I was watching the BBC news channel yesterday and saw a news report that suggests that the USA’s dominant superpower status is threatened. I read the full story on the BBC’s website, where it states:

“US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades, according to a new US intelligence report on global trends.

The National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts China, India and Russia will increasingly challenge US influence.

It also says the dollar may no longer be the world’s major currency, and food and water shortages will fuel conflict.”

This report caused me to start thinking about the domain industry. The US, in terms of quantity and size of domain registrations, domain-related companies, aftermarket transactions and active domainers is surely the domaining superpower.

For some time, influential domainers have been trying to draw the attention of Wall Street Capitalists to the potentials of the domain name industry.

There has been some success, but there is still a long way to go. Over the years we have seen the likes of Marchex and iREIT pumping millions into their domain portfolios over the years. Some companies have been able to secure lines of credit in the hundreds of millions.

Surely, there is a lot of money being spent in the domain industry from an investment point of view.

However, with hundreds of millions of domains registered in the majority of domain extensions, the average-user market must also be taken into consideration as well.

When all is said and done, the US is the domain superpower. But the question is, for how long?

For the Sarah Palin-type readers, Europe is a continent consisting of many countries. These include United Kingdom aka Great Britain (which consist of England, Scotland and Wales), Ireland, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland and Sweden.

Each of these countries has their own language and Country-Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).

This grouping/continent as a whole also has its own regional ccTLD – the dot EU domain extension.

In 2005 the population of Europe was estimated to be 728 million according to the United Nations, which is slightly more than one-ninth of the world’s population.

Europe is home to the two strongest currencies in the world, namely, the British Pound sterling and the Euro.

London, capital of England, United Kingdom is regarded as the Financial Capital of the World. Europe is home to some of the world’s biggest stock exchanges. Europe has a lot of money to go around.

According to internetworldstats.com, Europe has a 48% Internet Penetration, compared to just 18% for the rest of the world. This means that 48% of the European population has readily available Internet access.

Clearly, Europe is a sleeping monster where the domain name industry is concerned. It will only take a small percentage of the European population to discover the domain industry for Europe to become the Domain Superpower.

Perhaps if you should compare domain registrations originating from Europe to the US, Europe may be the leader. Of course, most of the top domain registrars are based in the US.

The Domain Superpower that I am mainly referring to is actually the domain aftermarket and monetization services.

There is a lot of capital here in Europe, and the average resident has access to borrowings that have more spending power than the US dollar.

Any serious domainer, domain capitalist or domain investor would be silly to ignore the European market. This monster will not stay asleep for much longer.