Jump Trading sues 79-year-old Carl Sagan fan over wormhole.com domain | Hacker News Reader

Jump Trading sues 79-year-old Carl Sagan fan over wormhole.com domain

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229 pointsdavidmr328 comments

Seems that Jump is wrong here, no binding contract was made according to article facts. Acceptance from the seller part seems required:

> Contract law says that a quote is not considered an offer and only acceptance of offers makes for a legally binding contract, according to Cornell Law School.

> Here’s what needs to happen for a quote to turn into a contract:

> - Supplier submits the quote to the client

> - The client accepts the quote and issues an order

> - The supplier accepts the order

> For example, a wedding photographer emails a written quote to a client for $2500 for 10 hours of photography. The client emails back saying they accept the quote and want to proceed with the order. The wedding photographer emails the client again to thank them and confirm that they will do 10 hours of work on a certain date for $2500. A legally enforceable contract has now been established.

https://www.freshbooks.com/hub/estimates/is-quote-contract

My reading of your link is that it’s complicated (see the case about Pepsi and the fighter jet). Generally you want to stay away from even proposing a price for a sale if you’re truly not interested.

Sure, but here we have a giant company versus a 79 yo person. Surely you can make a case that the person didn't really understood that a binding contract was forming, since the common understanding is that you need to accept a deal. Seems to me that you can make a case that the person was "tricked" into a binding contract (if it is indeed binding).

But was he not accepting the deal on his part by offering it in the first place?

It was not a genuine offer.

Akin to “jokingly” signing a regular paper contract, no?

Almost, except without the signature, the paper, the contract, or the regularity. But almost.

Both the paper and the signature are utterly irrelevant.

You can certainly enter a contract over email, it’s not irregular.

The price is figure isn't acceptance of an offer or a contract its negotiation regarding what terms would in fact be acceptable to both parties in preparation for forging an actual meeting of minds which would in turn enable a contract to be created.

I make an offer (in writing), you make a counteroffer (in writing), I accept your counteroffer (in writing).

Seems like a contract to me.

You go to walmart you ask the employee "how much is that TV". The employee says $999. No contract between you and Walmart has been effected. If you go back tomorrow to buy the TV and the price has risen to $1099 you can either make an agreement or not by handing over the money in exchange for a receipt and a TV. Importantly a quote must be different from a contract because virtually all contracts have conditions beyond price that must be satisfied in order to effect a deal between parties and discussing price is a way to clarify that that particular precondition has been met not an indication that all possible preconditions have been met.

An individual can be forgiven for not understanding the difference between a quote and a contract but a corporate lawyer never had that misunderstanding in the first place. When they tried to accept and they got a response that wasn't in the affirmative they understood that no deal had been struck. What they are trying to do is argue that a hypothetical lawyer, perhaps one that nearly failed out of school, could have incorrectly concluded from a 4 word email that an agreement had been made until the next email came in an hour later ergo the court should absolutely enforce that!

The purpose of contract law is to enforce the obligations that arise from legitimate meetings of minds not for highly paid corporate lawyers to play gotcha with laymen. If the meeting of minds in question wasn't sufficiently clarified in the 4 word email then follow up clarify mutual understanding and move forward. It appears that further clarification was sought AND in fact it made clear that there was no meeting of the minds at all. Now after the fact they would like the court to enforce what they wish the counter party had agreed to irrespective of what they actually intended.

Instead they should find someone who actually wants to do business with them instead of suing people that obvious have no desire to. The court should instead make them pay for the opposing sides legal bills and a penalty for bring a frivolous lawsuit that misunderstands centuries of commerce which understands the difference between discussion on price and affirmation of a deal something that would have been expressed by a handshake in person or a follow up email to the effect of "yes that will be fine then"

Your example is completely irrelevant, nobody asked for a quote here. Jump made an offer and received a counteroffer.

A counteroffer is not a quote.

In what way is the price is _____ not a quote? If there is a doubt about acceptance you send a follow up email ... which they did and got clarification that the offer wouldn't be accepted as such. Now they want to play gotcha and they are going to lose. Instead of debating the matter why don't you watch this play out in court.

It’s not a quote when it’s a counteroffer in a negotiation.

Idk I feel like nothing is really on the table until there's ink on paper so to speak. Like if this company made a job offer via email but no contract was signed yet, then no contract has been signed yet.

If we consider verbal contracts absolute then that changes a LOT of things.

That's not how negotiation works - not legally and not practically.

I give you an estimate $10k for some work you want. But confirmed work comes in. Now I can't do your work. Sorry, I withdraw the estimate.

I offer to sell you a website for $X. While you're thinking about it, someone else offers $2X. I take the second offer.

That’s completely different though, none of those scenarios are even vaguely similar to what happened here.

I think the fact that you have to engage in such mental gymnastics to try and make your point is pretty telling.

But the Pepsi fighter jet case was only valid because of specific laws about public advertisements.

I would think that a verbal domain contract would require some of the usual trappings of domain transfers to force the sale. They hadn't begun to negotiate the details of the transfer, by the sounds of it, let alone proceed to holding money in escrow.

I think a judge is necessary to determine DomainAgent’s brokering role with this specific property owner, because nobody knows and it is the crux of the case.

A quote is not a necessary element to formation of a contract.

If you're holding a yard sale, and I point at some knickknack and ask "how much for that?", and you say "it's a dollar" and I say "that's a deal", that's a contract.

I don't think that's a contract you want to engage in. There are no terms for timing. A dollar today or in 10 years? It will be difficult to prove these details were known or that the offer took place at all, which is why you want things in writing - which is the case for wormhole.com. It's also interesting to note that a verbal contract is not sufficient to form a contract at price points over a few hundred dollars.

Take from this what you will.

The original circumstances were, in fact, written, and the example quoted above was below such threshold. As such, I wouldn’t believe the note on verbal contracts is relevant to the matter at hand.

I think you'd be surprised how liberally courts have discovered implied terms in contracts where the parties have omitted them. There's a whole body of law on it, and courts have demonstrated considerable unwillingness to void contracts for uncertainty.

Also: about a zillion successful purchases at yard sales indicate to me that this is a pretty good way to form contracts of sale.

How many of those zillion contracts have been tested in a court of law? (As that is the relevant context here)

> Also: about a zillion successful purchases at yard sales indicate to me that this is a pretty good way to form contracts of sale.

In yard sales (and most retail situations, too), contracts of sale are usually formed with the tender of payment buy the prospective buyer for a specific set of items at a price stated by the seller as the offer, and acceptance of the tendered payment as the acceptance; they sale contract is formed fully executed, not as an executory (with some obligations still unfulfilled) contract.

I'm confused - how is "it's a dollar" not a quote?

In context, it clearly means "I will sell this to you for a dollar". That's an offer.

A quote is just a price. Like if you send a meat wholesaler a telegram asking what the price of pork is, and they send back "this kind of pork is $xxx, that kind of pork is $yyy", then that's a quote; it's not an offer. You can't accept a quote in contract law.

The difference can be fairly fine. You can even explicitly say that what you're writing is a quote and still end up having a court interpret it as an offer.

Compare these two:

https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/collages/1810

https://cite.case.law/minn/21/155/

To put it another way, if an item has a price tag, is that a quote? Can I refuse to sell you something?

The GP’s line of reasoning leads to an implication that it could be a contract and therefor are unable to deny sale. Or reverse, a quote is a price tag not a contract.

I’d say no they’re able to deny service despite the price list.

A price tag is, conventionally, regarded as an "invitation to treat". It's not legally binding as an offer.

The legal fiction goes that you take your goods to the checkout, and the offer occurs when the checkout clerk says "that'll be $19.95", and the acceptance when you offer payment.

Alternatively, you could take the goods to the checkout and say "I know it says $19.95, but this is shopworn and I'll only pay $15 for it" - which is then the offer - and the acceptance occurs when the manager agrees to that price.

> If you're holding a yard sale, and I point at some knickknack and ask "how much for that?", and you say "it's a dollar" and I say "that's a deal", that's a contract.

If you move forward and actually execute on it, sure.

If you then immediately say "actually, no, I've changed my mind", without making any motions to give the item over, it's hard to imagine that'd be considered breach of contract.

What does "execute on it" mean from a legal perspective?

Actually physically exchange the knickknack for the dollar bills.

> A quote is not a necessary element to formation of a contract.

True, but manifest intent to form a binding contract on the part of both parties is.

> If you’re holding a yard sale, and I point at some knickknack and ask “how much for that?”, and you say “it’s a dollar” and I say “that’s a deal”, that’s a contract.

Probably not; contract law would probably view that as a negotiation where only you manifested an intent to form a binding contract, so unless there was some positive acknowledgement of your “that’s a deal”, no contract would be formed.

I mean, I’m pretty sure that a near identical scenario to that was the one the of textbook demonstrations of the absence of that contract element in my Contracts class.

Are you suggesting that after that dialog, were I to put a dollar bill down on the table and wander away with the tchotchke, there would be courts that would hold I didn't actually buy it?

> Are you suggesting that after that dialog, were I to put a dollar bill down on the table and wander away with the tchotchke, there would be courts that would hold I didn’t actually buy it?

If the proprietor was aware of it and didn’t object, probably not, because the tender of payment is an offer on the negotiated terms and its acceptance is…acceptance.

I don't know - that seems a little bit wonky to me - you started off with the idea that there was no intent to create legal relations, but somehow that occurs as soon as the dollar bill appears, and then one party accepts by silence?

I would say it's pretty clear that buyer and seller in a yard sale are intending to create legal relations - viz. exchange goods for cash - this isn't one of those weird areas like family agreements or pacts between friends.

If, at the point the buyer put the dollar on the table, the seller suddenly changed their mind and said "no, it's not for sale actually", would a reasonable bystander actually think that the sale had been agreed? I would say yes.

