I live in Europe where we actually have a DEFLATION problem rather than inflation concerns but in a lot of other countries, especially in Asia and South America, currency devaluation is a huge, huge threat. In my opinion, the idea of protection against currency devaluation has perhaps been the main driver of short domain prices.

As weird as it may seem to someone who lives in the United States (where the dollar has actually gotten quite a bit stronger over the years, not weaker) or Europe (where, again, deflation is our main concern and not inflation), currency devaluation is the main threat in a lot of countries.

I mean just look at Brazil, a country everyone praised during the commodity boom (a part of the BRICS block, Brazil-Russia-India-China-South America) and which is currently experiencing DOUBLE DIGIT inflation.

… or even Canada, another commodity-rich country which has seen its currency go down a lot lately.

China is, of course, yet another country in which the population is always trying to protect itself from currency devaluations and all of a sudden, we realize why short domains are so appealing.

Don’t make the mistake of living in a bubble.

Understand that for a lot of countries, currency devaluations represent the main risk and that people want to protect themselves against. Our industry is ridiculously small in the grand scheme of things and even a bit of interest (as a percentage of the total population) from a country such as China has a huge effect.

How much longer will this appetite for short domains last?

I don’t know but the current state of affairs I’ve referred to might indicate that it the short domain boom may very well last longer than most domainers anticipate.

Nobody knows anything for sure, which is why I hate making predictions (your guess is as good as mine) but again, we may be earlier in the game than a lot of domainers realize.