On Tuesday, the ENS or Ethereum Name Service domain of amazon.eth received a bid of 1 million USDC or about 635 ETH based on current prices from an OpenSea anonymous user.
The offer to purchase the ENS domain had a deadline of Tuesday, 15:00 EST. However, the bid went unanswered without any transaction taking place.
According to OpenSea, amazon.eth was bought for 100 ETH in Oct 2019. The domain was transferred for 33 ETH in February this year to the user “4761BF”, who could have potentially netted a staggering 1900% profit had they accepted the offer.
It remains unclear whether the user was unaware of the bid, didn’t consider the offer fair, or if the bid was an attempt of wash trading – a manipulation technique used to inflate the price of an asset artificially. Other offers for the domain are currently in the 3,000 – 6,000 USDC range.
Even though an anonymous user made the offer, rumours suggest the bid might have come from the US retail giant Amazon.com, considering the price. Also, the fact that the offer was made in USDC and not ETH adds some weight to the speculations.
ENS allows users to link their wallet addresses to the domain name, making it easier for anyone to receive cryptocurrency payments. Since its inception in 2017, more than 1.6 million .eth domains have been registered by approx 482,000 owners.
Although the service is pitched as a Web3 development, some use the opportunity to make money through domain-flipping. It mainly involves registering names of prominent brands and reselling at higher prices. Till now, ENS transaction volumes on OpenSea have reached approx 46,200 ETH or around $72 million.