BTW if you think this one is bad, check out the fun and games trying to rationalize offer and acceptance in the Amazon stores without checkouts: https://www.oscola.org/post/amazon-fresh-offer-and-acceptanc...

You're right that a quote is not necessary, but GP was describing what needs to happen for a quote to become a contract. The quote's existence is the premise.

Can you reverse that. A sale person ask a customer "are you interested in buying that car with the sticker price of $10,000", the customer says "yes", the sale person says "We have a deal". Is this a contract, meaning that the customer can no longer walk out of the store?

No, you’re playing with words here.

Replace your first sentence with “will you buy this car from me for $10000” and that seems like a pretty clear verbal contract.

Of course verbal contracts are tricky, but this particular case was in writing.

The words matter yes, as does the meaning behind them. If we return to the yard sale and have the seller say "I will buy that knickknack for $1, do you agree" and the seller says "Yes", then the verbal contract is much more obvious.

Just like a customer asking for a price check, a seller asking if a customer is interested are normal parts of conversations that occurs between buyers and seller before a sale is made final. Regardless if it is in writing or not, the important part is if there has been an general agreement between the two parties. That agreement is what forms a contract.

If I go to a store and point at some knickknack and ask "how much for that?", the clerk says "$1", I say "that's a deal", the clerk say "you got to be a member of the club, which cost $1000", then that is not a break of contract. Depending in the jurisdiction it could be an illegal contract or false advertisement, but those tend to take a perspective of protecting customers against being tricked. That is a harder case to make when its the seller that refuses to agree to the sale.

“How much is that?” is strictly different from “I will pay you $2500 for this”.

First isn’t an offer, nor is it a negotiation.

So a contract is formed when the TCP three-way handshake completes.

Despicable on all levels. Not only was there nothing resembling an offer even made, much less a "contract" signed, Jump also very well knows that 50k for a domain like that is a steal and are more than happy to try and pry it from an old man's hands even "requesting and receiving a preliminary injunction to freeze the asset." I'd much rather the domain be in the hands of this guy with his cool JavaScript clock than these leeches any day of the week.

> old man

Meh. He’s the same age as the current US president and rather close to the prior. Warren Buffet, sharp as a tack at 91, just wrapped up another Berkshire Shareholder meeting. Jump appears to be very much in the wrong here, but I don't think we need to characterize this as the domain owner is feeble-minded or out of touch: the guy has owned a domain since 1994.

You're the one equating "old man" to "feeble-minded" or "out of touch". That implication wasn't there in the comment you responded to.

"pry it from an old man's hands" paints a very clear image without using explicit wording.

No it doesn’t. An old man may well be less likely to want to spend a decade defending against litigation than a young one.

How else am I to interpret the fact they stated the person's age in the title? I came to the comments specifically looking for discussion on why the person's age is relevant. To me, specifying the age like this is an attempt to pull at the heart strings of some poor defenseless senior citizen being victimized.

It's just another example of an asshat corporation doing asshatery. Would the story be any different if it was a 59yo? 49yo? 39yo? No. Corp is an asshat in every example age offered.

I guess being called an "old man" has been around forever.

When I was younger my version of an old man was anyone over 30. I kept upping it the older I got.

I used to throw around the "Don't trust anyone over 30."

Now that I'm much older, I still don't trust most old adults, and I'm one now.

Looking back my definition of old is more akin to being wealthy, sneaky, money grubbing, shifty dude. The kind of guy who uses lawyers, instead of a handshake.

It's crazy but in my mind the "old man" is the guy running this crypto company.

That's usually just 'the man'

>but I don't think we need to characterize this as the domain owner is feeble-minded or out of touch: the guy has owned a domain since 1994.

similarly I don't think it's reasonable to compare every 79 year old with two people that have had the most privileged lives imaginable.

it's extraordinarily common to live to a healthy old age when you have teams of people coordinating your schedules, traveling teams of chefs and nutritionists available to define your diet to the gram, and an accompanying traveling medical staff wherever you may need to go.

79 years old for those of us that had less glamorous lives can be * a lot * older than you'd imagine when comparing them to others -- to such a degree that age as a comparison is wildly speculative at some point.

Do you think that nutritionists & chefs are the reason the US senate has so many lively old people?

I would say it's just lucky genetics. Anyone who doesn't develop dementia and/or heart disease or something like that by age 70, is likely to live a very long time.

It's not genetics, it's wealth. In addition to better nutrition, wealth affords you better, proportionately cheaper healthcare. It's a predictor for lifespan and healthspan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/science/rich-people-longe...

> define your diet to the gram, "Buffett's diet of sugary soda, junk food, and limited vegetables has reached legendary status." https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-diet-2017-10

> traveling teams of chefs and nutritionists available to Almost. He was famously cared for by his second wife whom his first wife set him up with, thinking that he could not take care of himself.

> Jump also very well knows that 50k for a domain like that is a steal

I'm not up on domain name pricing. What would you estimate the fair price to be?

Here are some links listing recent domain sales:

https://enaming.com/recent-sales

https://www.dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm

https://www.namecheap.com/blog/top-domain-sales-of-2021-so-f...

Wormhole is a cool sci-fi word. A fun word that most people know and don't already associate with another brand. It's high tech, it's something at the frontiers of science, it's fast and futuristic. Easy to spell, easy to remember, and easy to build a new brand around.

"Galaxy.com" recently went for $1.8m, apparently, and that's like a better version of "wormhole".

Comparing to recent sales, I'd say Wormhole could easily go for $800k+. With the right buyer, maybe upwards of $1m.

I think $50,000 is fair as a matter of fact. It's not talked about much anymore. I don't know the other details of the case, just that...for wormhole.com...$50,000 is not out of the question. But the fact it's owned by Carl Sagan means it's a marketing op to say you bought it from him, at a good price, not a fair price.

They could bump it up to make both parties better off, and in fact Jump Trading like the name wormhole specifically and directly because of science popularization primarily due to Carl Sagan. Like write a better payment on a giant check and take a bunch of pictures, come on.

Or what? Does anybody at Jump Trading have old dry-ink manuscripts analyzing actual wormholes in the astronomical sense?

EDIT: on reflection the guys they hire actually could have dry-ink manuscripts, in grad school. But not within Jump Trading.

It's owned by a Carl Sagan fan and not Carl Sagan himself. Carl Sagan passed away in the 90s. I'm not sure why you're saying $50,000 is fair as a matter of fact and what you mean by dry-ink manuscripts.

Oh I see.

If you have $1million in your own personal accounts, I'll offer you $50k for all those accounts and the funds there in, deal?

This has nothing to do with the fact that wormhole is "a cool sci-fi word" that's "easy to spell, easy to remember, and easy to build a new brand around."

Jump wants this domain because its Wormhole Network already exists and is extremely valuable. Jump does not want this domain because it has good resale value. Jump is not in the business of flipping domains.

So your argument here is actually that wormhole.com should be worth way more to Jump than to any other generic buyer, since they have already built up a product around the name of a domain they didn't control.

I think a judge is necessary to determine DomainAgent’s brokering role with this specific property owner, because nobody knows and it is the crux of the case.

The rest of the actions or how we feel about the power dynamics are not really relevant.

>I'd much rather the domain be in the hands of this guy with his cool JavaScript clock than these leeches any day of the week.

Same. I'm also really curious now how the clock will handle changing the text for the current day, from an animation point of view.

> his cool JavaScript clock

Is it his? Fantastic if so.

The code for that 'did the rounds' back in the early 00s. I had it on my site for a while, but changed the code so the outer text spun like a sort of bouncing helix around the outside of the clock face. I never did know where the code came from though, and I had a note in my page source saying "Is this yours? Is it OK that I'm using it?"

Looking at this page's source it seems to have come from "www.rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com", though that site appears dead. It was referenced from an HN comment as recently as 2018 though...

Well, whoever you are rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com, thanks for the clock and the memories. I haven't seen that in nearly 20 years.

These guys have specialized in building super low latency, line of sight microwave networks for trading, across multiple continents (chicago -> nyc, frankfurt -> london, etc):

https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/hft-in-my-ba...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-08/the-gazil...

http://www.amsterdamtrader.com/2014/09/hft-in-my-backyard.ht...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/priva...

They employ skills such as kernel driver optimization specialists to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of network card drivers.

What the fuck are they doing messing with this? Yikes.

edit - I answered my own question. These dudes specialize in arbitrage and being faster than everyone else. The crypto markets are insane with this right now. The professional frontrunners have entered the game.

Yeah, Jump got on the map by being the first Chicago prop shop with a microwave line between Chicago and New York. They dominated the equity basis trade for a while.

Keeping your name out of the press and staying secretive is incredibly important and I'm shocked that they didn't just throw a fair amount of cash to this guy directly or offer it up as a donation to some Carl Sagan foundation (and offer to let him keep his e-mail address). $200k for a shop like that is literally the shells of peanuts and worth it to keep your name out of people's mouths.

Have you ever seen the OSINT where people figured out that the badges of certain military programs gave away the reason for their existence? https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/world/americas/01iht-pent... , this feels like one of those moments...wormhole.com for cryptos, LOL.

Jump bailed out Wormhole after the massive hack. This is already well known isn't it? [1] They own Certus One who developed the Wormhole bridge.

[1] https://decrypt.co/92709/jump-crypto-wormhole-defi

I would sell moneylaundering.com from 50k.

There's a lot of work on being immune to front-running, or at least very resistant, involving things like encrypted txs and block shuffling. Seems promising!

On the other hand I believe FTX basically made their money trading arbitrage between the Asian and European markets on the price of bitcoin.

I have to imagine the existence of these guys in the space means whatever 'work on being immune' is probably not functioning very well :P.

