ai.com's Debut Flop: After $70 Million Transaction, Did It Get a '504' Timeout?
Original Title: "From $70 Million Mega Deal to Day One Crash, ai.com's 'Grassroots' Debut"
Original Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily
Over the weekend, in addition to the "Bithumb Airdrop of 620,000 BTC" incident, another news broke the circle and sparked discussions: the mysterious buyer behind the premium domain ai.com finally surfaced. Contrary to many people's expectations, the buyer was not from a AI giant, but rather from Kris Marszalek, the co-founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange platform Crypto.com.
This deal, reached in April 2025, amounted to a whopping $70 million, allowing the outside world to intuitively sense the astonishing financial power of the crypto community. This transaction not only concluded all ownership disputes surrounding the domain but also put an end to the "top-level domain pointing war" among giants like OpenAI and xAI.
ai.com Domain Dispute: A 3-Year Long Mega Deal Battle
In November 2022, following the emergence of ChatGPT (GPT 3.5), AI became a contemporary discipline, and related domain prices naturally soared.
In February 2023, there were rumors that the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, had acquired ai.com, which was later confirmed to be fake news. However, the listing price of $11 million for this domain in 2021 still stunned many.
In August 2023, the ai.com domain pointing address was changed to the AI company xAI under Musk's ownership, once again attracting significant attention.
Since then, more information about this premium domain has been unearthed: the domain was first registered in May 1993, more than 30 years ago, making it a long-standing historical domain. However, Musk remained indifferent to this matter, once again making it clear to the market that changing the domain pointing address was just a marketing tactic for the ai.com domain holder to "wait for the right offer."
Its reappearance in the public eye was the recent revelation of the "selling price reaching as high as $70 million."
Public information shows that Crypto.com's co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek successfully acquired this premium domain, setting one of the highest domain transaction records publicly disclosed to date; this transaction was facilitated by domain broker Larry Fischer, with payment in cryptocurrency. For reference, this mega deal was twice the price of the previous top-level domain sale of voice.com.
As a well-established cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2016, Crypto.com has always been renowned for its "bold marketing moves," previously conducting market campaigns through sports sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, and more. In 2021, they even splurged $700 million to secure naming rights for a sports arena in Los Angeles.
During a media interview, Kris Marszalek revealed that they had "received more exaggerated resale offers but chose to hold onto the domain name" because he believed this domain name would be crucial for future business trust and awareness. Moreover, he made a bold statement: "Just as we emerged victorious among thousands of cryptocurrency exchanges back then, this time we will also make ai.com successful again."
Thus, the years-long battle surrounding the ai.com top-level domain name has finally come to an end. Just as the market was anticipating and speculating on how Kris Marszalek would use this domain name, he unexpectedly made a big move.
The Botched "Product Launch": ai.com Goes Live but Crashes Within 48 Hours
Crypto.com's Co-Founder and CEO Kris Marszalek posted, stating that they had been silently Buidling after acquiring the domain name and would launch a product during the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 8th. He then mentioned that with the help of the AI Agent on ai.com, users would quickly be able to deploy their own agents to perform a series of operations on their behalf, such as stock trading, automated workflows, calendar scheduling, and executing daily tasks, all maintaining privacy, based on user permissions, and fully controlled by the user.
However, amidst much anticipation, ai.com put on a "crash performance" within less than 48 hours of going live.
This morning, NVIDIA engineer yuhang posted, "This $70 million domain, after an $8 million ad (note: typical Super Bowl ad price), threw a 504 error."
One has to admit that after this incident, it once again confirmed the saying, "The whole world is just a slightly larger stage play."
At the time of writing, the ai.com website has been restored, allowing users to pre-register personal subdomains and AI Agent subdomains to easily experience the platform's corresponding functions. As for whether Kris Marszalek's envisioned "autonomous AI Agent" can be achieved, the author is currently reserving judgment.
The "Mainstreaming Journey" of Crypto Big Shots: Some Buy Houses, Some Buy Power Plants
Another hot topic brought up by the Crypto.com co-founder and CEO's $70 million purchase of a premium domain name is the various mainstreaming journeys chosen by crypto big shots.
