Elon Musk Buys Back His Sentimental X.com Domain
It’s seems the internet has now been around long enough for domains to hold sentimental value.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed in a tweet late last night that he purchased the domain X.com, a site he originally owned way back in 1999. X.com was an online bank and the second startup Musk ever created. It eventually became the hugely popular money transfer service Paypal – and they still owned the single-letter domain before selling it back to Musk.
Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2017
The amount Musk paid for the site is unknown, but if the number is high enough (seven or even eight figures) we will probably see the exact amount in SEC filings. It may even make the top list of the highest-priced domain names ever sold.
The sale of the domain seemed amicable, as Musk maintained a happy and thankful tone in his tweet announcing the purchase. Paypal was even quoted as being “delighted” to sell the site back to Musk.
Musk was pushed out of X.com as it shifted to its new name of Paypal, but not before he collected $165 million after the site was sold to eBay in 2002. Musk then used that money to help fund his current companies SpaceX and Tesla.
X.com had been inactive for some time, and it is unknown what Musk plans to do with a domain consisting solely of the coolest letter in the alphabet. It does mesh well with his company SpaceX and the Tesla’s Model X, so involvement with either of those becomes the logical guess.
