Is IPv4 a Good Investment in 2026? An Honest Look at the Market
All 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses are allocated, and a /24 block can earn around $1,200 a year in lease income. But prices corrected after the 2021 peak — here is the two-sided case.
The asset class nobody planned
Every IPv4 address that will ever exist was fixed decades ago by a single design decision: roughly 4.3 billion addresses — and all of them are now allocated. The free pools at the regional registries ran dry between 2011 and 2020, so no one can mint new supply, ever. What remains is a secondary market where blocks move through transfers and leases. That structural fact — fixed supply, persistent demand — is why address space started to be treated as an asset at all.
The bull case: scarcity plus cash flow
The supply side is closed and demand keeps growing. The IPv6 transition is real but slow: after more than two decades, the overwhelming majority of the internet still runs on IPv4, and every new AI workload, IoT sensor and VPN endpoint needs a public address. Meanwhile a purchased block earns income immediately: leasing runs at roughly **$0.40 per IP per month**, putting a single /24 — 256 addresses — at about **$1,200 per year** in rent. Cloud providers charge around **$44 per IP per year** for the same resource. Owners who buy at transfer prices and lease at market rates capture that gap, plus the asset's appreciation.
The bear case: prices are not one-way
The most important correction to the "only up" story is recent. Transfer prices peaked near **$60 per IP in 2021**, corrected through **2022–24** and have firmed since; today a /24 trades around **$27 per IP**, a /20 around **$16** and a /19 around **$14**. Anyone who bought near the top knows this market can fall as well as rise. There is also terminal risk: if IPv6 adoption ever accelerates sharply, the scarcity premium could compress faster than lease income builds. And holding address space is operational work — registry objects, RPKI, blocklist reputation, legal review — not a passive bond.
What the numbers actually say
At current levels a /24 costs about $27 per IP, with volume discounts taking larger blocks down to roughly $14 per IP at /19 scale. Against that, $0.40 per IP per month in lease income implies a running yield that comfortably beats cash — before any appreciation. The **RIPE region, covering Europe and Türkiye, carries the highest transfer volume in the world**: the deepest liquidity and the most reliable price discovery. For anyone serious about this asset, that is the natural home.
Who should buy — and who should stay out
Sensible buyers are infrastructure-heavy businesses — hosting, VPN, email, AI startups — that genuinely use the addresses and treat lease income as a bonus. Long horizons matter: gains arrive over years, not months. Stay out if you want a quick flip, cannot stomach a 30–40% drawdown, or have no appetite for registry and reputation administration. This is not a liquid, regulated market you exit in five minutes; it is a niche asset with real operational baggage.
A sane entry strategy
Start small: one /24, with a clean listing history, in a liquid region. Decide between leasing and owning on your horizon — under two years, lease; longer, hold. Keep the block active or leased so it never looks dormant. And before you buy, look at what already sits unused. The IPDORM dark space map shows the dormant side of the address space — registered blocks that exist and do nothing. That is where sensible deals begin: [ipdorm.com](https://ipdorm.com). --- *Explore the dormant side of the address space on the IPDORM dark space map — [ipdorm.com](https://ipdorm.com).*