Bitcoin.com was originally registered in 2000 by the Swedish company Hurricane Communication AB. After the company allowed it to expire, it was acquired in 2003 by IVN Technology, a Korean-based company. Later dropped again and it was acquired in 2008 by Jesse Heitler, a Yale student and budding entrepreneur. He was working on his own payments system, a service that would provide metered payments for websites, and he simply struck upon the name Bitcoin.
The business didn't work out. "Payments businesses are very hard to prove," he said. He let the business go, but held onto the domain. At this point, he had heard of bitcoin and was getting periodic offers to buy the name. He held on until July 2010, when he got an offer from David Lowy, a Vancouver businessman and domain-name squatter, who offered $2,000. "I didn't think bitcoin was going anywhere," Mr. Heitler said. So he made a decision he regrets today: He sold it.