I’ve been following the IPv4 pricing since before the pandemic run-up, and it seems we’ve finally returned to that level.
Here’s the graph for the past 6 years from the IPv4 Global marketplace:
What’s interesting to me is that there doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason why. IPv6 adoption is ticking up:
But I don’t think low-30s to high-40s as a percent is significant enough, and many (MANY) services are still IPv4 only (GitHub, for example). And given how tech and assets have gone post-pandemic in general, I don’t think ZIRP is the answer either.
Furthermore, during the run-up it seemed as though the cloud providers were buying the biggest blocks (which is not new, e.g. Amazon was already at 109,847,486 in 2022 vs 181,312,307 running that same script now). But why would that have stopped? And perhaps ironically they are also the most incentivized to keep the racket going, given the asset value of the IPs combined with the control they can flex on the industry. It forms a moat for them as the cost for other providers to get started increases.
I applied for the ARIN Waitlist in 2022, finished the application in 2023 (when I sadly realized that if I had finished my original application, it might have already been fulfilled!), and got an allocation in 2025. So, fwiw, it is possible to still go this route, it just takes some time. As a friend used to say, I now have more IPs than some countries. (Don’t worry, they are being used, I am not just hoarding them…)
Anyway, it seems you can now buy a sensibly-sized block (e.g. a /20) for $16/IP, or $12/IP for bigger (/16) blocks. Pretty wild fall from $60, and perhaps a nice reminder right now while everyone is hoarding RAM that scarcity doesn’t last forever… hopefully, anyway.