2021 Q1 IPV4 ADDRESS MARKET ROUNDUP

With the first quarter of 2021 closing recently, we wanted to share some interesting insights garnered from our IPv4 marketplace data. Our marketplace tracks and publishes all IPv4 address sales since 2014. You can check out our public data here, and keep reading for our analysis of 2021 Q1’s IPv4 results.

Q1 2021 Key Findings

It’s been an interesting year for most industries because of the COVID19 pandemic. COVID didn’t appreciably affect sales. However, volume gradually rose over the course of the year, and prices have definitely accelerated in 2021. It might be that some work was put off during the pandemic, but there’s no way to be sure.

Variability is the name of the game leaving 2020 and coming into 2021. We suspect that economic instability played into sales of IPv4. Prices saw a $13 spread from the end of 2020 into 2021, with a low at $19.60 in December, which rose to just over $32 by mid February.

Our data shows that prices jumped up quite substantially from 2020 into 2021. Back in 2020, prices peaked in the summer at around $23–24. But in the first quarter of 2021, prices reached $32 in February — which is nearly 30% higher than 2020’s peak. In fact, this year’s floor prices are about the same as last year’s peaks at $23–26.

With the pandemic and all its variability, there’s uncertainty on whether or not February’s $32 high was a true peak. We’ll have to watch the market and see what plays out with economic recovery. Either way, now is a great time to list your IPs for sale with us as prices seem to be increasing.

Private Auction Analysis

We also reviewed private auctions data from our invitation-only online marketplace. This platform analyzes private transactions for larger IP blocks, up to /9.

This chart has a much sharper curve than the public marketplace chart, with prices steadily increasing from 2017 into 2020. At first glance, it may seem that prices peaked in 2020 — or, that they may even be on a downtick into 2021. A few things could cause this:

• Private sales haven’t increased in price as much as online sales.
• There’s been a scarcity of blocks between /21 — /18, so buyers needing that size have been paying more than /16 buyers.
• Because of the scarcity for /21 — /18 blocks, /16 sellers break up their blocks, netting more.

All of the above considered, IPv4 sellers waiting for peak prices should consider selling their IP addresses with us soon.

This year is certainly off to an interesting start and there’s no doubt that it’s a great time to buy and sell IPv4 addresses. And at IPv4.Global, we make that easy for you. We’ve begun some partnerships with other IPv4 brokers to use our site, which is good for buyers, sellers, and brokers. We will soon add the ability to buy and sell ASNs to our IP market online. We have other plans in the works which we’ll unveil throughout the year as they are ready.