If you're holding a yard sale, and I point at some knickknack and ask "how much for that?", and you say "it's a dollar" and I say "that's a deal", that's a contract.

Same. I'm also really curious now how the clock will handle changing the text for the current day, from an animation point of view.

Is it his? Fantastic if so.

The code for that 'did the rounds' back in the early 00s. I had it on my site for a while, but changed the code so the outer text spun like a sort of bouncing helix around the outside of the clock face. I never did know where the code came from though, and I had a note in my page source saying "Is this yours? Is it OK that I'm using it?"

Looking at this page's source it seems to have come from "www.rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com", though that site appears dead. It was referenced from an HN comment as recently as 2018 though...

Well, whoever you are rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com, thanks for the clock and the memories. I haven't seen that in nearly 20 years.

I'm not up on domain name pricing. What would you estimate the fair price to be?

Meh. He’s the same age as the current US president and rather close to the prior. Warren Buffet, sharp as a tack at 91, just wrapped up another Berkshire Shareholder meeting. Jump appears to be very much in the wrong here, but I don't think we need to characterize this as the domain owner is feeble-minded or out of touch: the guy has owned a domain since 1994.

The rest of the actions or how we feel about the power dynamics are not really relevant.

Keeping your name out of the press and staying secretive is incredibly important and I'm shocked that they didn't just throw a fair amount of cash to this guy directly or offer it up as a donation to some Carl Sagan foundation (and offer to let him keep his e-mail address). $200k for a shop like that is literally the shells of peanuts and worth it to keep your name out of people's mouths.

Have long been in the game.

With free data and free APIs being ubiquitous in this industry from the ground up, its too tempting

Tradfi is not competing and largely in the same place it was 15 years ago. Have fun with paying to implement FIX protocol

On the other hand I believe FTX basically made their money trading arbitrage between the Asian and European markets on the price of bitcoin.

Wormhole and Pyth and two projects they contribute quite a lot to all in the open.

1994, when he registered it, was a great year for domains. As the article says, everything was still available. I registered all sorts of goofy things, but back then no-one was thinking they would be worth anything. They were also FREE in 1994. Shortly after they started charging a yearly rate for dotcoms and I let all but one lapse, to the loss of many millions in future revenue...

However, there must be an intent to enter into legal relations by both sides, and I'm uncertain that Merryman's actions demonstrate this. Further, I'm not sure that stating a price for the domain alone provides sufficient certainty of terms for there to be a valid contract (there is no discussion, for instance, about when the domain is to be transferred or when/how payment is to be made). The details of the initial communication from Jump may be relevant here - say if they invite counteroffers and it is clear they want to enter into a binding contract, or the other details are specified by them and the only part Merryman proposes changing is the price. It's also interesting that "Jump subsequently raised its bid", as this could be seen as an acknowledgement that no contract was formed at the earlier stage.

He merely received an offer that satisfied his criteria - he did not agree to also accept that offer. See 323's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227141

Generally, if the parties don't have a signed agreement, but act as if terms in an informal exchange are binding, the court will uphold the informal agreement even if one of the parties changes their mind. But in this case, the undisputed evidence is that one party didn't act as if they were bound by their informal correspondence.

And furthermore, courts have almost never upheld an informal/unsigned agreement between a corporation and an individual as binding against the individual.

Another example would be real estate listings, to which this is quite close. They have a definite list price, realtors most certainly say things like "the price is $XXX", and yet it's still on any potential buyer to submit a formal offer to buy with a specific price which the seller may or may not accept. If this weren't the case and such communication was considered positive offers, then we would rarely see things like houses being sold over their asking price.

any amount? For 60k you can probably hire an assistant full time to go through all your emails/browsing histories and switch them over.

I'm not sure exactly how this would break down, but I imagine the agreement could lay out specific responsibilities and penalties.

It's funny to see so many people trying to justify the ridiculous. My children try this all the time.

Jump imagines the seller cares about their long-term reputation for honoring their offer as a market-maker.

He could not give a hoot.

A verbal or written counteroffer is not a contract. How long does Jump imagine they have to accept counteroffer? Eternity? Silliness & slimy legal jiu jitsu.

As for the latter, they will still want to use some email addresses on the domain and not want to rely on a 79-year old individual to manage it for them.

2. There was no offer to sell, only a declaration of a price.

> Under the policy, most types of trademark-based domain-name disputes must be resolved by agreement, court action, or arbitration before a registrar will cancel, suspend, or transfer a domain name.

