Bitcoin Forum

The bitcoin.com domain is owned by a person who hasnt updated the site for years and I believe people could be confusing that site with the bitcoin project. In fact I have personally seen that happen on many occasions and had to explain that no it isnt the bitcoin project.

Should there be a community effort to buy the domain using a bounty so it can be pointed to bitcoin.org ?

It might also lessen the chance that one day someone will buy it and register the trademark for nefarious purposes and anyone using bitcoin in their business name could be sued.

Personally I know what I would use such a written demand for but thats not the point.

This deal would also include the @bitcoin twitter account.

why so many care about dotcom domains ? what bad with .info or .org ?

There's still a large population who don't know there is anything other than .com.

If this is to happen, it should happen sooner rather than later. (For obvious reasons). Bitcoins dot com is also registered but unrelated to the bitcoin (having been registered longer). However, that one is currently for sale on a site at $5K. Not that it's necessarily worth that.

Have you already talked to the owner of the twitter and domain?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: yesssssss.

Bitcoin will never be mainstream with this sort of attitude.

You have to decide what you want:  Idealism, or realistic achievements and steps in the right direction?

I would choose idealism.  ;)
Verisign will shutdown your domain in the blink of one eye. That is crude and realistic.
I would setup an onion mirror for the main website.
Anyway, bitcoin.org is well positioned in google search for the "bitcoin" keyword.

Do you guys not understand how many people will NOT join bitcoins because bitcoin.com doesn't go anywhere?

Sure, verisign could shut it down.  But that doesn't happen often.  And you'd still have the advantage of using the domain in the meantime.

are you the owner of that domain ?   ;D

I think no, it doesn't matter. People these days simply search for something on Google or another search engine, they don't randomly type in bitcoin.com.

Oh yes, they type "bitcoin.com" into Google.

Haha, no I am not!  I am just trying to give some perspective... I am not a hardcore bitcoin fanatic, so I am trying to present a point of view than many of you seem to not think about.  It does seem that my cries fall on deaf ears though.... oh well.

Lol, so true...

I tried that, and Google replied "Did you mean: bitcom.org?".

Tres cool!

+1

I vote we don't give a fuck about bitcoin.com :D

My guess is that kind of users would not be able to use bitcoin in its current state anyway.

"JEEVES, WHERE CAN I FIND INFORMATION ABOUT BITSCOIN?"

I agree it'd be good to have.

I just had a look on Twitter and saw this:

Rofl if it happens will this be the first second-hand buy of a bitcoin domain in its history? Anyone flipped one of their regs yet?

This should have happened a year ago, could have got it for next to nothing.  :'(    Make knightmb buy it!! (jk)

Actually, I bought coinbalance.com for $7 not long ago because it seemed bitcoin-related, but just sold it yesterday for $250 to someone who doesn't seem to be part of bitcoin community at all... he'll be using it for a completely unrelated site.

That's some namepros shite right there man, gg ...

Where did you sell it for that much at?

Someone just happened to contact me privately on the catch-all I had set up.

Um, thanks? I'd never heard of namepros til you just mentioned it... checking it out now :)

Has anyone contacted the owner of bitcoin.com to see if he's interested in selling? At at what price?

simple: ddos the site, and then offer to buy it.

There's nothing there to ddos anyway.

then kill the owner and talk to the widow

then kill talk and ddos widow ghost&repeat.

preciooouuuusssssss....  :)

I agree, I think we should stick with just .org, but if you don't buy the .com domain, something like this is likely to happen:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9288.0

So for the Brazilian .com domain it looks like you're too late.

+1 Seconded.

Couldn't we purchase the .com domain and just forward it to the .org domain.  That is what Slashdot and sf.net both do.  Hell even EFF has done it (eff.net forwards to eff.org).

It wouldn't affect our rankings in the search engines at all.  Particularly if we set the .com to redirect to the .org using 301 redirect.

(Note: I started writing this post a few hours before it was actually posted. I may have missed a few posts in the conversation.)

I think that we should buy the domain. If it helps get just a few people interested in bitcoins it will be well worth the investment.
Has anyone talked to the owner about how much he wants for it? If we decide to do a group buy message me and I might chip in.


+1


+1


+1


Would you rather bitcoins to stay as they are now or to become widely accepted by the 'general' public?
We cant alienate people that aren't as tech savvy as the rest of us.

