Sedo suspends payments and transactions involving people in Russia and Belarus due to sanctions.
Domain aftermarket sales to people in Russia and Belarus will be curtailed due to sanctions.
Sedo, which is based in Germany and has employees around the world, notified customers today that it can no longer serve customers in the two countries or send/receive money from bank accounts in those countries. This applies to both buying and selling domains, and domain parking.
The company has also suspended trading in Russia’s ccTLD (.ru) and Belarus’ ccTLD (.by).
I know that people in Russia are fairly active in the domain aftermarket, so this could impact domain sales. Domain platforms in other jurisdictions might not face the same sanctions, but I imagine they will begin scrutinizing transactions involving people in Russia to avoid any potential legal problems.
Unintended consequences of these decisions will be felt in the long-term.
Per usual, the ‘commoners will suffer and the big wigs will gain whatever benefits are to be had from these present decisions.
The unseen consequences always show up later.
While still allowing thousand of BOTs (yes, I get thousands a month on my parked pages) creating fictitious traffic numbers at SEDO parked pages… Buyerss beware.
Not a bad thing.
I would like to see ICANN make sure that NO DOMAINS owned by UKRAINIAN individuals or companies OR Registered with Ukrainian Registrars , are allowed to Expire and thus get caught by someone else.
ICANN could, put any such expiring domain into a Holding account so when the
owners finally get back to Ukraine they dont find they have lost what may be valuable domains to them.
Maybe someone with contact with ICANN can please make this suggestion to them ?