At the border crossing between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, dollars are not a valid a form of payment, unlike sheep or goats, week-old garlic bread and young brides. The Zakkenwasser family, however, were not deterred.
The Dutch family of five parked their crappy orange VW camper van on the shoulder of the D.100 state highway and were ready to pay for their passage with CHIPS – the Chinese letter LLLL .com domains no sane Westerner wants.
For two years, the family has been flipping four letter domains (“Chips”) on Chinese domain auction platforms and Flippa. After liquidating their assets, sold their retirement accounts and cars and they bet it all on these volatile “Chinese letters” domains, starting when they cost $30 dollars each until 2014.
Domain CHIP family
“We waited until the market crashed in 2018 and bought as many LLLL .com as possible,” said Pupu Zakkenwasser, patriarch of the so-called Domain Chip Family.
“Now, CHIPS are substantially more expensive, maybe the market will reach $300,000 dollars per domain in 2021, maybe not, who knows!” exclaimed Pupu Zakkenwasser.
The Zakkenwasser family is on the road, having visited more than 115 countries, despite the Coronavirus pandemic. They stay in their cramped VW camper, wash clothes in the rivers and lakes, and eat squirrels, deer and steal vegetables from the gypsies. But they don’t spend a penny more than what they make from the sale of CHIPS.
“When I told my wife, Kut, that we’re going to live off domain names, she said I’m a crazy mother*ucker,” exclaims Pupu Zakkenwasser, adding: “I love that crazy b*tch and I proved her wrong by the numerous sales we scored on eName, 22.CN, NamePros, Flippa, and NameJet. All CHIPS!”
If you have CHIPS, their value is going up, fast. In Turkmenistan, one can buy two ducks, ten kilos of potatoes, and rent an old lady to cook and clean for a day or two. If you feel adventurous like the Zakkenwasser family, now it’s your change to get on the road by using your LLLL .com domain names.
This, sadly, could’ve been a true story for many who owned Chip LLLL/NNNNN .com domains before they reached peaks of $300, which in retrospect was quite cheap as they ballooned to over $2500 in most cases (when I got out). Anyone who had a portfolio of 100+ of either of these names could very well have survived 115 countries after the peak of LLLL / NNNNN which could’ve ranged from $250,000 to a $1 million+, depending on the letter/number combinations of course. There was one guy I remember on the forums who had hundreds of NNNNN domains and his wife made him drop them because renewal was presumably around $1000 per year and they weren’t worth but $20 at the time. Shortly thereafter, even his worst domains could’ve sold for a low of $300 (zeros and fours) and four to five figures for the perfect combinations to an entire portfolio drop of $500k-$1m. I hope that guy is okay now and his wife isn’t mad at her decision… (True story so my heart goes out to them for having weak hands) — I am now seeing “CHIPS” dropping and being sold for $300-$500, which I am now picking back up to replenish my portfolio because the world pandemic may be causing the drops, to be worth more