Perhaps a DNS derivative could try that business model.
That would be an interesting experiment. It'd be a riot, if we could get the supporters of other cryptocurrency systems to clone BTS DNS to raise funds to register .doge, .ether, .prime, .nxt, etc. with ICANN.
The first chain and TLD are to demonstrate it's irrelevant now. It's a one-click browser extension, you get it in 10 seconds when you first visit the "wtf is .p2p" landing page.
This experiment is especially intriguing. A couple decades ago, if you didn't have a .com URL, you were as pathetic as those poor sods who couldn't get proper 1-800 telephone numbers. Now, we register .co, .fm, .in, .ws, etc. without a second thought, and 1-866, 1-888, etc. no longer carry a second-class stigma.
It will be interesting to see if the third phase of this is an increasing willingness on the parts of users to install the browser extension for .p2p.
The best thing we could get from ICANN is for them to acknowledge .p2p by name specifically, then nobody would try to take the name since it's magically more official
Most likely, that's what the $200K TLD application fee is all about. They're unlikely to give that kind of recognition away for free.
I tell my students that two rich veins for business ideas are branding commodities on the one hand ("It's not just
rice. It's
Uncle Bob's Local Organic Rice!") and breaking someone else's monopoly on the other hand (e.g., selling generators to people in areas with very expensive electricity).
BTS DNS is an example of the latter.