Previously, we saw Justin Sun spend millions to win a lunch with Warren Buffett. More recently, the actions of crypto big shots have become even more diverse:
Aave founder Stani Kulechov purchased a £22 million (approximately $30 million) mansion in London's Notting Hill area last November.
Tether CEO Paolo, on the other hand, is more focused on "putting eggs in different baskets." It is reliably reported that Tether has invested its stablecoin business profits in 140 investments covering sectors from agriculture to sports, and plans to expand its staff to 450 people. In addition, Tether's gold reserves have exceeded $23 billion.
In November last year, Justin Sun acquired two small hydropower plants in Norway in one go through his family office SunFund Energy. The total installed capacity is 86 MW, with an annual power generation of about 350 GWh, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 40,000 European households. In the era of AI exploration, Sun, who has always been bold and proactive, chose to hold the "power ticket" to board this era train.
Regardless of the investment results, cryptocurrency has become more widely known in various news as a payment currency, personal symbol, asset class, and more. Perhaps this is also an indispensable part of the mainstreaming process of cryptocurrency.
You may also like
Cryptocurrency CEXs are flocking to sell US stocks, and traditional brokerages are facing an "uninvited guest."
Will the SpaceX IPO Hurt Bitcoin? Here's What Traders Are Watching
Foreign selling in the South Korean stock market accelerates, with cumulative net sales reportedly reaching $75 billion this year
On June 9, The Kobeissi Letter, citing Goldman Sachs data, reported that global investors are selling South Korean stocks at an unusually rapid pace. In the latest trading session, foreign investors sold about $801 million worth of Kospi constituent stocks again; total foreign outflows last week reached about $10 billion, and the market has been in net foreign selling on nearly every trading day over the past month. According to the data cited in the report, foreign investors have sold about $75 billion worth of South Korean stocks so far this year. Meanwhile, South Korean retail and institutional investors together recorded roughly $69 billion in net buying over the same period, suggesting that the market’s main buying support has come from domestic capital rather than returning overseas funds. The information currently disclosed still mainly comes from The Kobeissi Letter’s retelling and Goldman Sachs data summaries, while public details on the statistical period and the specific definition of “selling” remain relatively limited.
Fortune Warns of Strategy’s Financing Structure Risks as Bitcoin Premium Narrows
Fortune warned that Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury model faces growing financing risks as MSTR’s net asset premium narrows and preferred stock dividend pressure increases.
Ferrari Challenge Le Mans: Carl Moon to Dominate in WEEX Livery
Sahara AI Responds to SAHARA’s Sharp Drop: No Contract or Product Security Issues Found, Internal Investigation Underway
Sahara AI responded to SAHARA’s 60% price drop, saying no token contract or product security issues have been found and an internal investigation is underway.
WEEX Deposit/Withdrawal Dynamic Island: Your Asset Status, Always in Sight
Scaling Crypto Derivatives: The Digital Asset Infrastructure Behind High-Volume Trading
In the fast-moving digital asset ecosystem, derivatives platforms face an extreme architectural test. High-leverage futures markets demand more than just standard security—they require absolute operational precision, zero-latency matching engines, and ironclad structural scalability, all while navigating intense market volatility.
As global platforms scale to meet these demands, the industry is shifting away from rigid, monolithic setups toward a more agile, "decoupled" infrastructure philosophy.
The Blueprint for High-Volume Copy TradingFor elite global exchanges like WEEX (founded in 2018), this architectural choice becomes critical when scaling high-volume retail features like social copy trading. When thousands of users automatically mirror the real-time strategies of elite traders simultaneously, it triggers sudden, monumental spikes in concurrent transactional volume.
To prevent execution latency or settlement bottlenecks during these peak volatility events, a platform's primary engine must remain entirely dedicated to risk management, copy-trade synchronization, and order matching.
The Architectural Rule: New-generation platforms must separate front-end user execution engines from heavy backend infrastructural overhead to eliminate operational friction.
By separating these layers, platforms can maintain complete sovereignty over their trading environments and user experiences while strategically aligning with institutional-grade infrastructure ecosystems. This strategic framework allows modern exchanges to leverage advanced Digital Asset Custody infrastructure such as Cobo’s behind the scenes, ensuring that backend wallet management scales elastically alongside trading spikes.