These folks showing up in your trading arena means you've left money on the table and they're going to take that, and maybe some extra.

It’s a small slice of the pie - MEV is still possible on the majority of chains for sure! And if quick finality (I.e next block) is required, which it probably will be for simple transactions, it probably always will be somewhat possible. I’m optimistic it will be drastically reduced overall though!

> The professional frontrunners have entered the game.

Have long been in the game.

With free data and free APIs being ubiquitous in this industry from the ground up, its too tempting

Tradfi is not competing and largely in the same place it was 15 years ago. Have fun with paying to implement FIX protocol

Close second to PoW crypto, in any competition for least-socially-useful investment of real physical capital.

They build a lot of open source stuff too: https://jumpcrypto.com/

Wormhole and Pyth and two projects they contribute quite a lot to all in the open.

Sounds like the domain owner threw out what he thought was a preposterous price that no one would accept, in attempt to get the buyer to leave him alone.

Little did he know that Jump Trading has already spent $300 million propping up the legitimacy of this blockchain.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-network-wormhole-h...

$50,000 for a brandable one-word generic domain was a ridiculously low quote. I'm amazed no-one bought it before now as he was underselling it.

1994, when he registered it, was a great year for domains. As the article says, everything was still available. I registered all sorts of goofy things, but back then no-one was thinking they would be worth anything. They were also FREE in 1994. Shortly after they started charging a yearly rate for dotcoms and I let all but one lapse, to the loss of many millions in future revenue...

I would say this is a valid contract, as much as I don't like siding with scummy crypto people (scummy might be redundant here). A contract requires several things to form. According to LLI[1] these are:

The basic elements required for the agreement to be a legally enforceable contract are: mutual assent, expressed by a valid offer and acceptance; adequate consideration; capacity; and legality.

Jump made an offer of $2,500, Dick said the price is $50k firm, the other party immediately accepted. This was in writing, which gets around the Statute of Frauds given the value of the contract is over $500. This seems very straightforward from a legal perspective. I do think that crypto people are super scummy, but the only remedy available when there has been all the elements of a contract existing but one party reneging is a legal remedy either for specific performance or monetary damages, so it's natural that Jump went to court to enforce the, what I would argue is, valid contract.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/contract

What would the remedy be, though? Would the court say you had a contract so you have to sell/transfer the domain? Or would they say, you're in breach of a contract and so Jump can sue you for damages from your breach of the contract?

In these cases the remedies are usually either specific performance or monetary compensation. Specific performance is when they enforce the contract to its terms, which would be the transfer of the domain, and this remedy is usually used in cases where the thing being sold is unique. Real property sale is usually specific performance under the theory that any piece of land is totally unique (there is some debate about whether this should be the case, two farm properties in Nebraska are probably similar enough, whereas two oceanfront properties in California maybe not). I would argue that a domain name is unique enough that specific performance would be the remedy, after all there is and can only be one wormhole.com.

The other remedy would be some sort of monetary damages. I would say that would be something like whatever it costs to purchase a comparable domain, but it would be really hard to decide on what a comparable domain is.

Another remedy would be damages, like you said, but what are damages here? Probably nothing, so even if Jump won it would just be symbolic under that theory.

> Dick said the price is $50k firm, the other party immediately accepted.

He merely received an offer that satisfied his criteria - he did not agree to also accept that offer. See 323's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227141

IANAL, but:

According to the message history in the court filings, Merryman responded on July 1: “The price for wormhole.com is a firm US $ 50,000. -Dick-.”

To Merryman’s surprise, Jump agreed.

Indicates that there was a counteroffer for $50k and an acceptance of that offer. 323's post is wrong because quotes are not the same as what happens in the offer/counteroffer/acceptance contract dance, they're a different thing. Quotes are related to performing work for a price.[1] Here it was Offer => Counteroffer => Acceptance.

[1] https://www.freshbooks.com/hub/estimates/is-quote-contract

But only one party performed "acceptance". Why should negotiating a price mean that the standard for accepting an offer is lowered?

I don't think I quite understand. In traditional contract flow, taking out unrelated things: one person presents an offer, the other person accepts that offer, and on acceptance a contract is created. It doesn't then go back to the offeror to accept the acceptance. I may be misunderstanding you.

Of course it does. I say: I will sell you my house for $1. If you accept, I'm under no obligation to actually sell it.

Real estate by law has to be done in writing.

If you put this in writing, and they accept, that is offer and acceptance.

This is done all the time by the way with houses. Someone puts an offer out to the seller, they accept, that's it, you are under contract.

Alternatively, sellers can offer or counter offer to buyers. In this case sellers will say, here is my offer, when buyer accepts, you are under contract.

Same thing with engagement letters for professional services. Signed proposed engagement letter presented to buyer (usually with an expiration and a few outs), buyer accepts, now you have a contract.

It is in writing; wtf do you mean?

There's offers and then there's binding offers - I assume it must be made very clear if an offer is binding before it is legally treated as such.

This is entirely false.

There's been plenty of litigation in this area. If you offer $230K, the other party accepts, then you are done. You can sometimes rescind before acceptance.

Email Contract Safety Tips

Since the validity of email contracts is generally accepted under the law, it is important to exercise caution when doing business through email. To that end, the following tips may be helpful:

A contract need not be physically signed to be agreed to.

A contract may be created over a series of emails, not just one.

In some instances, a preliminary email may constitute a binding contract regardless of it referencing a future formal agreement that has yet to be agreed to.

Beware of creating an “implied-in-fact” contract, which may occur through industry custom and your conduct.

Beware of using certain terms unless you intend their meaning.

If certain conditions are desired before entering into a contract, state them clearly. Do not create the impression of a meeting of the minds if that is not the intent.

It’s not wise to make assumptions about how the law works when there’s money on the table.

I think the difference here is between what contract law states under common law and what people imagine it to state. I agree it feels weird to say hey I offer you X for a house and you accept then we're under contract. It's such a big purchase and typically there's so much else going on (local regs, mold disclosures, lead paint disclosures, etc.) that it feels weird, but this is how contract law operates.

Many house offers have "contingencies" (financing, inspection etc etc). These are somewhat less binding on buyer. Where I am though for a while contingency free offers were being made. These are more binding.

Emails however are the gotcha's. Lots of "esignature" rules mean that you don't have to actually sign an offer or acceptance anymore, but can do stuff via email. Folks DO run into trouble this way - with sometimes terrible deals agreed to via email.

Kloian v. Domino’s Pizza for a funny one where they couldn't even get a formal settlement agreement, but Domino's still forced a contract.

"and on acceptance a contract is created..."

So... they never made a contract? Negotiation can certainly still fall apart in the 'make a contract' phase.

Contracts are generally signed by both parties. Up until the contract is signed, either party can back out.

Only under certain scenarios do contracts have to be written, never mind signed. Very often, handshake or verbal contracts are perfectly enforceable.

The Statute of Frauds sets the limit over which a contract has to be in writing, and other things. Not all contracts have to be in writing. Additionally, while contracts are generally signed by both parties, it actually, when a written/signed contract is required, only needs to be signed by the party against whom a remedy is being sought.

If agree to sell me your bicycle in a written contract for $1,500 and you sign it and I pay, that contract doesn't need my signature for me to seek a legal remedy against you in the event you don't deliver the bicycle.

In real estate, it's common for a house to be listed at one price, but the seller will turn down offers at that price because it's reasonable to expect bids 10-30% higher than the listing. There's no contract until both parties agree.

Where I live (California), counter offer in real estate implies acceptance. Technically, the seller signs an acceptance with extra condition that the buyer accepts a higher price of $Y in X hours. The seller could do “multiple counter” offer instead, if they don’t want to imply acceptance.

In many/most common law jurisdictions, there is a statute of frauds or similar rule that requires that contracts that purport to transfer interest in land must be written and signed by the parties in order for a contract to be formed.

It's a bad idea to extrapolate from the special case to the general.

Honestly I've had the same thing happen with a used car on Craigslist. Guy had an emotional attachment and changed his mind when I showed up with the cash. In the absence of legislation, courts look to similar cases. Individuals selling houses & cars is more similar to this case than grocery stores advertising prices for commodities, to me.

Jump: we would like to buy your domain.

Dick: I would sell it for $50,000 firm. this is prima facie the offer

Jump: sounds good to us; done. this is the acceptance

There's no notion in the law of contract that each party has to "accept". The law requires offer and acceptance - one party offers, the other accepts.

N.B. I write that Dick's message is prima facie an offer as there might well be other problems with it

Ok say you go into an antique store. You see a vase you like. You ask the shopkeeper "hey how much for that vase?" and they say "it's a firm $50,000."

You have not paid yet.

The seller goes back and realizes that the sticker price was wrong, or that it was the owner's special vase, or that they don't actually really want to sell it.

Can you sue at this point? I'd wager not.

There are certain jurisdictions where public advertisement of prices must be honored, assuming stock and conditions are met - but this is not one of those cases. Even airlines are no longer actually required to honor mistake fares after they collect money from the passenger in spite of 14 CFR 399.88(a) [1]

Asking how much something costs and getting a quote doesn't entitle you then to make that purchase unilaterally, even if you get a counterproposal. Otherwise any time a website bugs out and displays an incorrect price you could just sue them lol.

At no point did Jump obtain a binding option to purchase. Generally to force the seller's hand, they must have already accepted the money or signed something indicating that they will sell.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/399.88

You're mixing a whole lot of things together here; none of which actually relate to this case.

e.g. sticker prices are generally not offers; they're usually construed as "invitations to treat"; in cases involving sale of goods by merchants, the Uniform Commercial Code requires contracts for sales over $500 to be written; you've added a complex agency problem where an employee may be exceeding their delegated authority to sell goods on behalf of the employer; you've introduced an element of unilateral mistake where the selling party may be able to rescind the contract if the buyer had some reason to know the price was wrong

Let's take all those out of the equation.

