I don't remember this being the case, you could reuse your old MC purchase when they made the transition over.
the mojang to minecraft.net transition, yeah. the minecraft.net to microsoft transition, no. https://youtu.be/rUFDRAEducI
am i misunderstanding, or is the author saying it's better to spend $10m than $9m?
Until then the domain resolver needs to either be built into the browser itself or installed by the user via a WebExtention.
Lets say the domain is .anything, and your domain had to be at minimum 10 characters to limit the use of squatted names”. Then you could build a website for one purpose like “lets-go-get-pizza-tomorrow.anything” or whatever. Perhaps there could be a mandatory expiry or something.
I flee out of Thailand several months ago, because I was receiving some death threats, so I should be safe on that matter.