I've seen a lot of loans being asked offering domains as collateral. I'd like to add some comments and guidelines about this:
- Under some conditions, domains can be recovered after being transferred, particularly if it's proven they were stolen, or if there's a copyright infringement.
- A domain's value is very subjective and changes a lot. Several people ask about what valuation to use. The answer is simple. As said by Vod, collateral must be easily sold. Therefore the valuation to be used must be one that allows the domain to be easily an immediately sold. That is a very low price.
Maybe it'd be possible to sell the domain for 100x the price on Sedo or similar, after 1 year+ of promoting it, but that's definitely not easily selling it. - History of sales normally just list top-priced sales. They're more exceptions than rules. They may be good to give an idea of an optimistic price for the domain after a lot of work, if the right final user is found; but they're definitely not good to set valuations for collateral. What matters is not what price someone paid at some time but what price several people are willing to pay for something at any time.
If someone sold example.com for $1,000 a year ago but now the highest open, serious offer for it is just $100 then it's not worth more than $100 as collateral. - These guidelines seem harsh. You may think it would be better to just sell the domain. And you would be right. The idea is the borrower should never prefer to default and lose the collateral, under no circumstance. If he has to think about it then he should just sell it in the first place. Faking a sale as a loan is not allowed here.
- These guidelines can apply to art and other goods (physical or digital) whose value is subjective and varies a lot.
TLDR; Domains can be used as collateral
if- there's no suspicion of copyright infringement,
- the current and all previous ownership can be proved (especially if the domain is very valuable)
- and, a very low valuation is used, one that allows an easy, immediate sale
- Some digital wares such as domain names can be considered as long as the user cannot recover it.
I know you mentioned domains, so can we offer our website as collateral? OR Artwork?
Sry, so if I use the domain name as the collateral, how can we evaluate the price? Because i checked the different est domain name, also not the same price some are high, some are low?
Just to get clarify, does domain Name/webhosting will be accepted as collateral?