In the foreign exchange market, it is not uncommon for people to trade and make a tonne of money (or make huge losses) trading currencies (money) that either does literally does not exist, or change hands. It is like investing real money to play a virtual game with real life consequences. These virtual trades do impact the real exchange rates.

Over the years a lot of the domains that are reported as sold do not really resolve to a website. Why did these buyers spend all this cash to buy something that they did not intend to use?

Domain names for a long time have been treated like the foreign currency market. A domain name is flipped over and over for a profit, with the buyer having one main goal of selling later for more than what he paid for it.

As we are now having a shortage of cash in the world economy and the prices of almost all commodities are falling as a result of a recession, domain buyers are now seriously considering a what uses a domain name can have before they make the purchase.

In my opinion, if the domain name cannot be put to any use, except for some eternal hope of flipping later, then it is useless and have no intrinsic value.

So what can you do with a domain name when you have bought it?

Redirect The Domain
If the domain receives targeted traffic suitable for an existing website that you own, it will be beneficial to redirect traffic from the domain name to the existing website. This can end up costing you less in advertisement and marketing.

Park The Domain
You can park the domain name with a domain parking service provider and earn some Pay-Per-Click revenue. Learn more about domain parking here.

Develop The Domain
Develop a website that sells/resells products and/or services, provides information and/or supports the services of another website.

Build A Company Around The Domain
You can build a company around a domain name. Examples are Amazon.com, Shopping.com, Business.com.

If you can’t put a domain name to one of the above uses then it may very well be useless.