If you're a salesperson in a shop, and I ask "how much for that vase?", and you say "$100", and I say "I'll buy that vase for $100." then that looks like a contract. It's the acceptance that creates the contract; not payment.

N.B. Cancelation of a mistake fare has nothing to do with a post-sale price increase; because a contract that involves a mistake is rescinded, meaning that it is no longer recognized as binding - the airlines are not asking people to pay more in the context of an existing contract. The doctrine of mistake doesn't apply to the case where you intended to sell for a particular price then realized it was a bad deal for you.

> If you're a salesperson in a shop, and I ask "how much for that vase?", and you say "$100", and I say "I'll buy that vase for $100." then that looks like a contract. It's the acceptance that creates the contract; not payment.

Is there a single case where any shopkeeper has been held to specific performance?

I'm pretty sure if someone says "how much is the vase?" and you respond "$100," they say "I'll take it" and you say, "well, that's what it's worth but I'm not actually ready to part with it..." there's no binding contract to sell. But I'm not a lawyer, and I'm looking forward to a resolution here.

> N.B. Cancelation of a mistake fare has nothing to do with a post-sale price increase; because a contract that involves a mistake is rescinded, meaning that it is no longer recognized as binding - the airlines are not asking people to pay more in the context of an existing contract. The doctrine of mistake doesn't apply to the case where you intended to sell for a particular price then realized it was a bad deal for you.

This is actually incorrect. The DOT makes it clear that 399.88(a) requires airlines to honor mistake fares.

  ... if a consumer purchases a fare and that consumer receives confirmation (such as a confirmation email and/or the purchase appears on their credit card statement or online account summary) of their purchase, then the seller of air transportation cannot increase the price of that air transportation to that consumer, even when the fare is a “mistake.” [1]

  A contract of carriage provision that reserves the right to cancel such ticketed purchases or reserves the right to raise the fare cannot legalize the practice described above.  The Enforcement Office would consider any contract of carriage provision that attempts to relieve a carrier of the prohibition against post-purchase price increase to be an unfair and deceptive practice in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 41712.

However, they stopped holding airlines to that after a few folks took advantage.

[1] https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/EAPP...

>The DOT makes it clear that 399.88(a) requires airlines to honor mistake fares.

No; it doesn't state that at all - it states that it's an unfair or deceptive practice to increase a price for travel involved scheduled air travel after purchase. Airlines are, as a matter of contract law, able to rescind contracts made under mistake. Section 399.88 was originally interpreted by the DOT as creating strict liability for airlines if they refused to honor mistake fares, but that's different from there being a breach of contract. Breach of contract creates a remedy for the consumer; unfair or deceptive trading practices give rise to civil and administrate penalties by the DOT.

The fact of the matter is that the confrontation with their regulator and the civil penalties involved are in the "greater of two evils" category for the airlines, so there's commercially speaking no way this would ever come to court.

>Is there a single case where any shopkeeper has been held to specific performance?

This has nothing to do with specific performance; that's just one remedy for breach of contract. Why are you suddenly talking about remedies?

> This has nothing to do with specific performance; that's just one remedy for breach of contract. Why are you suddenly talking about remedies?

I'm mostly curious if this ever made it to court, and that the court decided in favor of the would-be customer.

>I'm mostly curious if this ever made it to court, and that the court decided in favor of the would-be customer.

There's at least one case I know involving a car dealership; is that close enough?

Got a link? I'd love to read it.

Not quite. Counteroffers expire or may be rescinded. In the absence of written terms it is obvious that a counteroffer expires whenever the seller feels like it.

So all that remains here is whether Dick had a duty to notify the expiration prior to Jump's acceptance.

Edit: if the negotiating process did have written or implied terms that would be different

>In the absence of written terms it is obvious that a counteroffer expires whenever the seller feels like it.

Uh no, offers do not expire whenever the offeror feels like it - where do you get that idea?

An offer remains valid for a reasonable period of time, or until revocation of that offer is communicated to the offeree.

Right. That's open to some context and interpretation across a continuum: informal, unstructured dealing at a garage sale on one end and billion dollar real-estate on the other.

Dafuq is IANAL.

As far as I am aware, listing a price of something (say in a mail order catalog, or on a store shelf), does not constitute an offer. Rather, it is a solicitation of offers to buy. I would think stating "the price is $XXX" would be along those same lines, as there has been no positive statement of willingness to sell it to a specific counterparty for that price.

Another example would be real estate listings, to which this is quite close. They have a definite list price, realtors most certainly say things like "the price is $XXX", and yet it's still on any potential buyer to submit a formal offer to buy with a specific price which the seller may or may not accept. If this weren't the case and such communication was considered positive offers, then we would rarely see things like houses being sold over their asking price.

Advertising seems like a bit of a red herring here, given that the domain wasn't advertised. My understanding from reading is that the DomainAgents people sent an unsolicited offer on behalf of Jump for $2,500. I could be wrong on that. Even if I am though, using your house analogy, it's like offering a price on a house that's advertised, and a homeowner says "no I will sell it to you for 20x the amount" and then the buyer accepts in writing.

But what if you knock on the door of a property, ask the owner whats the price he's willing to sell the property at, owner says a price, and then you accept that price?

Is that binding without the property owner also accepting? Doesn't seem so to me.

Ignoring statute of frauds concerns - why not? The roles of offeror and offeree can reverse many times during a contract negotiation and it doesn't matter at all whether "buyer" and "seller" are in any particular role once the offeree accepts.

Can you explain the legal basis on which this "both sides need to accept" thingie of yours come from?

It is incredibly common in transactions more complicated than buying milk for both parties to communicate over time the many and varied factors that could effect forming a final agreement including both parties thoughts on price without intending to or forming a final agreement then and there or listing every possible contingency in every single informal communique.

The salesman and the buyer discuss the merits of the car one says they think they could pay 25000 and other 28000 but the buyer intends on test driving and having it checked out mechanically. Meanwhile the seller expects the buyer to have acceptable credit, sufficient down.

Whereas price could enter the discussion along with other factors both parties expect there to be a formal step in which paperwork is signed which actuates the sale. This could even in less formal situations be a handshake and a check but the difference between one and the other is clearly expressed intent to complete the sale.

That doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I asked.

Not sure how it works in the US but where I’m from a bid for a house, either buying or selling offer, is made as a very particular legal document with all sorts of assurances and has to be made by a lawyer or a real estate broker.

That document is legally binding and it’s enough for the receiving party to accept for a contract to be formed.

Casually doing this over email is absolutely not the same.

This type of requirement on offers/acceptance procedure is typically (most states and federal jurisdictions in the US) require for ‘real property’, that is things categorized as ‘immovable’ property in civil law jurisdictions. It is not required for other property types unless the jurisdiction explicitly requires it via legislation.

No, the $50k would not have satisfied the statute of frauds, because Dick sent them correspondence indicating he didn't think he was actually forming a binding contract, which is required in the absence of a signed legal agreement.

Generally, if the parties don't have a signed agreement, but act as if terms in an informal exchange are binding, the court will uphold the informal agreement even if one of the parties changes their mind. But in this case, the undisputed evidence is that one party didn't act as if they were bound by their informal correspondence.

And furthermore, courts have almost never upheld an informal/unsigned agreement between a corporation and an individual as binding against the individual.

My background is in English law, though I believe similar broad principles would apply here. IMO, it's plausible to argue it either way, and hard to be certain without knowing the full details about what was said. Jump seem to have made an offer for the domain, and the $50,000 price could be interpreted as a counteroffer, which would enable Jump to accept and lead to the formation of a contract.

However, there must be an intent to enter into legal relations by both sides, and I'm uncertain that Merryman's actions demonstrate this. Further, I'm not sure that stating a price for the domain alone provides sufficient certainty of terms for there to be a valid contract (there is no discussion, for instance, about when the domain is to be transferred or when/how payment is to be made). The details of the initial communication from Jump may be relevant here - say if they invite counteroffers and it is clear they want to enter into a binding contract, or the other details are specified by them and the only part Merryman proposes changing is the price. It's also interesting that "Jump subsequently raised its bid", as this could be seen as an acknowledgement that no contract was formed at the earlier stage.

This entire discussion would be much more informative if everybody stated their credentials regarding matters of law, as you did. For example: IANAL. Or "I practice law in such and such jurisdiction" etc.

IANAL but I use the internet and I know that everybody on it has an opinion about legal matters.

So if I go to a car dealership and ask how much a car is, and the dealer says $30K. I say I would pay $28K. The dealer says "sure! sold!". By this logic I would be required to buy the car.

legal logic doesn't apply to different variables, so I'm not sure why you did that.

the one with more similarities would be that you would have asked the dealer to sell at $28k, the dealer says $30k and you say okay.

secondly the courts accept verbal contracts unless there is a statutory carveout for a specific kind of agreement, the courts require proof to rule which verbal contracts happen to lack. so if you did it over email, or did it through a broker's portal that says using it is a binding contract, then a court would have the proof, which is the logic of the actual case here.

I think that both reversing the power status and changing the relative amounts is doing the analogy some harm.

In my opinion a more relevant analogy is: Car dealership approaches person and asks to buy their car for $2500. Person says “Naah, price is $50,000 bro”. Dealership says: “Sure”.

Here I believe it’s more clear that the person is in fact not obligated to part with their car unless they take the required additional step of agreeing to the purchase and finalising all documents.

Even in your scenario over email you agreed to sell to the dealer for $30K, I still don't think it would be a binding contract.

No, because, under the Uniform Commercial Code, the contract for sale of goods, by a merchant, with a value over $500 has to be in writing. But that also doesn't tell you anything about this case, because the category of "goods" does not include "general intangibles" into which category the courts have placed domain names, and because the seller in this case would not be considered a merchant in the sense of the UCC.

