Will c/ become the .COM of Handshake?

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about Handshake and written about how much I like the community and how I think there are some super interesting things happening in the space. When I first started to dive into the world of Handshake my thinking was – I’ll split my investment between Handshake domains and the HNS token.

As time has gone by and I’ve learned more about the space I’ve grown increasingly excited about what’s happening, but also realized that I think me, and many others, missed the boat when it comes to getting Handshake domains that would actually be valuable to end users if Handshake takes off.

What makes Handshake domains so different from the normal domains I invest in like .COM and .IO is that Handshake domains are intended to be used as TLDs. If you were lucky enough to snag a Handshake domain early on that could lend itself to becoming a TLD, then I think you might have something valuable. One great example here is c/.

I recently bought morgan.c and a few other one-word sub-domains of c/. The thinking here is that in the Handshake world c/ could become the equivalent of .COM in the traditional domain world. That being said, it is still anyone’s guess when it comes to determining how Handshake domains could be used if the concept takes off so I’m not investing too heavily.

That being said, at this point I own more keyword.c/ domain names than regular Handshake domains but I’m not investing heavily in either. I think it’s still very early and so my way of supporting Handshake at this point is to continue to buy HNS and to invest in companies as an angel investor that I think are doing cool things in the space.

With ~2,000 new gTLDs available in the traditional domain name world, I still find myself only visiting sites that have one of ten different TLDs. So if Handshake progresses the same way, ten Handshake domains will be a hit, and the names that would end up having value would be the subdomains on one of those ten.

Right now, it looks like c/ looks like it’s the front-runner but that could change. And full disclosure, as a domain investor I’m still pretty laser-focus on .COM and I don’t see that changing anytime soon, but if c/ becomes the .COM of Handshake, I’ll have a handful of names that might be valuable some day.

What do you think? Will c/ become the .COM of Handshake? I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Disclosure: I am an investor in Handshake domains, HNS token, and startups in the Handshake space.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton