.bit
Is .bit a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.bit is contested: 6 applicants have said publicly that they applied to run it, as of 9 September 2026. They are Aruba, ShortDot, Radix, DNRater, Oinkadot and Link Freedom Group.
A catchy tech ending some startups and crypto projects will like, but it is no default anywhere and adoption will need explaining.
developers, crypto-native projects, and small tech brands that want a short, playful technical identity; secondarily data, hardware, and infrastructure tooling teams
In LFG's published list of 300+ strings submitted before the ICANN window closed on 2026-08-12. Their catalog tagline: “Even the tiniest details matter.”
One of 25 strings the Oinkadot partnership (Ray King of Porkbun and Todd Han of Dynadot) applied for in the ICANN 2026 round, per Domain Name Wire's exclusive.
Announced by founder Youness Kasmi (@kasmiyouness1) on X and LinkedIn: "We have applied for .bit and .ion." DNRater is a domain appraisal tool; .bit becomes a three-applicant string (Link Freedom Group, Oinkadot, DNRater).
One of 46 ICANN 2026-round applications Radix announced on its own applications page. Radix states it intends to build and operate each TLD it wins.
One of the 80 strings ShortDot published for the ICANN 2026 round. ShortDot states it has submitted 40 applications, but publishes the 80 strings without revealing which 40 are applications and which 40 are designated replacements. The submission claim is therefore applicant-level, not string-level: nothing in the source says ShortDot applied for THIS string. Catalogued, not announced.
Aruba S.p.A. told Domain Name Wire it applied for 39 strings in the 2026 round 'as primary or replacement', listing .bit among them without saying which strings are primary. The claim is the applicant's own, post-filing, relayed by the publication. Founder ruling 2026-09-09: recorded as announced. Already on the record from another applicant, so this adds to the contention set.
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a three-letter everyday dictionary word whose computing second meaning does all the marketing, sold as an open brandable suffix with no vertical, no community, and nothing to defend except shortness plus a tech connotation.
Also a common noun whose internet-native second meaning is the whole pitch — bought by tech companies, shorteners, and brands wanting a short memorable string rather than by any identifiable industry.
Same class of bet on an internet/computing primitive as a short, meta, brandable string — value comes from the word's digital resonance, not from an addressable registrant population.
What a .bit domain is
.bit is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under AI & tech. 6 applicants have said publicly that they applied for .bit.
Is the .bit domain extension real yet?
.bit is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .bit domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .bit name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .bit was .zip, delegated on .
Is .bit a real TLD?
Not yet. .bit is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant said publicly that it applied for .bit in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round. Every claim on this page links to its source.
- ShortDot · now announced
- Aruba · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
- ShortDot · first recordedShortDot (Ireland) Limited
- Radix · first recordedRadix
- DNRater · first recordedYouness Kasmi (@kasmiyouness1) on X
- Oinkadot · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“Aruba S.p.A., which operates the .cloud top level domain, is expanding its domain portfolio. The company told Domain Name Wire that it applied for 39 top level domains in this year's new TLD round. That number includes replacement strings. [...] The company applied for the following strings as primary or replacement: aid, all, ask, beta, bit, bnb, cart, ciao, daily, demo, easy, fix, gaming, gen, genius, gym, happy, hello, hola, human, kit, lab, mars, max, moon, omg, pec, pop, rem, roma, sign, sito, super, tag, tex, vps, yes, zen, zzz”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
“ShortDot (Ireland) Limited has submitted 40 applications to ICANN's 2026 New gTLD Program. The 80 strings shown include applied-for and designated replacement strings across ShortDot's 40 ICANN applications, presented without revealing their status or pairing.”ShortDot (Ireland) Limited
“Radix has applied for these TLDs; we do not own or operate them today.”Radix
“A new partnership has applied for 25 top level domain names in this year's ICANN TLD expansion round.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
“.bit · Infra · “Even the tiniest details matter.””Link Freedom Group
“The company just disclosed its 40 applications and 40 replacement strings.”Domain Name Wire
“LFG voluntarily published its full list of submissions ahead of ICANN’s official Reveal Day.”PR Newswire (Link Freedom Group)
“Top level domain registry Link Freedom Group (LFG) has disclosed more than 300 strings submitted as part of the ICANN new top level domain name program.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The string is short, pronounceable, and semantically loaded for computing ('bit') with a crypto echo (bitcoin), so it should attract real registrations from developers and crypto-adjacent brands over the next 5 years. It is not in the 50-69 band because there is no demonstrated sustained demand for this string in the ICANN root and no category where serious projects currently reach for it as a primary identity; by analogy with other evocative-but-unproven tech strings, most buyers will treat it as a secondary or campaign name rather than the brand itself, and the aftermarket is likely thin. It is above the 10-29 band because the word is a genuine, widely understood tech morpheme rather than a joke or event-driven novelty, and short generic tech suffixes have, by analogy, sustained steady volume registrations. A complication, flagged as general-knowledge analogy with no specifics asserted: a .bit-style namespace has historically been used by an alternative blockchain naming system outside the ICANN root, which could both seed crypto-community affinity for the string and create name-collision confusion during rollout. The applicant, Link Freedom Group, filed more than 300 strings in the 2026 round (per the verified facts); a portfolio applicant of that breadth may spread launch marketing across many strings, which tempers (neutrally) how much single-string promotion .bit is likely to receive. Main market uncertainty: whether crypto and developer communities treat .bit as an identity-worthy suffix (the way some communities adopted developer-oriented TLDs, analogy) or as a novelty checkbox registration, which is the difference between the top of this band and the band above.