No, you go to your neighbor and give them a note that says $500 for the corvette, they write back no way, it's $50k, you write back "done!". They are now obligated to sell you the car for $50k, even if it's hot rod red and they really like driving it on the weekend.

Prove I wrote "done"... case dismissed.

I look forward to the Carl Sagan fan winning this trial on that basis.

Sure, agreed, but let's say the buyer doesn't accept on the spot in mere seconds. So no agreement is made on how long the counter is good for. Buyer goes home to check his finances. He comes back an hour later and says, "done deal!"

The seller seems firmly within their rights to say, "Sorry, my counteroffer was good only for 15 minutes."

This might sound silly but market conditions change in minutes and events happen like earthquakes or 9/11. In the absence of an agreed term of expiration I see no reason why a counter is good for any longer than the seller feels like it. Though with written or implied terms it would be totally different (see real estate contract offers for examples).

Am I missing something?

Still not definitely an offer since its not clear whether "no way, its $50K" is a committed offer, plus the terms should be more definite.

> So if I go to a car dealership and ask how much a car is, and the dealer says $30K. I say I would pay $28K. The dealer says "sure! sold!". By this logic I would be required to buy the car.

Yes. What’s your point?

My point is I don't think it would be a valid contract but I think you could have inferred that.

Jump themselves repudiated this view of the exchange when they agreed to subsequent larger amounts. This is a transparent ploy to use the power of the state to seize private property at a price that the current owner does not consent to sell at, and the only question is whether the law will recognize this or ignore it.

It isn't a valid contract and it will fail in court.

Was there any time frame for when the domain would be transferred? Or when the money would be transferred? Without that specified how could this really be enforceable?

Crypto should indeed disappear down a wormhole to get deposited into the trash dimension.

If you hate these guys so much you should not let them dictate your language. Crypto doesn't mean cryptocurrency.

Yes it does. It just doesn't to you, because you're not an average person.

The average person, who has no idea what cryptography is, only hears of "crypto" in sound bites on MSNBC or Fox News, and hears advertisements for a VISA crypto card, the only card powered by crypto! and they think exactly what OP thought.

I'm going to blow your mind... the "crypto" in cryptocurrency is from cryptography, of which it is a subset.

Sort of. Little of the work being done in the cryptocurrency space is actually applied cryptography. The big innovation of proof-of-work consensus isn't using cryptography to achieve trustlessness. Yeah there are digital signatures. Hooray.

The proof of work in bitcoin was originally a cryptographic primitive designed to prevent email spam.

I would argue that pretty much all of the recent (past 5 years) advances in work on zkproofs is researched/funded/applied by cryptocurrency community. and imo this is the most important work in cryptography that is happening, actually developing secure general computation. You might not like cryptocurrencies but to dismiss this is silly.

The "crypto means cryptography" motto also trivializes all the prior work, cryptography and ideas of digital tokens/currencies have been tied together for decades.

https://zkp.science/ https://zkproof.org/ https://github.com/0xPARC https://github.com/iden3/circom

I don’t see how they can win, as quoting an amount is a negotiating strategy that I’ve personally seen and used on both sides: if they were to win, it would surely have far reaching implications across the business world.

Aside from the fact that I don't want them to win this, I kind of want them to win because the fallout would be hilarious.

> “I didn’t really want to sell it. I’ve had the same email address for 28 years – it’s like family,” he said.

This would be the biggest concern for me. Would you trust yourself to update the email address with every single account/organisation you've registered it? I use my personal email even for government-related stuff, there are hundreds of places where I've used it. I wouldn't trust myself enough to relinquish my domain for any amount of money.

>I wouldn't trust myself enough to relinquish my domain for any amount of money.

any amount? For 60k you can probably hire an assistant full time to go through all your emails/browsing histories and switch them over.

I think I would write into the contract that I need to retain ownership of my one email address.

I'm not sure exactly how this would break down, but I imagine the agreement could lay out specific responsibilities and penalties.

So many people here saying throwing out a price obligates you to sell at that price. Deals fall apart all the time after a price has been settled on.

And prices change. Surprising for a trading company it seems.

It's funny to see so many people trying to justify the ridiculous. My children try this all the time.

I'm not a lawyer, but here is the crux of the argument:

> And while Merryman's view isn't reflected in the court filings, Goldstein said his "statement that the price is a firm $50,000 could reasonably be understood as a counteroffer, which Jump had the power to accept, thereby forming a contract."

This is such a Wall Street trader perception of contracts.

Jump imagines the seller cares about their long-term reputation for honoring their offer as a market-maker.

He could not give a hoot.

A verbal or written counteroffer is not a contract. How long does Jump imagine they have to accept counteroffer? Eternity? Silliness & slimy legal jiu jitsu.

> How long does Jump imagine they have to accept counteroffer?

Generally in situations like this, unless otherwise specified, courts would fall back to a “reasonable” period of time or until Jump is notified that the offer is no longer valid.

Completely disgraceful, but not totally unexpected for a company led by a 25 year old "crypto intern".

What do you mean by crypto intern here?

I think he's referring to the president of their crypto arm (not the whole company) who was an engineering intern when he originally joined the company 5 years ago.

Are you jealous? What is wrong with being 25 year old and figuring out how to lead the company you interned at to unlock 1 billion in revenue? Seems like a pretty good start to me.

I'm not jealous; I'm making a moral judgement about how immature a 25 yo's view of the world is likely to be, especially if they work in a privileged industry far divorced from most people's everyday reality.

> Merryman hadn't been serious about selling, he said, throwing out what he viewed as a high offer to get them to go away.

Sounds like a bad business practice. I’ve seen this logic in other circles “quote higher for someone you don't want to deal with” without acknowledging what is binding.

I think a judge is necessary to determine DomainAgent’s brokering role with this specific property owner, because nobody knows and it is the crux of the case.

Disgusting. Jump Trading should be ashamed, but people like that are shameless.

I have a domain that's worth maybe a couple of hundred dollars. When I get an occasional request for a quote on it I usually say $350k. I'd probably actually accept that, but it would be a shock if someone agreed to it, and I sure would not want or expect to be legally bound to the offer price.

Their claim is such a reach that I hope the owner doesn't pay much in legal expenses.

Even in ebay, I can offer something for a firm price, someone can offer to buy it at that firm price, and I can still cancel the sale for a variety of reasons. If someone offers a OBO price, I can counteroffer, and still cancel the sale after they accept the counteroffer. It may hurt my eBay reputation, but I'm under no obligation to sell at any price unless I explicitly agree to it. Giving a counteroffer isn't an actual agreement to sell.

There's a domain I want that has been squatted since 2001, current going price was $19000, I check in on it every now and again and the price goes up by some $1000. So stupid.

If (and this is very much an "if") it really is the case that just an offer can be a binding contact, what happens if you make an offer to two parties in parallel, and both accept? Does the one who accepted later just not get the domain and noone can sue anyone? (no other option makes sense to me, there usually wouldn't really be any damages you could sue for either) If so, wouldn't it be possible to claim that you sold the domain to someone else for $5 before and get out of needing to sell it?

How long does an offer stand? What if someone offered to sell 1 bitcoin for $100 10 years ago, would that offer be still standing and be required to be fulfilled?

My IANAL answer is that in that case you would not be negotiating in good faith, and both purchasing parties could sue for damages.

For all the armchair lawyers arguing on this, bear the current facts in mind: There is no legally binding precedent that can impel a private person to sell an asset just because they stated what the price was.

Merchant law and private seller law are two very different things.

I think Goldstein is over-stating and over-reaching what an offer and counteroffer implies.

Private sellers of assets and services are free to renege any deal - even after the contract is signed. After the contract is signed, then it is a matter for the courts. No contract was signed or implied to be signed in this case.

In a private sale there is no verbal contract law - A: "How much for the lawn mower?" B: "$50 firm" A: "Sold!" B: "I don't want to sell." Verbal or written, there is absolutely no implication of a contract or acceptance of the contract at that point. Though this very much varies by state and would be governed by the state of NV.

Just because an entity states they are authorized to act on a deal, does not mean they have that authority. There was a scummy domain broker around a few years ago that would send you a snail mail letter of intent to purchase your domain for a stupid low amount, with a cheque attached, and failure to respond to the letter after a certain number of days indicated your willingness to sell at the offered price. Depositing the cheque indicated your acceptance of the contract. Holding on to (or destruction of) the cheque indicates your acceptance of the contract. I know of quite a few people with high value domains who had to lawyer up to stop the transfers from taking place.

There are a number of fairly strong claims in here, that I think you need to cite some authorities on. e.g. what is a "private sale", that precludes the possibility of a verbal contract?

I am not about to write out the equivalent of "Hello world!" for legal citations and the various laws as they apply to private sale vs an entity recognized as a business or merchant with established conventions. This entire thread, other than the rare statements by actual laywers (who have a learned opinion on the matter, but probably lack a lot of context without reading the actual filings) is armchair lawyering of coulda-woulda-shoulda. I happen to be one of those armchair lawyers, with a lot of law classes to back up my reasoning, but still not a paid up member of the legal profession. I stated a number of points that can be verified by anyone with a legal background, which you seem to have at least a modicum of. I hedged my bets by stating "this varies by state."

It appears to be a very clear case of a business' legal team overreaching what constitutes an agreement of sale in the hopes of either scaring the owner of the asset, or swaying opinion enough to have a judge side with them. I suspect they will not prevail in their initial filing, and then they will argue for domain squatting. I doubt this will end amicably for either party.

> you need to cite some authorities on

P.S. I don't need to do shit.

