Dispute Over Domain Name

Twitter user @cryptofelon has cried out over alleged bullying by Binance. Cryptofelon said Binance is trying to force him to relinquish a domain name he claims to have acquired in 2017: www.binance.ca.

Cryptofelon detailed his allegations in a Twitter thread on July 15. According to him, a top official of Binance contacted him on Nov. 16, 2021, concerning the Canadian domain name, which Cryptofelon says he registered on Oct. 27, 2017.

According to the Twitter thread, the Binance official later made an offer to buy the domain name from him. Then, in a sudden twist, Cryptofelon claimed that Binance stalled on the offer and resorted to coercion via threats of legal action, and accused him of breaching the organization's trademark rights.

Cryptofelon said that when the Binance official asked him to name a selling price, he suggested 420 ETH (at the time worth $1.8 million). The Binance official countered with an offer of $6,500. Cryptofelon responded by saying he didn’t think he could accept less than 25 BTC (at the time worth $1.5 million).

The timelines in the Twitter thread suggest that Binance filed papers for registration of its trademark not earlier than 2018 – at least a couple of months after Cryptofelon appeared to have registered the domain in question. Binance also accused Cryptofelon of using the Binance name for profit – a claim which Cryptofelon firmly denied.

‍Here is the link to the Twitter thread. 

Going by the correspondence between Binance and Cryptofelon, the dispute over the domain name may have to be resolved through legal means if both sides do not find a mutual settlement. Cryptofelon argues that he registered the contentious domain name before Binance acquired the rights to its trademark.

That being said, the Binance organization was indeed founded in July 2017 using the name “Binance,” and it is plausible that Cryptofelon may have registered the Binance domain name with a Canadian country code, betting that Binance would want to establish a Canadian presence in the future.

Another wrinkle is that Cryptofelon claims that he is “an American felon” who isn’t allowed to enter Canada, thus if Binance sues him in Canadian court, he would have no ability to appear in court, and would “automatically lose” the case.

Issues like this need not degenerate further. Though Cryptofelon claims to have acquired the domain name for a project he planned to set up, it is fairly common practice for people to register domain names in the hopes that somebody or an institution will be willing to pay good money for them in the future. For example, a 2010 report by Techcrunch discloses that social media giant Facebook may have paid up to $8.5 million to acquire Fb.com from the owner of the domain name.

Apparently, www.binance.ca isn’t the only domain name owned by Cryptofelon that has caught the attention of a crypto company.

In April, Cryptofelon published a Twitter thread talking about a crypto-related domain name he had bought in 2017 and eventually sold for nearly $435,000.

The thread begins, “how i bought a crypto domain for $16, told a multi-billion dollar CEX to kick rocks, and negotiated my way from a $500 offer to selling it for half a million dollars:”

‍BSCNews reached out to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao for comments about the tussle but we didn't receive a response as of the time we went to press. We will follow up on the story as it develops to see how Binance and Cryptofelon resolve the controversy.

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