Spent 10 days in Japan with my family. Amazing culture, but one guy in particular stuck with me.
Easily 75, out front of his house in Kyoto sweeping the street. Not just his doorstep, the leaves on the public road too.
Nobody asked him to. Nobody was watching.
Funny how the small unwatched things tell you the most about a person, and a culture.
Everyone saw: Coinbase layoffs.
I saw this one sentence:
"Rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it."
— Brian Armstrong, May 6 2026
Not an AI company.
An intelligence.
The prefix is already gone.
This is exactly the arc:
Artificial Intelligence → AI
Artificial General Intelligence → AGI
Artificial Superintelligence → ASI
Superintelligence → SI
Intelligence → I
Armstrong just skipped straight to the end.
I've owned domains along this curve since 2019.
The .ai floor is $90k and holding.
https://t.co/SKL0johOB5 sold for $70M.
The destination is Intelligence.
The naming arc always ends at the core word.
I'm already there.
🔗 https://t.co/x7M94TO4QK
99% of domain investors will completely miss that the primary keyword of long-term, repeatable value here is “Intelligence”, not “Agentic”. IYKYK. I set a 6-figure BIN because of the noun, not the adjective — just as I’ve done with Bot, Trade, and X as adjectives modifying “Intelligence” in other .com domains in my portfolio. “Agentic” happens to be the trendiest adjective modifying “Intelligence” at the moment so it sold faster. “Agentic” will come and go; “Intelligence” has greater permanence.
HT to @domainpro for influencing me at some point over the past 18 months to increase the BINs on most of my “Intelligence” domains. 🙏
Have we achieved peak AI hype when a two-word, 19-letter, 7-syllable .com domain name sells for six figures with no negotiation whatsoever?
Thank you to @GoDaddy's @Afternic team for building a brand and platform that end users trust enough to spend that much on https://t.co/CJ4Djyo83h without blinking. Or, maybe it was an Agentic AI agent that cannot blink at all? 🤷♂️
#domainnames #agenticai #agenticintelligence #agentic #ai #afternic
A domain name owner had their valuable domain name stolen.
Someone hacked their account and transferred the domain to another registrar.
So the owner of the domain, the original owner of the domain who registered it in 1999, got in touch with the registrar.
Here's the registrar's response:
"it has been determined that the unauthorized transfer or loss of the domain was due to negligence or a security lapse on the part of the original account owner."
What?!?
The registrar literally tells them that "the unauthorized transfer or loss of the domain was due to negligence or a security lapse on the part of the original account owner", which IS THEM! They are the the original account owner.
And due to the fact that it was a security lapse or 'negligence', the registrar will not help get the domain name transferred back to them.
How is is negligence or a security lapse when your account is hacked?
This domain name registrar is saying that it's the account owner's responsibility if their account is hacked, and not the responsibility of the registrar.
Something funny happened. I just saw a domain trading news: https://t.co/pZbOe8Nevz was sold for a fixed price of 11,960 RMB on @gnamedotcom . It looked really familiar to me, so I checked — it was actually my domain. Then I noticed I received 8,000 RMB via Alipay early this morning, which was the payment for this domain. I listed it on Alibaba Cloud at a fixed price of 9,200 RMB. Gname crawled my listing price, marked it up by 30% and reposted it on their platform. The buyer finally purchased the domain directly from Gname. #DomainBase
I’m not old school. And I’m not new school. I’m the bridge between them.
I finally realized why I never fully fit into either world.
Over the last 30 years in the domain industry, I’ve met some of the smartest people of my life.
Many of them are far more technically advanced than I am because I come from the old school.
But after thinking about it more deeply, I realized something:
I’m probably part of the last generation bridging the old world and the new one.
A hybrid.
I will never lose my old-school roots:
Instinct
Timing
Negotiation
Positioning
Human psychology
Sales
Patience
Conviction
But I also refuse to stop moving forward as technology evolves.
No, I may never fully understand every new technology that appears.
But I understand enough to utilize it, adapt to it, and combine it with the experience and instincts built over a lifetime.
That combination creates my own path.
I’ve been a trailblazer all of my life…but in many ways, it feels like everything led up to blazing this trail.