If you aren't tech savvy enough to figure out .org GTFO. 

I for one will not encourage anyone to checkout bitcoin who isn't open to the idea of decentralized currencies free from inflation.

i'm new to bitcoin - but with the increased value of the actual bitcoins, grabbing bitcoin.com should be rather trivial for the community - someone should just grab it. offer $500 - that could work, if not, offer $5000 --- or shesh - offer bitcoins - thats much more valuable then dollars already anyway....

that said - .bit is a great idea and definitely in line with what i gather is the spirit of the community. again, with the increased value of bitcoins the community should be able to float the $150k application fee/registration for a new top level domain and the $25k yearly maintenance fee.

personally, i'm on a mission to bend the web to be more understandable to regular people - from kids to old folks --- and am using ".is" - the top level domain of iceland - to accomplish this.

so i picked up http://coin.is --- which can reference http://bit.coin.is as well... or any other varient on the the cryptocurrency coin concept --- such as name.coin.is/ etc...

basically 'bitcoin' just redefined 'coin' at the root of it all --- do average people say they are downloading bittorrents or just torrents? nope. they call them 'torrents' --- bitcoins would well served to bank on that and mainstream a takeover of the word 'coin'


http://coin.is/1Gy8cVUKykZqQ5MmCyKMCi7ExwY8NvgeLA


can i have coins please?

I see no need for this, and I'd prefer if you'd not volunteer my money to be spent in this way.  No need for collective phrases such as "the community".  If you think it's essential, I recommend starting a thread with a bounty for getting the domain setup correctly. 

Yes, I'm sure making it that bitcoin stays being only excepted by a few online shops is defenetely the way to go /end sarcasm/

Doesn't anyone see that to make businesses except bitcoins as a method of payment a lot more people need to start using it, and not just those who know there way around PHP and C++ or even just top level domains.

Agreed with the sentiment already expressed: we should buy bitcoin.com if possible. If the currency is to take off, the Average Joes and soccer moms need to start using it, and refusing to take a .com domain simple because of ideology is, at the most polite, not pragmatic.

This is also completely distinct from the argument of "your grandma couldn't use bitcoin anyway, it's too complicated; she'd need a vastly simplified interface". Indeed, that would be a more than legitimate - and likely quite productive - use of the bitcoin.com domain.

+1 to that!
I found bitcoinsfrom remembering that you could run a screensaver to donate your cpu cycles when your Away so i had a bright idea to type in donate cpu cycles for cash and found a new world on the internet with its own ecnomoy and constantly active userbase. No no lets not male this main stream let the 4chan children find this one by them selves. Bitcoins shouldnt have to "put it self out there" it should be so explosive that people find out about from word of mouth. When you hear things comming from a close friend youll habe More trusting view point about it instead of finding it out the internet and think its for terrorist and drug money laundering.

It will be hilarious if the two bumbling idiot senators take down bitcoin.com without even realising the .org is the actual domain. That would really make them the laughing stock they are already.

>I see no need for this, and I'd prefer if you'd not volunteer my money to be spent in this way.  No need for collective phrases such as "the community".  If you think it's essential, I recommend starting a thread with a bounty for getting the domain setup correctly.

speaking of idiotic --- i thought that the namecoin folks were actually trying to acquire the .bit top level domain from the new ICAAN application process --- that is not what they are doing --- my mistake. apologies ---- i'm new here.

to get back on topic with bitcoin.com --- someone will grab that domain name and do whatever they want with it ---

Yeah, ICE.

I think it would be prudent to get the domain if that is possible. Are you able to contact the current owner of the domain?

This thread seems to have drifted a bit toward something like, "is .com too mainstream for the likes of bitcoins" but I agree with noagendamarket that it could be a liability for the legitimate bitcoin community if the brand were abused. I would chip in to a bounty to secure the .com domain for a group I trusted with the integrity of the community.

Large as in 99%

more ppl know about BTC -> more ppl buy/use BTC -> BTC is more stable -> BTC price is going up

so yes, bitcoin.com would be very nice for the community.

Incidentally,

The organization whose name used to be on the Bitcoin.com page, Bitcoin Ltd, has dissolved:

BITCOIN LTD
Company No. 06831070
Status: Dissolved 21/06/2011
Date of Incorporation: 26/02/2009

 - http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

Additionally,

Bitcoin.com site now resolves to localhost.