I wish there were a pro bono or law-student organization that would take on cases like this. I actually don't know if there's a case here but it definitely sounds like legal bullying. Jump Trading suffered no loss by the person backing out of the deal so pushing forward is really obnoxious. Just to make a point against bad behavior like this, I would take up this case if I had the means.

Prince Humperdinck: Surrender.

Westley: You mean you wish to surrender to me? Very well, I accept.

The current owner doesn’t want to sell because he doesn’t want to part ways with his current email address.

Couldn’t they simply add a provision for this in a deal? Like “we’ll own the domain but we will maintain a redirection for your previous email address to a newer address of your choice”?

Or the other way around “we’re buying ownership of certain DNS A records like “www” and “@“.

Has this ever been done?

I wouldn’t do the former, because there’s a high risk it will still atop working at some point, and you don’t want your email being down for all the time it takes to get things resolved legally and technically (possibly having to start a legal fight).

As for the latter, they will still want to use some email addresses on the domain and not want to rely on a 79-year old individual to manage it for them.

I've seen several domain purchases where there was an agreement that the previous owner's email address be forwarded to him, e.g. bob@wormhole.com would forever redirect to his new address.

If I had a cool domain like that I'd also want to send mail with it, so personally I'd want to keep all current MX and TXT records relating to email intact.

So,

1: I think there’s merit to the case in that the domain owner said they’d sell for 50k and that can reasonably be seen as a binding offer. The courts may decide one way or the other, of course. But -

2: The offer did not go into any kind of detail on things like when transfer of control would take place! It could be “immediately” or “20 years after the seller’s death”.

1. The guy said the price was 50k. He didn't say he would sell for 50k. He just stated the price.

2. There was no offer to sell, only a declaration of a price.

He didn't even say to whom he'd sell the domain at that price.

Well, I'm pretty sure you can't even directly sue over ownership of a .com domain? You have to submit to UDNP arbitrage first (https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en).

It doesn't seem they even tried this in this case? So this should be a dismissal right away, albeit at great emotional/monetary expense to the original owner. Unfair, but yeah, cryptobros will be cryptobros, and any harm to members of society is just for the good of society, I'm sure...

(Later edit: so, apparently I'm wrong, and there is no binding arbitration clause. Still, lame action, and this seems the exact situation arbitration is designed for, especially since 'local courts' is not exactly well-defined for .com...)

>Well, I'm pretty sure you can't even directly sue over ownership of a .com domain?

Why not? The whole story seems like a contract dispute, which most definitely is in the jurisdiction of local courts.

Sure you can. It's stated explicitly in the UDRP on the very page you just linked: one way to handle a dispute is to take it to a court and get a ruling.

> Under the policy, most types of trademark-based domain-name disputes must be resolved by agreement, court action, or arbitration before a registrar will cancel, suspend, or transfer a domain name.

> ... file a complaint in a court of proper jurisdiction against the domain-name holder ...

Emphasis mine. You don't have to choose arbitration.

>arbitrage

I think you mean "arbitration".

Why do you think the UDRP has any bearing on what Jump can do in court? ICANN can't make up rules that apply to third parties; there's such a thing as privity of contract! The UDRP may be incorporated into the contract that Merryman agreed to with his registrar, but Jump isn't a signatory to that agreement.

if you are going to treat a domain name owner like this, why would shareholders, and potential customers expect to be treated any better.

actions advertize louder than popups

Jump is a privately held proprietary trading firm.

There are a very small number of shareholders (though, to be pedantic, the correct term is "member" rather than "shareholder" since all the related US organizations are LLCs rather than corporations) and it seems extremely likely that those members would agree with the firm's actions here.

Beside the point but the cursor tracking javascript clock thing on wormhole.com is pretty impressive / mesmerizing. I haven't seen anything like that before.

The article doesn't seem like a terribly big deal to me. I think both parties are being obnoxious. Essentially squatting on a nice domain name, asking an exorbitant sum for it, and renegotiating after a deal is accepted because you think you "left money on the table" are all obnoxious behaviors. Suing someone over what was never a terribly firm or serious offer also seems obnoxious.

The domain owner is _using_ the domain. There's a site there, and it's been their email address for decades.

That's not squatting just because someone with money wants it.

The website is basically an image of a wormhole. The owner is using the domain for an email address, but I imagine they could reach an agreement where he kept the email address(es).

Maybe squatting isn't exactly right, because he's not trying to sell it, but it seems closer to squatting than using it to me.

He would be well within his rights to host no website at all on the domain. Using it solely for email is 100% "using the domain". Period. The end. Not squatting. Just became some crypto bros want the domain does not change that.

First, owning a valuable domain that you don't use is basically the definition of squatting. Second, I never wrote that it was outside of his "rights", I wrote that it was obnoxious.

> First, owning a valuable domain that you don't use is basically the definition of squatting.

But he is using it. For email. It's just an MX record instead of an A record.

Say you buy a shed. However, you never get around to using it. So you’re squatting on that shed, and I demand you relinquish it to someone who will make more use of it.

Yes, that's how it should work

Do you feel that nobody should own anything that they're not actively using, and that such things should be removed from their possession?

What about if someone with more expensive tools than yours wants it? Do you just give it up?

Do you think that for any given domain, if there's someone who can make better use of that domain than the current owner, they should be allowed to take it?

For example, soup.com is just a redirect to https://www.liptonkitchens.com/ right now, without any specific content of its own, so they're using it even less than this person is using wormhole.com, since he's using it for his email address. If I am prepared to start an actual soup related blog should lipton be forced to give the domain to me?

I recall doing something similar (text following cursor on a delay) as an exercise in a "learn javascript programming" book about 20-15 years ago. The clever bit here is the text being dynamic, like a clock, but I doubt it's an entirely unique idea and more of an evolution of the idea from the exercise. This use of javascript seemed quite clever and important back then; you had to be there.

It is not easy to say who is right here.

From the little information in the article, it looks like this is how it went down:

Jump sent an unsolicited email to Dick, offering $2500 to buy the domain.

Dick did not want to sell and phrased that as "The price for wormhole.com is a firm $50000", expecting nobody would want to pay $50k for it.

Can the latter be seen as a binding offer?

Given the sum of the circumstances, my feeling is that it can not. A one-line reply to an unsolicited email with a price 20x the initial offering is not really signaling a serious will to sell.

No. That’s why contracts exist.

If an email with a number in it was a binding offer, then what is a contract for?

Edit: I see that you edited in an additional paragraph at the end of your comment after my initial reply. If you’re editing a comment after-the-fact, it’s good practice to make it clear for future readers.

Contracts do not have to have any specific form. An email exchange can very well be a contract.

A contract is for selling things that are more complicated than a simple transaction. If you go to the supermarket and buy a sandwich, you don't sign a contract. They stipulate a price, you agree by taking it off the shelf and showing it to the cashier. Then you inform the cashier of your banking details by sliding your creditcard, and your bank and their bank arrange for the actual payment.

In this case, Jump agreed to the price the person set, and then the person didn't give Jump the opportunity to pay. Where I live I'm pretty sure this would have been a binding agreement, though there's definitely some exceptions to that law that might or might not apply here.

On many occasions it’s been upheld that an advertisement is not an offer in a contract. A store cannot be sued over not delivering on an advertisement.

There is a huge difference between buying a sandwich, and a claimed 5-figure deal. No one is going to sue over not being able to buy a sandwich.

If you walk into a car dealership and buy a car, you can be damn sure there will be a sales contract.

So what's the difference?

And note this was not an advertisement, it was a personalized quote.

Also while advertisements made in separate channels (like on TV) might not be binding, at least where I live any advertisements made in the store are certainly binding.

The amount of money makes a big difference.

> it was a personalized quote.

"personalized quote" implies that the owner here took the time to look into the prospective buyer, and determine an amount that was based on that buyer.

It is not in any way, shape, or form reasonable to assume that the seller looked into Jump, determined that they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on something called "Wormhole Network", and that 50k was what they would reasonable pay for "wormhole.com".

Trying to phrase this as a "personalized" quote is misleading.

Supermarkets dont need to sell you stuff for the price on the shelf. That would be insane.

What?

Why would an email with a number not be a contract?

The same reason an mls listing is not a contract.

Huge difference, a mls listing is one sided so there’s clearly no meeting of the minds.

A written negotiation about the purchase price is completely different.

B: Hey, I’ll buy this from you for $2500

S: No, sorry. But I’ll take $50000

B: Deal!

Nope, the second step was not “I’ll take $50000”, it was “the price is $50000”. No different from an MLS listing.

He did not say, “if you pay $50,000, I will sell it to you.”

That only makes sense if you totally ignore the context. In context it was clearly a counteroffer.

There may be an argument that the sale price has been negotiated. Although I don't believe it has, since Jump countered again after the fact with $200k.

However the rest of the terms have not been negotiated. Timeline and transfer details have not been discussed.

For timeline I suggest: When the moon is in the Seventh House And Jupiter aligns with Mars

As for the "transfer ceremony", I leave that to your imagination

Generally, the UCC sec 2-201 "statute of frauds" requires that agreements for more than $500 for an exchange of goods must be signed, and in writing. Most states have adopted the UCC or this portion of the UCC.

An informal (unsigned) written agreement can still satisfy this requirement...so long as it represents the intent of both parties to be bound by the contract. But there is correspondence by the domain owner to Jump that he did not throw out the original $50k price expecting it to be accepted or to form a valid contract. And before that correspondence he didn't act like there was a binding agreement.

However, the $100k follow-up email by the domain owner would represent a firm offer that would satisfy the statute of frauds. It doesn't appear the $100k was accepted, and Jump is suing for the $50k price. Ultimately, they will spend a multiple of the original price on legal fees...to try to get the original price. (That assumes they win at court. I would estimate that there is a <1% chance they win if this goes to trial, or to appeals. They chose the wrong hill to fight on.)