> ... file a complaint in a court of proper jurisdiction against the domain-name holder ...

Emphasis mine. You don't have to choose arbitration.

Why not? The whole story seems like a contract dispute, which most definitely is in the jurisdiction of local courts.

I think you mean "arbitration".

Why do you think the UDRP has any bearing on what Jump can do in court? ICANN can't make up rules that apply to third parties; there's such a thing as privity of contract! The UDRP may be incorporated into the contract that Merryman agreed to with his registrar, but Jump isn't a signatory to that agreement.

There are a very small number of shareholders (though, to be pedantic, the correct term is "member" rather than "shareholder" since all the related US organizations are LLCs rather than corporations) and it seems extremely likely that those members would agree with the firm's actions here.

That's not squatting just because someone with money wants it.

If an email with a number in it was a binding offer, then what is a contract for?

Edit: I see that you edited in an additional paragraph at the end of your comment after my initial reply. If you’re editing a comment after-the-fact, it’s good practice to make it clear for future readers.

Bloomberg quotes a corporate lawyer who claims that the $50k price constituted a "firm counteroffer," which could be accepted, but they chose the wrong expert to ask.

Generally, for contracts between corporations and non-corporate entities, legal formalities are required to make the contract binding. This almost means a signed written agreement where the terms of the exchange have been specified.

Between corporations, or between individuals, courts have been willing to relax the requirements for formalities (meaning, not requiring signatures, or not requiring a single document laying out the agreement between the parties). But between corporations and individuals, courts have been very, very insistent on observing legal formalities, due to the extreme power differential between the parties.

It's very likely that Jump will settle this case. Even if they somehow win at trial, the domain owner can simply appeal and keep hold of the domain name for years before the appeal is resolved.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

People/companies suing people over domains isn't new. See for instance, nissan.com

They are desperate to become the new middle men so they fight dirty.

Yeah, I don’t get how they see this as a good move.

Sorry to shatter your illusions, that's not specific to crypto at all. Disney lawyers are far less child-friendly than the company's content, and so is pretty much every major corporation. Just this week, I remember Zara (the fashion retailer) sueing a one-woman-run boutique named House of Zana. A bit before they also sued a women's empowerment business called Tara Sartorial (yes, because of likeness of the names). The number of tiny independents that Jack Wolfskin has sued for putting anything resembling an animal footprint onto pretty much any fabric is countless. We could go on here.

https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot...

Because some people do not give a fuck. We're talking about people who support valuation of assets based on speculation with no actual economic value while pumping out oceans of CO2 and wasting copious amounts of energy to have computers, to simplify a bit, guess a number somewhere between 0 and 2^255 for the privelege.

Seems on brand.

> Merryman hadn’t been serious about selling, he said, throwing out what he viewed as a high offer to get them to go away.

If he wasn't serious about selling, he should have said so and moved on. It seems smarmy to quote an offer price without a sincere intent to sell.

The point here is:

- someone with knowledge of something’s value tried to by something - person who owned it realized that they didn’t know the value - person realized the value and decided he wasn’t going to undercut himself.

Now in this situation, you’re calling the 79 year old man greedy, rather than the company being greedy? The company that is fairly-clearly trying to run an old man over with legal fees to steal something that they don’t own?

There’s no world where Jump should be suing this person. There’s no contract here. Jump is just being greedy and is trying to bully this person into selling the domain.

He's not obligated to sell it for any amount of money, and he's definitely not done anything that he should be sued over.

He's free to be as greedy as he wants to be, and the company are free to either pay up or go away. But bringing him to court because "wahhh he won't sell to us" does seem ridiculous.

They offered initially $ 2,500.

Then he replied saying that the price was $50,000.

Then he rejected the offer of $ 50,000 and was offered first $ 100,000 and then (through a different agent) $ 200,000.

Of course IANAL (and know anyway very little of US Laws) but if this corporation really-really believed that the $50,000 reply actually amounted to a binding contract, they should have attempted to have it respected immediately, the two later offers, doubled each time, sound nothing like "good faith" (probably irrelevant in court, still ...).

However even if this was his long con on owning the domain having proposed a number in email seems unlikely to form a contract that he must sell it to them at that cost but I suppose we'll see.

Not getting a current market value offer an blindly accepting isn't greed. Being 79 with a domain you carried for years can be worth more than 100,000 which after taxes is much less.

What do you think motivates the algorithmic trading company trying to buy the domain?