And honestly, that’s where I’m most comfortable:
Right in between those two worlds.
For three decades, I’ve been trying to bridge that gap.
Ynot
Oprano
Rick’s Board
Rick’s Blog
TRAFFIC
28 shows across 4 continents over 10 years
Twitter & LinkedIn
Shows
Articles
Podcasts
Interviews
Always trying to connect the old world with the new one.
And for the first time, because of AI, infrastructure, builders, and category-defining digital assets…
It finally feels like the bridge is about to be complete.
And I think that convergence is going to become very visible @NamesCon this November.
One world is slowly disappearing.
The other one is just beginning to appear.
This is the moment of convergence.
And maybe the people who can bridge both worlds end up having the clearest view of what comes next. I sure as hell can. I can see it clearly.
#BeanstalkChallenge #Domains #DigitalAssets
Okay. I'm ready to talk about this.
It was the worst month of my life. Also ironically the greatest blessing god has ever given me.
Last month I was held in the Cayman Islands facing 15 years in prison.
The charge: illegal firearm importation. Here's what happened. More importantly what I learned.
Short answer: no. I haven't been smuggling guns.
In the States I legally carry a gun on me at almost all times for self defense. Part of this is ensuring I am trained.
Hence why I routinely go to the range to shoot. When I do I pack the firearm I intend to use in in a backpack.
Last month I was in a giant rush to make a private flight and didn't fully check my backpack before leaving. In it was a small firearm I missed.
It was discovered when I went through immigration.
At first I assumed I'd just be sent home.
Then my wife did some quick research. She pointed out the minimum sentence for importing a gun is 15 years. The police who showed up confirmed it.
To say I nearly pissed my pants is an understatement.
This was completely my fault. I'm an idiot. The point of this post isn't to blame or complain about anything. The laws there are fair. I'm a grown man capable of checking his bag before flying.
The point is: for three weeks on the island (on bail), I got to take a long hard look at my life.
I've built a high net worth and a company I love, with people I love working with. I have a beautiful wife who is my best friend. I do whatever I want all day every day. My parents are alive and I get to see them almost every week.
Still, despite all this, I often wake up annoyed I haven't done enough with my life. Asking myself "is this it?" In fact I'm pissed half the time, feeling I can do better.
Which is ironic. I made $20,000 a year in the military. If you'd told me then I'd achieve a 9 figure net worth and all the above, I would've assumed I'd consider my life a dream.
The twist truly hit me on the island as I watched everything I worked hard for in my life held at "gunpoint". Pun intended. Everything I worked so hard to get — poof. Didn't matter for shit.
The way the law works there are simple : if you can't prove it was an accident, the minimum is 15 years.
It became glaringly obvious. Not only was I an absolute idiot who couldn't pack his own bag. I'd also become a fool who couldn't enjoy the blessings I already had.
I'd taken all the people in my life and the success totally for granted. Blind. Blind. Blind.
Nothing like a 20-year potential sentence to make you realize: waking up with fun stuff to work on, then chilling on the couch reading with your wife at the end of the day — that's about as good as it gets.
I should be euphoric 24/7.
To go from having it all, to potentially not even having the option to piss and shit when you want — that's a wake up call if there ever was one.
Luckily, the Caymans is a fair place. I was found under exceptional circumstances during my trial. AKA the judge and the courts reviewed the case and agreed it was an accident.
I still love the island. It's probably my favorite place to vacation. Just check your luggage before you go. Ha.
My point is this: be present. Enjoy your life. One day something could happen — even by complete accident — and yoink it all away.
I have so many friends who'll read this and by all definition live a "dream life" — and yet are dissatisfied just like I was. If anything this is the default for most successful men. Not the exception.
I'm writing this to help you stop.
It took god slapping me across the face with my own ignorance to see it. It was painful and scary. Dark.
But honestly, it was the greatest blessing I've ever received. I'm writing this from my office at home, giddy as absolute fuck about my life and everything I have the option to do today.
If anything, I'm sad about how much time I wasted feeling otherwise.
Don't be ignorant and stupid like me. You might not get the blessing of a 15-year prison threat in a foreign country to wake you up.
Wake up. Appreciate what you have now.