On the desk today · VeriSign Inc.
Every .com address on Earth pays rent to one company in Virginia.
| NASDAQ · VRSN |
$1 quadrillion would be enough to send a check for $2.8 million to every man, woman, and child in America.
That's how big this opportunity is.
And you could claim a stake today…
Before the company goes public…
Starting with just $500.
The Company That
Owns .com
In the early 1990s, a company called Network Solutions won a contract from the U.S. government to operate something brand new — the system that matched internet addresses to names. The Domain Name System. Nobody else bid. The contract cost $5.9 million. Network Solutions became the sole operator of .com, .net, and .org — the address book of the internet. In 2000, a company called VeriSign acquired Network Solutions for $21 billion in stock. The price had gone up. VeriSign kept the .com and .net registries and spun off the retail business. Today, 173.5 million .com and .net addresses are registered through VeriSign's system. The company doesn't sell you the domain. It doesn't host your website. It just runs the registry — the master list — and collects $10.26 per year for every .com on it.
I renewed a domain last month through GoDaddy. Paid $18.99. I assumed all of it went to GoDaddy. It didn't. Of that $18.99, VeriSign collected $10.26 — the wholesale registry fee — before GoDaddy saw a cent. I had never heard of VeriSign. I had been paying them for 12 years.
Most people think GoDaddy or Namecheap "owns" the .com system. They don't. They're registrars — resellers. If you've ever registered a .com domain, your registrar paid VeriSign on your behalf. VeriSign is the registry. It operates the master database. Every registrar on Earth — more than 3,000 of them — pays VeriSign the same $10.26 per .com domain, per year. There is no second supplier. There is no alternative registry. VeriSign is it.
Jim Bidzos, a Greek-born internet security pioneer, founded VeriSign in 1995 as a spinoff of RSA Data Security. The company went public in 1998. After acquiring Network Solutions in 2000, VeriSign focused entirely on the registry business — stripping away everything else over the next decade. Today, Bidzos serves as chairman from the company's headquarters in Reston, Virginia.
The numbers are almost absurdly clean. In 2025, VeriSign reported $1.66 billion in revenue — up 6.4% from the year before. Net income was $826 million. The net profit margin was 49.8%. The operating margin was 67.7%. The gross margin was 88.1%. Capital spending for the entire year was $22.8 million. Read that again — a $1.66 billion business spent $23 million on capital. The rest was cash. VeriSign returned $1.1 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. And Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns about 13 million shares — worth roughly $2.6 billion.
|
The “SpaceX IPO” Window May Be Closing Fast
Mark Skousen believes the biggest money in the SpaceX IPO may be made before the public rush begins.
After correctly calling major historic turning points for decades, he says June could become critical for investors watching this story unfold.
That 28-year figure is the lock. VeriSign has delivered 100% availability for the .com and .net domain name resolution system for 28 consecutive years. Not 99.99%. Not "five nines." One hundred percent. Every time you type a .com address into a browser, VeriSign's system resolves it. It has never gone down. That record is the reason the contract keeps getting renewed — and the reason no one else gets to run .com.
The pricing power is written into the contract. Under VeriSign's agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN, the company can raise the wholesale .com fee by 7% per year in four out of every six years. The price was $7.85 before 2018. After four permitted increases, it's now $10.26. Each hike adds roughly $100 million in annual revenue — without acquiring a single new customer. The registrars pass the cost to the domain owner. The domain owner pays. Nobody switches off .com.
I find the original contract story irresistible. In the early 1990s, the government needed someone to build the domain name system. One company bid. It paid $5.9 million. Today, that same registry — now run by VeriSign — collects $10.26 on 173.5 million domains every year. Jim Bidzos described the 2025 results in a single line: "In 2025, we extended our track record of providing 100 percent availability for .com and .net domain name resolution to 28 years." That's the entire pitch. We've never gone down. Here is your bill.
The flywheel is simple. Every new website, every new business, every new idea that needs an address starts with a .com. In 2025, VeriSign processed 41.7 million new registrations — the highest count since 2021. The internet keeps growing. The registry keeps collecting. And the contract allows periodic price increases on the entire installed base. New domains add volume. Price hikes add revenue per domain. Both run at the same time. VeriSign doesn't need to sell anything. It just needs you to keep your address.
WHY THIS WORKS
Government-sanctioned monopoly. The ICANN contract gives VeriSign the exclusive right to operate the .com registry. No competitor can bid. The contract presumes renewal as long as VeriSign maintains uptime.
Built-in price escalators. VeriSign can raise the .com fee 7% per year in four of every six years. Each increase applies to 173.5 million domains automatically. No negotiation required.
Near-zero capital needs. A $1.66 billion business that spent $23 million on capital in 2025. The gross margin is 88%. Almost every dollar of revenue converts to cash.
.com is the address that matters. New top-level domains have come and gone. .com remains the default. Businesses, brands, and institutions all want it. The registry's relevance has outlasted every challenger.
What most people miss: the original contract to build the domain name system cost $5.9 million. One bidder won it. That bidder's successor — VeriSign — now collects $10.26 on every .com domain on Earth, 173.5 million of them, with 28 years of perfect uptime and a government contract that presumes renewal. Warren Buffett owns $2.6 billion worth. The toll booth was built for $5.9 million. The toll never stops.
