Also called kiting
Domain kiting, explained
Only registrars receive grace-period refunds from registries, so kiting was carried out by registrars or by parties working through them. It was common in the mid-2000s alongside domain tasting, which used the same refund to test names for traffic and keep only the earners. ICANN closed the loophole with its AGP Limits Policy, which took effect in 2009: a registry may not refund a registrar for grace-period deletions above 10 percent of its net new registrations in a month or 50 names, whichever is greater.
For today's investor, kiting is history with a practical lesson. Do not count on deleting a new registration for a refund; treat every hand registration as a commitment of at least the first-year fee. The term, borrowed from check kiting, still appears in older articles and is sometimes confused with domain tasting. Tasting kept the names that earned; kiting kept a name in a free loop indefinitely.
Example. In a kiting loop, a name was deleted on day four of its grace period and registered again minutes later, so its holder never paid a registration fee.
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Education, not financial, legal or tax advice. Domain investing is speculative and most domain names never sell. Read the disclaimer.
