[ToucanLoucan]

Fun fact. I approached a domain squatter for my name as a domain name (obviously not going to provide it) ending in a .com. I asked out of curiosity what they wanted. They were talking on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mind you, my name isn't... uncommon, but it's not common either, and this was a firstlast.com variety. I looked through the web archive and could see the domain had literally not ever had a website, since it was originally registered in 1995.

Now, I wasn't expecting to get it for $15 a year like a hover subscription, but still. 6 figures of value based on what?

[DaSHacka]

I suspect its like the New York City landlord conundrum; the squatter holds out for years pricing their listings at way more than their worth, hoping that a whale will come along one day and cover their losses by purchasing a single domain/property.

[teractiveodular]

Based on the squatters having thousands of domains, so it's not worth their time to negotiate with small fry, they focus squarely on the big fish.

See also, the VC investment model that relies on the 1% breakout success covering losses on the remaining 99%.

[e40]

My lastname.com was nabbed a month before I tried to get it, then I had to watch for decades while they didn’t use it.