- Industry figures argue that IPv4 addresses are a vastly undervalued digital asset with potential market value far above current levels
- Critics point out structural constraints such as scarcity, limited liquidity and registry policies that complicate valuation and speculative claims
“The claim that IPv4 could reach a total value of $60 trillion is not rhetorical. It follows from basic asset economics once IPv4 is treated for what it actually is: a scarce, irreplaceable service-enabling asset.”
——Lu Heng, CEO at Cloud Innovation, CEO at LARUS Ltd, Founder of LARUS Foundation.
IPv4 valuation enters economic debate
IPv4, the Internet Protocol version 4 system that underpins most current internet addressing, allocates a finite set of approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses. Since the pools managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) were exhausted in the early 2010s, IPv4 addresses have become scarce digital resources with an active secondary market.
In recent industry commentary, Lu Heng — CEO of LARUS Ltd — argued that IPv4 addresses are “massively undervalued” and that their collective market value could reach as much as $60 trillion if treated as fully liquid and tradeable economic assets. Heng’s contention is that current valuation, at roughly $200 billion for the global market, reflects arbitrary constraints rather than intrinsic worth. He pointed to structural issues such as the lack of recognised ownership rights and restricted transferability imposed by RIR policies as major factors suppressing prices.
Proponents of this view have urged telecom and cloud executives to involve themselves more directly in policy and governance decisions around IPv4 address management, suggesting that greater strategic oversight could unlock hidden wealth in these digital assets. One argument is that IPv4 addresses act as “service enablers” for networks and servers, yet their pricing remains far below the economic value they enable, similar to how valuable physical infrastructure might be treated in other markets.
However, IPv4 address markets today are modest in size by comparison, with documented total sales around $1 billion at leading marketplaces. Additionally, average prices per address in 2025 range from roughly $30 to $60 depending on block size and regional demand.
Also Read: IPv4 as an investment asset: upper potential
Also Read: How much do regional internet registries really cost and who pays?
Scrutiny of value claims and market realities
The discussion about a potential $60 trillion valuation for IPv4 addresses highlights broader tensions in the governance and economics of internet infrastructure. At its core, the debate underscores how the scarcity of IPv4 — a protocol designed decades ago when the internet was far smaller — has created a market dynamic that did not originally exist.
Supporters of the high-valuation thesis argue that recognising IPv4 as a major asset class could influence investment decisions and encourage more efficient resource utilisation. Yet critics and market analysts caution that such valuations rely on speculative assumptions about liquidity and ownership that are not widely recognised in current law or marketplace structures. For example, the limited liquidity of the IPv4 market — with under 1 per cent of total resources traded annually — makes price discovery difficult and speculative.
Moreover, the governance role of RIRs, which enforce “needs” criteria and holding periods for IPv4 transfers, means that these addresses cannot be traded with the same freedoms as traditional financial assets. This has led some observers to argue that extraordinary valuation figures may overshoot what is economically plausible, given structural constraints and the ongoing shift toward IPv6, which provides a far larger address space intended to alleviate scarcity.
The debate also invokes questions about how digital infrastructure assets should be regulated and valued in the broader digital economy, and whether reforms in policy or market structure could meaningfully change the landscape for stakeholders such as service providers, users and regulators.