Most likely outcome: Jump settles for $100k plus the domain owner's legal fees.

I think that they do not mind spending 50k or 100k, they just want to secure the possibility of sale going through. They probably do know that the legal fees alone would cost them more, they just want the domain.

I was twisted at first, but now firmly stand against the man, since he disables the right-click menu.

Jump needs to retain new lawyers because their current ones seem to be idiots at face value.

I think the lesson learned here is don't reply to offers unless you really want to sell.

Reading the article it looks like the domain owner was leading wormhole cryptocurrency on a bit with counteroffers wormhole agreed to but then he backed out of. There’s probably more to the story then the headline elicits.

The bloomberg article has more details. Based on the correspondence provided by both parties there wasn't an offer made by the domain owner. He suggested a price, but that by itself does not constitute an offer, or houses would always sell for list price.

Bloomberg quotes a corporate lawyer who claims that the $50k price constituted a "firm counteroffer," which could be accepted, but they chose the wrong expert to ask.

Generally, for contracts between corporations and non-corporate entities, legal formalities are required to make the contract binding. This almost means a signed written agreement where the terms of the exchange have been specified.

Between corporations, or between individuals, courts have been willing to relax the requirements for formalities (meaning, not requiring signatures, or not requiring a single document laying out the agreement between the parties). But between corporations and individuals, courts have been very, very insistent on observing legal formalities, due to the extreme power differential between the parties.

It's very likely that Jump will settle this case. Even if they somehow win at trial, the domain owner can simply appeal and keep hold of the domain name for years before the appeal is resolved.

> It's very likely that Jump will settle this case. Even if they somehow win at trial, the domain owner can simply appeal and keep hold of the domain name for years before the appeal is resolved.

I hope he crowdfunds his legal fees if it comes to that. It would be an apt way to fire back at people claiming to defend public goods, and the negative PR would worry Jump almost more

Now it will cost legal fees plus a million

Cartoon level evil, Mr. Burns class.

Yuck.

I’m sick of living in a society where wealthy people are able to bully and harass others.

No corporation would feel bound to honor a price tossed out casually in an email with nothing signed — and it’s disgusting they’re suing an old man to bully him.

Why is it crypto people are so gross? — how can I take the current state of crypto seriously when a “major” platform acts like petulant middle schoolers?

> Merryman responded on July 1: “The price for wormhole.com is a firm US $ 50,000. -Dick-.”

> Merryman hadn’t been serious about selling, he said, throwing out what he viewed as a high offer to get them to go away.

If he wasn't serious about selling, he should have said so and moved on. It seems smarmy to quote an offer price without a sincere intent to sell.

Sure, that's the most you can say. Without a signed agreement he has no obligation to listen to them or sell.

Why would an email not be an agreement?

Its not legally binding, are you asking why an email isn't legally binding?

Yeah, why not?

Because a window isn't a door

So you don’t actually know?

"smarmy" is not illegal. It's also not a binding contract.

I dunno, as long as there is no contract I dont see why he can’t reconsider. I mean, offers are retracted all the time

I think we've found the potential buyer.

>It seems smarmy to quote an offer price without a sincere intent to sell.

Merryman is 79, and receiving emails about selling the domain he's owned for decades. He has never asked for these emails, and just wants to be left alone. He throws a highball offer, hoping they'll go away. He then clarifies that he doesn't want to sell, which he is of course fully allowed to do. Then they sue him.

I would say there are smarmy actions in here, but not on the part of Merryman.

> He then clarifies that he doesn't want to sell

He increased the price to 100k, then 200k, then said no.

Perhaps a more direct "fuck off" would have been better?

View it from the eyes of a guy that retired in 2001, or any reasonable person, and $50k for a domain is an absurd amount that should have been tantamount to "I'm not selling, take off."

>or any reasonable person

There are many reasonable people who understand that $50k is nothing for a decent domain name.

And I guarantee you there are far more reasonable people who don't.

Not knowing what something is worth won’t get you out of a contract.

I think he was serious about selling it. But he was so severely low-balled initially that he doesn't trust Jump to give him a fair price.

Jump's original bid is 2,500 dollars.

>Why is it crypto people are so gross? — how can I take the current state of crypto seriously when a “major” platform acts like petulant middle schoolers?

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

People/companies suing people over domains isn't new. See for instance, nissan.com

So what?

I was refuting the parent comment. If you have trouble understanding the significance/consequence of that act, or that "so what?" is an adequate reply to that, then it's clear that engaging with you is not worth my time.

But it's not a refutation at all

1. maybe next time you should make a more substantive comment rather than something vague like "so what?"

2. What is a refutation then? The OP was the equivalent of getting cut off by a BMW, then lamenting how BMW drivers are "are so gross" and how you can them seriously when they "acts like petulant middle schoolers". If you don't think that counts as a refutation, what does?

You haven't demonstrated how your analogy is useful. OP's statement wasn't from a single instance of wrongdoing.

>OP's statement wasn't from a single instance of wrongdoing.

He didn't list or make any explicit reference to any other instances. The entirety of the comment consists of:

1. assertion that "crypto people are so gross"

2. claiming that the actions of "a “major” platform" (singular) causes him to be unable to take current state of crypto seriously

>You haven't demonstrated how your analogy is useful.

Maybe BMW driver are actually "so gross", but on a forum like HN I expect more arguments backing that than just a reference to the current story.

> on a forum like HN I expect more arguments backing that than just a reference to the current story

Your expectations aren't likely to be met if you spend time on fallacies instead of just writing one line asking for more evidence as to why crypto people are gross.

Yes, it's clear you don't know what a refutation is. "B is also Y" does not falsify "A is Y". OP never said "crypto is uniquely scummy" and you did not say "crypto is not scummy".

The problem is that crypto advocates will spend all day bending your ear about how crypto is necessary for the good of humanity, and then as soon as you point out any of the bad shit happening, claim no honorable intentions were ever claimed, the existing system sucks anyway, get over it, buy my token loser.

>Yes, it's clear you don't know what a refutation is. "B is also Y" does not falsify "A is Y".

linguistic descriptivism to the rescue!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/refute

>2. (transitive, proscribed) To deny the truth or correctness of (something).

>Usage notes

>The second meaning of refute (“to deny the truth of”) is proscribed as erroneous by some (compare Merriam Webster,1994). An alternative term with such a meaning is repudiate, which means to reject or refuse to acknowledge, but without the implication of justification. However, this distinction does not exist in the original Latin refūtō (“oppose, resist, rebut”), which can apply to both senses.

That said, I'll concede that it's not strictly not a refutation, because I don't think it's ultimately relevant to the conversation.

>The problem is that crypto advocates will spend all day bending your ear about how crypto is necessary for the good of humanity, and then as soon as you point out any of the bad shit happening, claim no honorable intentions were ever claimed, the existing system sucks anyway, get over it, buy my token loser.

I don't understand what your point here is. Are you claiming that Jump Trading or their leadership engages in the behavior that you mentioned? Or are you simply noting that there's crypto companies/people doing shady stuff?

> Why is it crypto people are so gross?

Yeah, I don’t get how they see this as a good move.

Why is it crypto people are so gross?

Sorry to shatter your illusions, that's not specific to crypto at all. Disney lawyers are far less child-friendly than the company's content, and so is pretty much every major corporation. Just this week, I remember Zara (the fashion retailer) sueing a one-woman-run boutique named House of Zana. A bit before they also sued a women's empowerment business called Tara Sartorial (yes, because of likeness of the names). The number of tiny independents that Jack Wolfskin has sued for putting anything resembling an animal footprint onto pretty much any fabric is countless. We could go on here.

I don’t see how outlining other gross behavior makes crypto people less gross.

Eg, Disney is currently suffering major financial losses due to being associated with child grooming and trying to overturn democratically passed laws.

Is your point that I should accept the grotesquery of a major company suing an old man because others behave badly?

…How does that make sense?

> Sorry to shatter your illusions, that's not specific to crypto at all.

This is also a petty ad hominem that requires an uncharitable assumption about me.

Far from shattering my “illusions”, you just revealed your own cynicism and low standards.

So do you have issues taking fashion retailers seriously because major players act like "petulant middle schoolers" (your words)? Do you have problems taking pretty much every economic sector seriously because major players act in an incredibly petty way heaping frightening lawsuits on unwitting individuals? Or are you just holding crypto companies to a different standard because you have other reservations about the sector?

>Disney is currently suffering major financial losses due to being associated with child grooming and trying to overturn democratically passed laws.

>This is also a petty ad hominem that requires an uncharitable assumption about me.

The contrast between those two statements is most interesting.

How so?

How, because I misread what you wrote and didn't reread it when I wrote what I said. I totally took what you said incorrectly for that I apologize.

>Why is it crypto people are so gross?

They are desperate to become the new middle men so they fight dirty.

"Why is it crypto people are so gross?" They're conmen running a scam, they're gonna be super gross of course.

"Why is it crypto people are so gross?"

https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/ot...

Because some people do not give a fuck. We're talking about people who support valuation of assets based on speculation with no actual economic value while pumping out oceans of CO2 and wasting copious amounts of energy to have computers, to simplify a bit, guess a number somewhere between 0 and 2^255 for the privelege.

Seems on brand.

Jump Trading was founded in 1999, they’re traditional finance people, not “crypto people”.

They seem to have since then moved to operating in crypto (tfa says they want the domain for their crypto business).

They’re buying this domain solely to use it for their wormhole network, which bridges blockchains together. So, in this context, they most definitely are “crypto people”.

I know it’s for a crypto related project, I read the article, but I’d argue that the average finance person adding another asset class that they trade is substantially different from the archetype that most would describe as “crypto people”.

They are absolutely "crypto people." They have had nigh the most crypto engineering power of any firm in the entire world for like 5-6 years now. They have literally hundreds of extremely smart people who have been in crypto since the beginning.

