< careful there may be a troll in here... :) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.nyc "As of July 2, 2013, .nyc has been approved by ICANN as a city-level top-level domain (TLD) for New York City" As places like that see $186,000 as small change, I wonder what other countries (much less the cities within them) like .nu, .sb or .vu will do? For them this is an astronomical number. Someone's about to hit a financial home run reminiscient of the tech-stock bubble... I haven't read enough, but what's to stop speculators paying the $186,000 then charging the tiny countries mors when they are able to make the purchase? Please don't suggest arbitration because that only increases the cost to those countries. Who's going to buy .nanog? Who's going to buy .ietf? etc. Did icann have any financial requirements to get .icann? scott