More and more articles about cryptocurrency have been cropping up lately, most likely due to news of people striking it rich from mining coins. But while some coin miners like Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, Michael Saylor, and Matthew Roszak, among others, do owe their billions to cryptocurrencies, not everyone, unfortunately, can amass similar huge fortunes.
Apart from the fact that cryptocurrency mining requires large investments, threat actors also take advantage of the coins’ popularity to lure potential victims into their many scams. One proof of that could be the growing volume of newly registered crypto-related domains each day.
Newly Registered Crypto-Related Domain Trends
To support our hypothesis, we downloaded newly registered domain data feeds for each day of April 2021. We then identified five of the top cryptocurrencies based on value as of May 2021. Using the strings “bitcoin,” “ethereum,” “binance,” “dogecoin,” and “cardano” as search terms, we found that in just one month, 4,438 new crypto-related domains made their way into the Domain Name System (DNS). These don’t include possible misspelled variations of the terms, which could be present in the data feeds and were limited to those that fall under the .com top-level domain (TLD).
A huge majority of the newly registered crypto-related domains (3,273 domain names to be exact) contained the string “bitcoin.” Only a couple of hundred domains contained the other four strings as shown in the following chart.
The “bitcoin” domain registration peaked on 1 April 2021. The highest number of “ethereum” domains, meanwhile, was recorded on 16 April. The “binance” domain registration peaked on 22 and 23 April. That for “dogecoin” reached the highest point on 17 April. Finally, the highest number of newly registered “cardano” domains was recorded on 1 April.
A possible reason for a spike in registration volume could be a mention in the news as was the case for Dogecoin when Elon Musk expressed his support for it. Another could be just public interest that has to do with either existing or potential interest in investing in the cryptocurrency based on its value, which could be indicated by search volume.
Slight variations in domain registration and search volume, however, are evident but the general trend with “bitcoin” leading in both can be seen.
People or organizations highly interested in investing in cryptocurrencies are probably on the right track given the rise of e-commerce sites allowing them to be used as payment and the number of people earning from mining them. They should, however, be wary when looking for websites that provide information on cryptocurrencies or investment sites themselves. Some of them could be malicious.
Monitoring newly registered crypto-related domains could be a good starting point for keeping malicious domains at bay. We named a few options that you can choose from in the next section.
Newly Registered Domain Data Feed Options to Choose From
Various vendors offer their own versions of newly registered data feeds, here are five of them:
WhoisXML API’s Newly Registered & Just Expired Domains Data Feed: Gives you access to more than 100,000 newly registered and recently expired domains each daily.
IQwhois’s Newly Registered Domains Database: Provides you with a list of around 80,000 newly registered and recently expired domains each per day.
JsonWHOIS’s Newly Registered or Dropped Domain Names Database: Get up to 85,000 newly registered and recently dropped domains each every day from this.
DomainsIndex’s Newly Registered Domains List: This database lists up to 85,000 additions to and deductions each from the DNS daily.
Domain Name Stat’s Newly Registered Domains Data Feeds: Gives as many as 90,000 domain additions and deductions on any given day.
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Any of the five featured data sources can help you observe domain registration trends for research, domaining, and other purposes and keep track of newly registered domains that may prove harmful to your network and data. And while cryptocurrency mining is all the rage these days, caution is advised to avoid the perils of losing your money to scammers instead of earning.