The Bitcoin news website Bitcoinist LTD has signed a private long-term lease agreement for the “million-dollar domain” BTC.com. The lease with GAW Miners goes until March 2018.
Controversy regarding the connection between BTC.com and Josh Garza, CEO of GAW, brewed over Reddit, as Bitcoinist briefly and quietly mentioned Garza’s ownership of the BTC.com domain name in their original press release. One redditor said,
“If they were smart they would have had [a response regarding Garza’s ownership] prepared well before launch. They also wouldn't have published an article to advertise one of Josh's scams recently.”
The BTC.com team launched the new platform yesterday, which features Bitcoin statistics (hash rate, market cap, difficulty, etc.), events, learning centers, leasable subdomains, and news and reviews covering the digital currency industry.
BTC.com also announced plans to reach out to Bitcoin companies to sell premium BTC.com subdomains, including buy.btc.com, shop.btc.com, card.btc.com, exchange.btc.com, mining.btc.com, pool.btc.com and wallet.btc.com.
BTC.com said they expect one of their leasable subdomains, the talk.btc.com forum, to eventually compete against the largest bitcoin forum, bitcointalk.org, in size. Redditors called this an overly optimistic and ambitious plan. One said:
“They are trying to sell subdomains to bitcoin companies, and expect the forum to become ‘bigger than bitcointalk’ ‘due to its memorable name.’ Stay away, nothing good can come of this.”
Plans for the new site also include acquiring lease agreements with Bitcoin companies such as exchanges, wallets, shops and cloud-based mining pools to link BTC.com subdomains to their services or platforms. Specifically, they say, bitcoin exchanges could benefit from this service by connecting the exchange to the subdomain buy.btc.com, which could potentially introduce a large number of global customers to their exchange.
Once all premium subdomains are leased out, BTC.com plans to serve as a complete “Bitcoin and digital currency industry portal.”
The criticism and controversies hinge partly around Garza and his altcoin Paycoin, as well as around GAW Miners. In early 2015, Garza presold paycoins and promised his customers a value of US$20 per paycoin. Currently, paycoins are worth no more than 20 cents each. Garza recently announced, “It’s unfortunate this was handled this way. … I am sorry to say, but it is likely the end of Paycoin.”
Despite being attached to the tarnished name of Garza, the BTC.com is following through with its plans for the site.