The beauty of dual personality domains

This domain is both English and Pinyin.

When you look at the domain OK.cn, what do you see? Many domain investors may see an English word that means agreement or acceptance. But it is also an acronym for two Pinyin words.

On November 28, 2019, billionaire Star Xu launched OK.cn and also started using the Chinese name 欧科 (Ou Ke) for the Chinese market. According to the OK.cn website, his company OK Group was founded in 2013 as a blockchain technology pioneer which now serves more than 180 countries and 50 million users. OK Group’s main domain seems to be OKcoin.com according to a Google search.

OK.cn was sold to domain investor Yao ZHANG (张尧) for more than $150,000 (7-figure yuan) in 2016 before Xu acquired it for about $1 million in 2018.

OK matches the Chinese brand 欧科 (Ou Ke) of OK Group. O is the acronym for the Pinyin word Ou (欧), which is taken from 欧几里得空间 (Euclidean space) to imply unlimited potential. K stands for Ke (科), which is taken from 科技 (science and technology) to imply strength in technologies. Together, OK is used to project the image of a savvy company offering unlimited potential in blockchain technologies.

While the OK.cn domain is a good choice for the Chinese market, the ultimate upgrade must be OK.com if it can be secured. In this case, OK is both English and Pinyin.

This reminds me of another domain with dual personalities: Alibaba.com. Alibaba is English and it refers to the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. In China, it is the Pinyin phrase 阿里巴巴 (A Li Ba Ba), which also happens to be the Chinese name for the brave man who defeats the forty thieves.

Therefore, a domain which is both English and Pinyin is great, because it works very well both inside and outside China.