Imagine a car wash that washes 10 cars a day but reports 100. Where does the money for 90 phantom cars come from? Dirty money pushed through the register.
NameSilo is the same car wash. Except instead of cars, it's domains. 4.2 million phantom "washes" that don't exist.
4.2M domains with no website, no traffic, no email, no business identity. NameSilo spends $72,645/day on wholesale fees to registries. Books $211,807/day as revenue. Nobody uses these domains. The purchase IS the purpose.
958,188 domains that actually respond to HTTP. Real websites, real businesses, real customers. This is the legitimate business. It's 4.4x smaller than the phantom side.
Laundering cost: 4.5%. Standard money laundering rate is 10-30%. NameSilo does it for 4.5% through cheap TLDs. The cheapest laundry in town.
| Layer | Domains | % | Reality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total "under management" | 5,179,405 | 100% | The investor number |
| No DNS (never activated) | 1,669,111 | 32.2% | Never existed as a website |
| Parking stubs | 1,710,658 | 33.0% | Sedo/CF/Shopify defaults |
| HTTP dead/empty | 774,235 | 15.0% | Resolves but nothing there |
| HTTP alive (actually responds) | 958,188 | 18.5% | Something exists |
| Real business (org/company) | 54,855 | 1.06% | Actual identifiable customers |
| Top-million (has real traffic) | 17,875 | 0.35% | Someone actually visits |
| Tranco top 10K | 58 | 0.001% | Fifty-eight. |
NameSilo claims to have "the cheapest domain prices on the Internet." We checked 136 ICANN-accredited registrars across 12 TLDs.
| # | .com Registrar | Register | Renew | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spaceship | $2.90 | $10.18 | 5.4x cheaper |
| 6 | Namecheap | $6.99 | $14.98 | 2.2x cheaper |
| 14 | Dynadot | $8.99 | $10.88 | |
| 23 | Porkbun | $10.08 | $11.08 | |
| 26 | Cloudflare | $10.46 | $10.46 | At-cost pricing |
| ... 100+ registrars cheaper than NameSilo ... | ||||
| ~96 | NameSilo | $15.56 | $17.29 | Bottom 30% |
ShortDot SA (Luxembourg) owns .sbs, .cfd, .icu, .cyou, .bond, .buzz, .qpon. NameSilo is 1 of 6 named partners out of 400+. These TLDs dominate the dead domain graveyard.
| Event | Date | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| ShortDot acquires .sbs from Australian SBS | Apr 2024 | IANA ownership transfer |
| ShortDot acquires .cfd from DotCFD Registry | Apr 2024 | IANA ownership transfer |
| NameSilo dead domain spike | 2024 | +615% (67K → 485K) — perfectly synchronized |
| Spike continues | 2025 | 1.5M new, 4,260/day — 732K ShortDot TLDs total |
NameSilo's ICANN-accredited registrar publicly defended a $100M+ Monero theft operation. This is not an allegation — the tweet is archived, the lies are debunked, and the operator posted a farewell letter admitting the investigation forced closure.
Then they used X Gold Checkmark to silence the researchers. X Support: "no violation found." Account still locked. Subscription still billing. 3 other registrars (WebNic, PDR, Key-Systems) suspended the same domains on the same evidence within days.
| Person | Role | Notable |
|---|---|---|
| Paul Andreola | CEO & President | Former investment advisor. Signed off on the 4-lie tweet. |
| Kristaps Ronka | Director + CEO NameSilo LLC | 18.5% owner (~17M shares). Runs the registrar day-to-day. Oversaw 100+ ignored abuse reports. |
| Natasha Tsai | CFO | CPA, formerly Grant Thornton. Signs financials that count 81.5% dead domains as "active." |
| Colin Bowkett | Director | CFA, Master of Finance. Should be asking about the 615% dead spike and $50.8M phantom profit. |
| Paul Kozak | Director | VC partner. Raised $75M+. Invested in a company where 81.5% of the product doesn't exist. |
| Dan Milic | Director | Co-founder AdParlor ($100M in Facebook ads). Inc "Top 30 under 30." Board member of a registrar protecting a $100M theft operation. |
1. Who is buying 4,260 dead domains per day and never activating them?
2. Where is the $26.5M/year for dead domains coming from? Show payment records.
3. How many domain purchases were paid in Bitcoin? From which wallets?
4. Why did dead domains spike 615% in 2024, synchronized with ShortDot's TLD acquisitions?
5. Do any bulk-purchase accounts belong to NameSilo employees, officers, or related parties?
6. What percentage of reported C$65.5M revenue is from domains never activated?
7. Why did the company publicly defend a $100M+ theft operation with 4 verifiable lies?
8. Has NameSilo filed any Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with FinCEN?
9. How does a registrar with 5.18M domains have 58 in the Tranco top 10K?
10. When you say "active domains" — what exactly is your definition of "active"?
This is a corrected version of NameSilo's public investor presentation. Every number is from published sources:
NameSilo's own SEDAR+ filings, IANA records, shortdot.bond, dead_domain_economics.json, and our 130M domain analysis.