- IPv6’s virtually unlimited address space removes scarcity, which undercuts direct price formation and tradability compared with IPv4.
- In practice, IPv6’s value emerges indirectly through operational efficiency and long-term network planning rather than as a tradable asset like IPv4.
Address scarcity and the meaning of capital
In the global digital economy, not all internet infrastructure is valued equally. While both IPv4 and IPv6 serve the same fundamental purpose—enabling devices to communicate over networks—their economic trajectories have diverged sharply. One has become a traded financial asset; the other remains an invisible utility. This divergence is not accidental. It stems from a basic principle of economics: scarcity creates value.
IPv4, the internet’s original addressing system, is now a finite commodity. Its 4.3 billion addresses were exhausted at the global level by 2011, and regional registries followed suit within the decade. In contrast, IPv6 offers a near-infinite address space—340 undecillion (3.4 × 10³⁸) unique identifiers—rendering scarcity obsolete. Yet this very abundance has prevented IPv6 from acquiring the second dimension of value that defines IPv4 today: capital worth.
Also Read: What makes an IP address a form of digital capital in 2026
IPv4: From Technical Resource to Financial Asset
What began as a technical allocation mechanism has transformed into a liquid secondary market. According to IPlytics, a Berlin-based IP market intelligence firm, the average price per IPv4 address reached $ 43 in Q4 2025, up from 15 in 2019. Large blocks now command seven- or eight figure sums. In 2023, Microsoft acquired a /17 block(131,071 addresses) for an estimated 5.6 million—a transaction recorded in internal procurement records reviewed by industry analysts.
This market is institutionalised. Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) such as ARIN (North America) and RIPE NCC (Europe) maintain formal transfer policies that legitimise sales between organisations. Brokers like IPv4.Global and Hilco Streambank facilitate transactions with escrow services, due diligence, and legal frameworks. Leasing, too, has matured: firms can rent IPv4 space for 12–36 months, often bundled with routing support.
Crucially, IPv4 now appears on corporate balance sheets. Zayo Group Holdings disclosed $ 87 million in IPv4 assets in its 2024 SEC filings. Similarly, Lumen Technologies listed IPv4 holdings as “intangible assets with indefinite life.” Even non-tech firms participate: in 2022, a UK-based logistics company purchased a /22 block to future-proof its telematics infrastructure—and later leased unused portions to offset costs.This dual nature—operational necessity plus tradable asset—makes IPv4 unique among internet protocols.
Also Read: IP Capital: How network reliability shapes the value of IP addresses
IPv6: Abundant, Free, and Economically Invisible
IPv6, by design, cannot replicate this trajectory. RIRs allocate IPv6 blocks (typically /32 or larger) based on demonstrated technical need, not market demand. Critically, resale is prohibited under nearly all RIR policies. RIPE NCC’s policy explicitly states that IPv6 allocations “must not be transferred for profit” (Policy Proposal 2022-07). ARIN and APNIC enforce similar restrictions.
The result? No meaningful secondary market exists. Attempts to list IPv6 blocks for sale—even symbolically—have failed. In 2022, a broker offered a /32 IPv6 block at $ 0.01 per address. There were no buyers. Why would there be? Any qualifying organisation can obtain the same block—free of charge—from their RIR. A single /32 contains more addresses than humanity will likely ever deploy.
Consequently, IPv6 carries zero capital value. It does not appear in asset registers, cannot be leveraged as collateral, and generates no rental income. Its value is purely operational: it enables scalable, end-to-end connectivity without Network Address Translation (NAT). Cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud offer IPv6 support not as a premium feature, but as part of baseline infrastructure—unbilled and unmonetised.Even in high-adoption regions, this dynamic holds. India, with over 72% IPv6 user penetration (Google, January 2026), still relies heavily on IPv4 for enterprise and government services. Reliance Jio, the country’s largest mobile operator, uses IPv6 natively in its 4G/5G core—but maintains IPv4 gateways for legacy compatibility. The company owns millions of IPv4 addresses, acquired during early allocations, which it now leases to fintech startups. Those leases generate revenue; its IPv6 infrastructure does not.
The Persistence of Dual-Stack Reality
Global IPv6 adoption has grown—Google reports 47% of its users now access services via IPv6—but progress masks enduring dependency on IPv4. Most networks operate in “dual-stack” mode, running both protocols simultaneously. This is not transitional; it is structural. As long as significant user segments (particularly in North America and parts of Asia) remain IPv4-only, services must retain IPv4 endpoints.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) illustrate this tension. Cloudflare states that while 35% of its traffic is IPv6, 100% of its enterprise customers require IPv4 support. “You can’t turn off IPv4 until your last customer upgrades,” said a senior network architect in a 2025 RIPE meeting. “And some may never upgrade.”
This dependency sustains IPv4’s market value. A 2025 Internet Society report projected that “IPv4 will remain economically relevant until at least 2035, possibly beyond,” citing embedded systems, industrial IoT, and legacy banking infrastructure with 15–20 year lifespans.Thus, organisations face a bifurcated strategy: treat IPv6 as a cost of future-proofing, and IPv4 as a strategic asset to be managed, optimised, and monetised.
No Path to Monetization for IPv6
Could IPv6 ever develop capital value? Only if scarcity were artificially reintroduced—which contradicts its foundational purpose. Some have proposed “premium” IPv6 subnets (e.g., memorable hex strings like 2001:db8::cafe), but RIRs have rejected such ideas as contrary to open allocation principles. Others suggest leasing IPv6 routing capacity, but bandwidth—not addresses—is the bottleneck there.
AFRINIC’s 2025 annual report confirms the trend: 127 approved IPv4 transfers, generating administrative fees and market activity; zero IPv6 transfers. The pattern is consistent across all five RIRs.Even governments, while mandating IPv6 readiness for public services, do not assign it financial worth. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recommends IPv6 deployment for security reasons—eliminating NAT improves endpoint visibility—but provides no valuation framework. The European Commission’s Cyber Resilience Act treats IPv6 as a compliance requirement, not an asset class.
Conclusion: Two Models of Value
The comparison is stark. IPv4, constrained by design and depleted by demand, has transcended its technical role to become a dual-value instrument: operationally essential and financially appreciating. IPv6, engineered to abolish scarcity, delivers superior scalability and architectural cleanliness—but precisely because it is abundant, it remains economically inert.
This is not a judgment on technical merit. IPv6 solves real problems that IPv4 cannot. But in the marketplace, utility alone does not confer value—scarcity does. And in that domain, IPv4 occupies a category all its own.For network operators, the implication is pragmatic: IPv6 is a necessary investment in infrastructure resilience; IPv4 is an asset to be actively managed. One keeps the lights on. The other, increasingly, pays the bills.
