.bit
Is .bit a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.bit is contested: 11 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are XYZ Registry, GoDaddy Registry, Qaten, Internet Naming Company, Identity Digital, .top (Zhongze), Aruba, ShortDot and 3 more, listed below.
Who is applying, and what they run today
Seven of the twelve already run TLDs, 56.94M names between them. Five run none.
Will names sell?
A catchy tech ending some startups and crypto projects will like, but it is no default anywhere and adoption will need explaining.
Last round the AI scored the 2012 strings blind to their fate. Strings it scored 60 or more hold a median 27,168 names today; those under 30, a median of 30. .bit’s closest 2012 strings hold .zip 15K, .link 310K and .dot 5.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .zip, held 14,562 names, June 2026. .link held 310,085; .dot held 5. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 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.
Where they meet elsewhere
Identity Digital and XYZ Registry face each other in 77 contests this round, .bit included.
- Identity Digital × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × GoDaddy Registry
- Link Freedom Group × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Radix
developers, crypto-native projects, and small tech brands that want a short, playful technical identity; secondarily data, hardware, and infrastructure tooling teams
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, in our AI & tech category. 11 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
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. A .bit name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .bit was .zip, delegated on 15 September 2014.
Is .bit a real TLD?
Not yet. .bit is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .bit is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- DNRater · now abandonedICANN
- 6 applicants · first recordedICANN
- 5 applicants · now confirmedICANN
- 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
The source’s 11 linesHide the lines
APEC2611T-T45326 · Aruba PEC S.P.A. · primary · contention set 2026-26 DM2627T-T34270 · Duel Meaning, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-26 HKZI2636T-T79772 · Hong Kong Zhongze International Limited · primary · contention set 2026-26 INC2624T-T96235 · Internet Naming Company · primary · contention set 2026-26 LFGL2683T-T55382 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-26 NA2626T-T67212 · ShortDot (Ireland) Limited · primary · contention set 2026-26 NA2631T-T45584 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-26 OI2692T-T11525 · Oinkadot Inc · primary · contention set 2026-26 QGL2682T-T10263 · Qaten Group Limited · primary · contention set 2026-26 RTIS2674T-T37415 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · primary · contention set 2026-26 XL2625T-T23714 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary · contention set 2026-26
“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
- 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.