In early 2022 the discount that had been available for large blocks of IPv4 addresses disappeared. For the first time in years, /16 blocks and larger began to sell at an increasing premium. By Q2-2023, small and medium-sized blocks sold for a 30-35% discount to larger ones. By Lee Howard.
Source: https://circleid.com/posts/20230817-ipv4-prices-supply-and-demand-in-2023
The bifurcation of the market is clearly between those /16-and-larger blocks and all smaller ones. The overall need for addresses is immediate and outweighs variation in price. Relatively small price variations don’t dampen the need in this theoretical scenario.
However, supply may very well influence pricing. And pricing impacts supply. Let’s look only at transfers smaller than /16, since the dynamics change at /16 and larger. Considering long-term price trends, prices increased at a very steady rate 2014-2018, before flattening in 2019-2020 and then spiking in 2021. At this point, prices of small blocks have returned to where they would have been had the original (2015-2020) steady rate of increase simply continued. Interesting read!
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