K, which accounts for 90% of their ‘wealth’ – and thinks that their 25 years of hard work and saving has now solidified their ability to relax till their dying day.
Most of them don’t recognize that those electronic credits could disappear in a nanosecond from a major solar flare corrupting/destroying data centers, or a global-scale hack by a nation state.
While it’s hard to fault that exec for consistently ‘doing things the right way,’ the problem for most of them is that they’ve truly put their FAITH in that transient wealth. So while there’s probably a 90%+ chance that everything will work out as they’d planned it, there’s a very real possibility that it won’t. And to the point of your article, you could substitute ‘successful domainers’ for my example of a corporate exec – with the same analysis.
February 20th, 2017 at 11:23 am
Have a plan b and plan c. If you are in the city that won’t be good if sh#t hits the fan. Get some gold, silver have a place outside of town where you can head to. If you ever see a news report saying the banks will be closed for the weekend to update their systems that will be GO time. ie. Greece, Venezuala, etc,etc. Italy’s banking system is about to go crash. Why do you think the US sanctions on Iran? It was because they said they were dropping the dollar. Same with Iraq, their president was going to sell oil without using the US dollar. Well the good old boys can’t have that. If China says they will bail on the US dollar that will probably be the start of ww3. The US dollar is a massive house of cards waiting to implode. Bullets and chickens will be the new currency when it goes pop.
Remember when the power went out a few years ago on the Eastern side of the continent?? People died in condo’s, no heat, no air conditioning, no elevators, no water etc,etc……. The government will not do sh%t for anyone except themselves.