Ah ok, thanks for the context! The people I know in hedge funds are far away from being what most would think of as crypto people, but perhaps Jump is a bit of an exception.

Most crypto people are traditional finance people at this point, this is lost in a lot of conversation about crypto.

To be fair, he bullied them first by lying about his offer, even insisting that it was "firm" when it really wasn't at all. Those people are assholes when they win their smaller-scale bullying game. He just happens to have barked at a bigger dog than himself.

The linked article seems to be copied and pasted from here: https://www.businessinsider.com/jump-trading-sues-over-wormh...

Not sure what "kqeducationgroup.com" is but it looks illegitimate.

It certainly does—my apologies. This is where I saw it first. Unfortunately I can’t change it.

BI runs content syndicated from elsewhere, so appearing on BI doesn’t indicate that it’s their reporting (although someone who can see past the paywall may be able to say for sure). Assuming that the linked source is legally running the piece, it’s a better link for HN because it isn’t paywalled.

> Alex Morrell is a correspondent at Business Insider covering Wall Street at large

OP's article is trendsquatting.

The quoted segment of your comment answers my question, but what is trendsquatting?

It's a term that felt appropriate to describe what OP's article was achieving

Unrelated but I clicked your name and noticed you joined in 2007 the year HN started, that's pretty cool! How did you hear about it back then?

Also drift.space/jamsocket seem pretty interesting (the jamsocket site seemed to lag when scrolling).

I think it must have been from coming across PG’s writing, but I can’t remember exactly.

Thanks for the site feedback, which platform are you on? I’ll see if I can reproduce it.

Awesome. I'm on mbp osx 11.6.5. I tried again and it seems that scrolling feels a bit lagged/jumpy, but otherwise the site looks great.

Curious what a realtime chat app w/stateful backend might look like!

Ok, we've changed the URL above to that from https://kqeducationgroup.com/jump-trading-sues-79-year-old-c.... Thanks!

I will have to disagree with most comments here: I’m not sure Jump is to blame here.

- $100’000 seems like a rather generous compensation to change your email address.

- And most importantly, they simply agreed to his initial demand. And now he’s backing off out of greed. Hell they even agreed to his second counter-offer of $100k and now he wants $200k…

It's his domain, he is free to change his mind for whatever reason.

He's not obligated to sell it for any amount of money, and he's definitely not done anything that he should be sued over.

He's free to be as greedy as he wants to be, and the company are free to either pay up or go away. But bringing him to court because "wahhh he won't sell to us" does seem ridiculous.

I’m not sure I agree with that. I think he’s absolutely free to come up with whatever ask he wants in the first place. But once he did ($50k) and once a buyer agreed to it, I’m not sure it’s fair to revisit the price.

Order is of the essence here.

If I list my house for $20, then realize it might be too low and raise the asking price to $100k, that doesn’t suddenly mean I’m forced to accept the first offer that comes in.

A listing is not an offer. This is really basic contract law.

Exactly, the old man gave a listing, not an offer.

Well if that’s the case, I’d like to buy your house for $50k. That seems like ample compensation for you just changing your address and you should take it.

The point here is:

- someone with knowledge of something’s value tried to by something - person who owned it realized that they didn’t know the value - person realized the value and decided he wasn’t going to undercut himself.

Now in this situation, you’re calling the 79 year old man greedy, rather than the company being greedy? The company that is fairly-clearly trying to run an old man over with legal fees to steal something that they don’t own?

I feel like a key difference here is that the owner was initially willing to sell for $50k. He was the one coming up with this price tag in the first place, wasn’t he?

> I feel like a key difference here is that the owner was initially willing to sell for $50k.

He said it as a clear joke. Here's a ridiculously huge number for a novelty, a bauble - now go away.

How was it a clear joke?

50k isn't a ridiculously huge number though? Domains have gone for much much more in the past

So when a house is listed for sale for an asking price, does that mean the seller is obligated to sell for only that amount? The seller came up with that price tag in the first place.

The owner never stated a willingness to sell, just a price.

If you come up to me while I riding my bike and says "I'll give you 25 dollars for that" and I respond "it's price is 500 dollars firm", that doesn't mean you can then give me 500 dollars and take my bike or sue me for refusing. That is ridiculous.

Even if I did have an intention of selling the bike at that price, I am in the middle of using it and can easily accept or reject attempts to buy it at a time that is inconvenient for me. Similarly, it is also my right to choose who buys my bike at that price. If it has strong emotional value I may refuse to sell it to someone who I don't think will treat it well.

This is classic offer and acceptance in contract law. If you did indeed offer, in writing, $50k for that person's house in something that wasn't a joke offer, and then other person accepted for whatever reason before you rescinded the offer, that's a valid contract for sale of something. There may be additional concerns given it's real property and not goods, but the point stands: the owner was presented with an offer, then countered the offer with $50k, and the first party accepted the offer. All in writing. This creates a valid contract.

Houses sell all the time after multiple offers and sometimes not at all, even in the presence of a full asking-price offer.

Indeed, however an offer by itself doesn't create anything binding. One of the other critical pieces is the acceptance of that offer. Otherwise we'd have situations where someone was forced to sell their house simply for being in the presence of an offer!

The point is that setting an "asking price" does not in itself constitute a binding offer.

Nobody is forced to sell their house to a particular buyer because that buyer emailed back with "accept" in response to an inquiry about the price.

But it isn't.

>Well if that’s the case, I’d like to buy your house for $50k. That seems like ample compensation for you just changing your address and you should take it.

1) Parent post never accepted an offer to sell their house to you.

2) $50k is not ample compensation for any house almost anywhere, as shown by median housing prices.

> 1) Parent post never accepted an offer to sell their house to you.

Neither did the old man. So, case closed?

$50k is not ample compensation for a domain that is worth $500k to Jump.

> I’d like to buy your house for $50k.

If I say "it's worth about twice that", are you now allowed to evict me? I think not.

> And now he’s backing off out of greed

What do you think motivates the algorithmic trading company trying to buy the domain?

Agreed.

I guess actually everyone is greedy in this story, but only one party doesn’t seem to be true to their word.

Trading companies: we exist to make as much money as possible

Tech companies: we exist to make the world a better place

Everyone on this planet is greedy.

- The church priest asking for donations

- the homeless man asking for drug money

- and the software engineer with competing FANG offers.

At least finance people have the balls to admit it.

He's had the domain since '94 and he's 79. If he's refusing to sell to someone offering double his original "go away" offer I'm inclined to believe he's truly not interested in selling the domain not that he's hoping to hold out even longer.

However even if this was his long con on owning the domain having proposed a number in email seems unlikely to form a contract that he must sell it to them at that cost but I suppose we'll see.

Just because someone makes a good offer, it doesn't obligate the other party to accept it.

Well, it’s not just a good offer: it’s the price the seller asked for in the first place, isn’t it?

Since he hasn't sold anything its kind of hard to call him a seller. He got an unsolicited email. He isn't in the business of selling domains.

True, but if someone says "The price is X" and you say "Okay, deal" and then they say "No, that was too easy, I could get more from you" then there may be some kind of obligation there - at least a moral or social obligation if not a legal one.

Why should the individual have morals when dealing with corporations when corporations don't have morals?

Jump lowballed for $2500 knowing full well that was a trash offer for a domain like wormhole.com. The owner just figured 50k would be such a big number that Jump would go away.

There’s no world where Jump should be suing this person. There’s no contract here. Jump is just being greedy and is trying to bully this person into selling the domain.

I’m sorry but I don’t agree.

If you don’t want to sell, they say “this domain is not for sale”. If you say the price is a “firm $50k”, well, it looks to me like you’re willing to sell for $50k. And I don’t think he was bullied into coming up with this offer.

It looked to be 50k, but that changed. There was never a full agreement.

You can change the price of something based on the buyer’s response. Happens all the time.

Magic the Gathering, antiques, art, domains, Instagram usernames, etc. if someone starts salivating at a price you thought was wild, you’re obviously selling for too low.

At which point he'll ask for 400k, and then 800k ad infinitum. He doesn't want to sell.

He should have just ignored them from the beginning.

It seems to me a bit different.

They offered initially $ 2,500.

Then he replied saying that the price was $50,000.

Then he rejected the offer of $ 50,000 and was offered first $ 100,000 and then (through a different agent) $ 200,000.

Of course IANAL (and know anyway very little of US Laws) but if this corporation really-really believed that the $50,000 reply actually amounted to a binding contract, they should have attempted to have it respected immediately, the two later offers, doubled each time, sound nothing like "good faith" (probably irrelevant in court, still ...).

I agree with you.

I think they were willing to pay more than initially agreed to expedite the process. Since it didn’t work I’m pretty sure they’ll ask the court to execute the sale at $50k.

Well "more" (to expedite the process) is not double or quadruple.

At least when/where the object of the sale has a value that can objectively be estimated.

Surely a reply like "The domain is not for sale." would have been better, but considering a one line reply (to an unknown/unverified correspondent) a binding contract sounds (to me) more than a bit "off".

> Then he rejected the offer of $ 50,000

You can’t reject your own offer!

The offer to buy at 50,000, I meant.

Maybe it is a translation issue, here (Italy) it is the buyer that makes an offer and the seller that sets a price or accepts an offer (or proposes a counter-offer).

For some people 500 would be generous compensation to change an email address. Others 5,000,000. What your personal level is doesn't factor in.

Not getting a current market value offer an blindly accepting isn't greed. Being 79 with a domain you carried for years can be worth more than 100,000 which after taxes is much less.

We live in a free market, the domain is worth whatever people are willing to give you for it and not a penny less. Why should he give it up to make some crypto-bro happy? He's had it for something like 20 years.

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