IPv4 Market Summary and 2023 Price Predictions

2022 demonstrated that even the most business-critical products and marketplaces can experience pricing volatility. Rare IPv4 commodities certainly possess all the key traits of a resilient market. However, under extreme circumstances, even IP’s can fluctuate and fall subject to pricing resistance. Let’s discuss the leading factor that contributed to the fluctuations this year.

COVID caused prices to rapidly increase in 2020 and 2021. During the pandemic, many organizations that would have re-addressed and sold IPv4 had to refocus efforts on COVID contingency plans. At the same time, most ISPs, Cloud Operators and Hosting companies had an influx of client demand due to the quickly shifting work-from-home culture. These organizations were forced to over-purchase IPv4 addresses due to fear of future shortage, large client usage projections and rising IPv4 prices. The lack of supply combined with an increase in demand caused IPv4 prices to spike more than 100% in 2021.

In 2022, there was a pendulum swing in IPv4 supply once most organizations had control over COVID-related projects. They reallocated efforts to focus on IPv4 re-addressing projects to take advantage of the inflated IPv4 prices. During this same time at the beginning of 2022, we began to see a consistent decrease in IPv4 buyer demand. These 2 events combined caused market stabilization and ultimately price resistance at around -15% of all-time highs.