Hacker News Reader

Comment by 4cao | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

(1) Rent for $0.20-1.20/mo - or -

(2) Sell for $20-24

Sell/rent ratio is 17-120 months. These numbers seem very different than for real estate. It's as if the cost to rent a $1M property could be as high as $60k/mo. Not really sure what to think of it, perhaps the comparison is too simplistic.

View on HN

I think this implies that IP addresses are expected to be a worse investment than property? Landlords would probably be more willing to sell their land if it didn't appreciate. Conversely higher rents would be needed in order to justify holding land that depreciates.

The other possibility I can this of is that renting the block might have greater liabilities compared to outright selling it.

Right. Most of their value is in the short-mid term. At some point everybody will be using IPv6 and these old addresses won’t matter much.

Ha, been hearing that exact idea since the 90s when I got on the net. ip4 will become increasingly valuable until the day it goes to almost 0. This discussion makes me want to invest in some.

My impression is that many of the entities that rent IPs are shady VPN providers, spammers, and the like -- the reputational damage that the IPs will suffer during the lease term is priced in. The blocks that sell for $20-24/IP are relatively "clean" in comparison.

Real-estate prices partly reflect wealth-inequality. The rich are buying property as investment (driving up sale prices for everyone), but it is primarily ordinary people renting, and this rent prices are much more demand-constrained.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com