XC.com reported sold to Chinese travel company Ctrip

Alex Lerman, a long-time investor in generic domain names, was until recently the registered owner of  XC.com.  Alex confirmed on a phone call that he no longer owned  the domain.

Alex does not wish to publicly disclose the sales price.  He is known for not offering his domains for sale, so it likely took a substantial offer to persuade him to part with it.

The new owner appears to be giant Chinese travel company Ctrip.  Ctrip’s Pinyin name is Xié chéng, thus its interest in xc.com.

Ctrip is publicly traded on NASDAQ with a market capitalization of nearly 6 billion dollars.  Its market value has more than doubled in the past year.

This sale again demonstrates the tremendous impact that the Chinese have had on the domain market.  Domains that were out of favor, such as number domains and acronyms that include ‘x’, ‘q’, ‘j’, and ‘z’, are now in high demand thanks to interest from Chinese buyers.

Chinese buyers with an interest in two-letter dot-com domains have been good for Alex as last year he sold jd.com to another Chinese company for an amount that most speculation has in the millions of dollars.

 
Hat tip to the Chinese domainer who passed on the news

Updated 11/26