[Cthulhu_]

I'd guess they bought a whole block early on because they could and it wasn't too expensive yet. I wonder if they could be compelled to auction it off. But they might be using it a lot internally.

(a lot of guesswork in this comment, I don't know anything lol)

[bananapub]

no, no one bought anything, they just emailed some dude and said "hey we're connecting to The Internet, we need some IPs" and the reply was "here is the 2^24 IP addresses dedicated to you".

[everfrustrated]

In the early days no money changed hands at all. You just asked for a block and got one.