Capitalizing on Market Momentum and 400× LeverageIn a derivatives arena where platforms offer up to 400× leverage on perpetual contracts, capital efficiency and market agility are core business metrics. To capture market momentum, an exchange needs the ability to rapidly expand its asset offerings, supporting everything from legacy crypto assets to sudden, trending altcoins across a massive library of trading pairs.
Adopting a flexible, scalable Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) solution such as Cobo’s could completely rewrite the development timeline for high-growth exchanges. Instead of spending months of engineering capital building out custom backend wallet architectures for every new blockchain network, platforms can deploy localized infrastructure in days.
This agility allows platforms to instantly scale their listings to over a thousand trading pairs without compromising security or delaying time-to-market. It mirrors the exact operational advantages seen during high-velocity market events, similar to how advanced wallet infrastructure empowers platforms during sudden asset surges; allowing exchanges to pass that speed and liquidity directly to their global user base.
A Mature Foundation for GrowthThe synergy between trusted infrastructure ecosystems and global trading platforms represents the natural evolution of a maturing crypto market. As WEEX continues to scale its global spot and derivatives offerings for over 6 million users, adopting robust backend paradigms proves that platforms no longer have to compromise between cutting-edge trading velocity and uncompromised structural security.
Morning Report | BitMine increased its holdings by 126,971 ETH last week; trader Eugene announced his exit from the crypto market
Wang Chuan: How can one not feel anxious after the neighbor Old Wang made thirty times profit by investing in storage stocks? (Seven) - A quarter-century cycle
Get Paid to Onboard? Try WEEX’s New Homepage with Rewards for Registration, Deposit & Trade
WEEX Custom Layout: Build Your Perfect Trading Workspace in Seconds
See “Buy Walls” & “Sell Walls” Instantly: WEEX Launches the Depth Chart for Smarter Trades
What Is Quick Trade on WEEX? 2 Ways WEEX Ends Chart-Panel Jumping
Morning News | Five major virtual asset platforms in South Korea have experienced 57 incidents of hacking and system failures in six years; Grayscale submits registration application for Canton ETF
Should we escape the peak? The principle of the tail-end market in the stock market
RootData: May 2026 Cryptocurrency Exchange Transparency Research Report
Founder of Baixing.com: My Experience with Claude Code in Fourteen Points
Cryptocurrency CEXs are flocking to sell US stocks, and traditional brokerages are facing an "uninvited guest."
Will the SpaceX IPO Hurt Bitcoin? Here's What Traders Are Watching
Foreign selling in the South Korean stock market accelerates, with cumulative net sales reportedly reaching $75 billion this year
On June 9, The Kobeissi Letter, citing Goldman Sachs data, reported that global investors are selling South Korean stocks at an unusually rapid pace. In the latest trading session, foreign investors sold about $801 million worth of Kospi constituent stocks again; total foreign outflows last week reached about $10 billion, and the market has been in net foreign selling on nearly every trading day over the past month. According to the data cited in the report, foreign investors have sold about $75 billion worth of South Korean stocks so far this year. Meanwhile, South Korean retail and institutional investors together recorded roughly $69 billion in net buying over the same period, suggesting that the market’s main buying support has come from domestic capital rather than returning overseas funds. The information currently disclosed still mainly comes from The Kobeissi Letter’s retelling and Goldman Sachs data summaries, while public details on the statistical period and the specific definition of “selling” remain relatively limited.
Fortune Warns of Strategy’s Financing Structure Risks as Bitcoin Premium Narrows
Fortune warned that Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury model faces growing financing risks as MSTR’s net asset premium narrows and preferred stock dividend pressure increases.
Ferrari Challenge Le Mans: Carl Moon to Dominate in WEEX Livery
Sahara AI Responds to SAHARA’s Sharp Drop: No Contract or Product Security Issues Found, Internal Investigation Underway
Sahara AI responded to SAHARA’s 60% price drop, saying no token contract or product security issues have been found and an internal investigation is underway.