Additonally, the whois page for the domain shows: "Updated Date: 05-jul-2011"

Look at the IP it gives when I ping it:

ping bitcoin.com

Pinging bitcoin.com [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 127.0.0.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms


...I've checked my hosts file and it's not in there... how does this happen?

When it says that it was updated 7/05, that could be because the name servers were changed, or possibly the registrar (since it wasn't due to a renewal) ... which hints that the domain was sold. I could see it happening in a private deal.

Can anyone access old records and see the registrar and DNS info pre 7/05 ?

Bitcoin,com used to use a twitter account back in '09 (http://twitter.com/#!/bitcoin (http://twitter.com/#!/bitcoin)) which bitcoiners seemed to have followed just for the name. Their tagline was 'Making web payments flow'  and judging by Way Back Machine, the url was forwarded elsewhere.

I say focus on other aspects when trying to spread Bitcoin's name. Make more great Bitcoin accepting sites. User friendly Bitcoin programs. Promotion. Even if we did get the .com domain, will that help Bitcoin's exposure? If someone really wanted to know about Bitcoins, he'd search for it instead of just typing in bitcoin.com. Even if he did and got to that website, of course he'll be confused. Where will he go then? to google! Still the same.

Many big sites out there buy their equivalent domain in .com (and somtimes in a few other popular TLDs) and redirect to their intended URL when someone tries to use the wrong ones they caught; helps bring people when the addy is typed wrong as well as when the browser tries to guess the URL when the user types a word without a TLD (i've seen some browsers do that, even some that also do google searches, if it's a single word, first they try checking if there is a .com with that word before going to Google)

Even i occasionally type in bitcoin.com instead of .org when I'm out of it. Maybe we should offer to buy a re-direct instead of the domain (hopefully for a 10% of the price) if the domain price is exorbitant.

Yes, that info is listed here:
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=88.msg35976#msg35976

Hey thanks, an interesting thread there btw. satoshi posting, and hints of the trademark and .com/.org problems that have happened now.

But I didn't see what I'm looking for, which is the registrar (not registrant), currently godaddy, and the address of the name servers (currently ns1/ns2.domainmanager.com). I want to piece together whether the domain was transferred or the server was moved recently, because it could have been sold under the table this past week. I don't have those type of whois history tools that are pricey to use.

  - http://dnshistory.org/browsedomains/bitcoin.com.

    nameservers: linode.com.  (e.g., ns1.linode.com)

As far as registrar, sorry -- I don't know of anywhere that was recorded.

ahh thanks, didn't know you could get free dns history, some of the other records cost a lot to access.

Well, we may have a sale on our hands, unless they just happened to feel like re-hosting an unused site.

im voting yes, but maybe as a community pool or a committee to take ownership in the spirit of the project, i dont like single people owning these such things.

also with a pool ownership you can get more $ :)

Maybe raise some funding through glbse to do this.

yes.

What do you want to bet that asshole lawyer bought it?

How do we know Satoshi doesn't own this domain, and is waiting until Bitcoin gets massive (mainstream)?

We don't.

Also I agree with the GLBSE idea.  I think this would be a great way to pool money for it.

I'm agree with you in half because the risk is real but I thought that  is still a good idea to buy it to not confuse the people.

In any case I don't think that this might worry the project too much.

the real question is how much do they want for the domain name.
i bet something ridiculously high as to not make it worth it

If you type "bitcoin.com" into google it tells you to visit bitcoin.org.  Google has caught on!

Did we buy all not-already-bought bitcoin.* and bitcoins.* domains yet?

If not, howsabout we buy all those bargain priced ones before worrying about ones people are squatting on.

-MarkM-

P.S. Of course we already picked up all the freebies like bitcoin@gmail.com, bitcoins@gmail.com, bitcoin@yahoo.*, bitcoins@yahoo.*, bitcoin@hotmail.*, bitcoins@hotmail.* and so on, yes? If not what for are we looking to spend valuable coins when we haven't even done the free stuff "homework"?

(found this thread again, hooray)

Tradehill has bought bitcoin.com... anyone know how much they paid?

I was hoping to find that out too.

Too bad they beat the community to it.  I really think that should have been made a redirect to bitcoin.org.  :-\

guessing more then 10,000$

way more. i'd guess $50k+

naaaa

Bitcoin.de sold for $42,581... I'd be shocked if bitcoin.com was sold for less than that.