Trump, SI and the .si rush: the timeline, the arithmetic, every quotation and the limits

Companion to the audit. Everything here is drawn from sources the desk fetched on 8 October 2026 (UTC 9 October); the arithmetic and the translation are the desk’s own and are labelled as such.

Timeline, with a source for each entry

The 19 September 15:29 UTC time and the 20 September 19:22 UTC Polymarket opening are Netcraft’s. Cochran’s thread is dated by its X timestamps (00:20 UTC on 30 September, 20:20 on 29 September in New York).

Figure

The desk’s arithmetic

Inputs are quoted from the named sources; calculations are the desk’s. Hash of this record as frozen in the piece: sha256 ddec3808820d1b54b5a63b75afe26885930b19d9739ca18a54e37e8c499b4714.

I1. Registry price per registration: EUR 10, "the same for all registrars" (Register.si notice, Slovenian original; desk translation). Foreign Policy: EUR 10 "per registration". Domain Name Wire, 2026-09-28: "EUR 10 wholesale per domain". Domain Name Wire, 2026-10-01: "EUR 10 per year". The sources do not agree on whether the EUR 10 recurs yearly.
I2. New .si domains registered in September 2026: 46,066 (Domain Name Wire, 2026-10-01, "According to the registry").
I3. Domains registered in August 2026: 3,515 (Netcraft, 2026-10-01, from register.si statistics of 2026-09-23); BBC News quotes the registry spokeswoman as "less than 2,000" for August. The two figures differ and the desk uses neither as settled.
I4. Total .si domains: about 190,000 on 2026-09-04 (Domain Name Wire, 2026-09-28, from an archive of Register.si); 198,535 on 2026-09-23 (Netcraft); about 219,800 on 2026-09-29 (Foreign Policy, from ARNES); 298,682 on 2026-10-05 (The Next Web, from the Register.si counter).
I5. Highest public .si sale in Domain Name Wire's review of 35 sales recorded by NameBio from January through 9 June 2026: USD 20,000 (Recursive.si, to an AI company).
I6. Executive Order 14434, signed 2026-09-29; section 3(b) gives the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology 60 days.

CALCULATIONS
C1. 46,066 September registrations x EUR 10 = EUR 460,660, if the EUR 10 applied to every one of them.
C2. 3,515 August registrations x EUR 10 = EUR 35,150.
C3. 46,066 - 3,515 = 42,551 more September registrations than August; 42,551 x EUR 10 = EUR 425,510.
C4. Domain Name Wire's own estimate on 2026-09-28: about EUR 300,000 "extra this month" at EUR 10 per domain.
C5. 298,682 - 190,000 = 108,682 more domains in total between about 2026-09-04 and 2026-10-05. This is a net change in the registry's total and is not the same as new registrations.
C6. USD 100,000,000 / USD 20,000 = 5,000. That is how many sales at the highest public price in I5 it would take to reach USD 100 million. It describes scale only. It is not a claim about any actual sale, and Adam Cochran's thread does not say how his figure was built.
C7. 2026-09-29 + 60 days = 2026-11-28, the date by which section 3(b) of the order asks for proposed legislative language.

LIMITS OF THE ARITHMETIC
L1. EUR 10 is a registry price. Registrar prices are higher and are set by each registrar (Register.si notice). Retail examples: USD 11.99 first year and USD 16.99 after, at Hostinger (Foreign Policy).
L2. The calculation ignores renewals, promotions, taxes and the registry's costs. The sources do not say where the registry's income goes.
L3. Asking prices on aftermarket sites are not sales (IBTimes UK). The desk has no completed-sale data for September.

The Register.si notice: Slovenian original and the desk’s translation

The translation is the desk’s, without a professional translator. The Slovenian controls.

Desk translation of the Register.si notice "Število domen pod .si preseglo 200.000" (The number of domains under .si has exceeded 200,000), https://www.register.si/obvestila/stevilo-domen-pod-si-preseglo-200-000/. Slovenian original as fetched on 2026-10-08, followed by the desk's English translation. The translation is the desk's, made without a professional translator; the Slovenian original controls.

SLOVENIAN ORIGINAL (as fetched)
V zadnjih mesecih na Registru.si beležimo povečano število registracij domen .si. Pretekle dni je zanimanje za .si spodbudila tudi razprava o novem poimenovanju umetne inteligence.
Predsednik Združenih držav Amerike Donald Trump je 19. septembra na družbenih omrežjih predstavil več alternativnih poimenovanj za umetno inteligenco, t.i. Artificial Intelligence (AI), med njimi Superior Intelligence (SI). Razprava je hitro pritegnila pozornost javnosti in tehnološke skupnosti, med drugim pa so se pojavila ugibanja o vplivu morebitne nove kratice na slovensko nacionalno domeno .si.
Register.si, ki deluje v okviru javnega zavoda Arnes, preko približno 90 domačih in tujih registrarjev omogoča registracijo domen pod .si. Registracija neposredno pri Registru.si ni mogoča. Cena registracije je za vse registrarje enaka in znaša 10 EUR. Končna cena za nosilce domen je odvisna od politike posameznega registrarja in Register.si nanjo nima vpliva. Špekulacije v medijih o »milijonskih zaslužkih Slovenije zaradi povečeanega interesa za .si« torej nimajo resnične podlage. Vsekakor pa svetujemo nosilcem blagovnih znamk, sloganov, firm, …, ki še nimajo domene pod .si, da jo čimprej registrirajo.
Dejavnost Registra za .si je (med drugim) regulirana tudi z Zakonom o informacijski varnosti.

DESK TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH
In recent months Register.si has recorded an increased number of .si domain registrations. In the past days, interest in .si was also stimulated by the discussion about a new name for artificial intelligence.
On 19 September, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, presented several alternative names for artificial intelligence on social networks, among them Superior Intelligence (SI). The discussion quickly drew the attention of the public and the technology community, and speculation appeared about the effect of a possible new abbreviation on the Slovenian national domain .si.
Register.si, which operates within the public institute Arnes, enables registration of domains under .si through approximately 90 domestic and foreign registrars. Registration directly at Register.si is not possible. The price of registration is the same for all registrars and is 10 EUR. The final price for domain holders depends on the policy of the individual registrar and Register.si has no influence on it. Speculation in the media about "million-euro earnings of Slovenia due to increased interest in .si" therefore has no real basis.
The activity of the Register for .si is regulated, among other things, by the Information Security Act.

Every quotation set out as an exhibit in the piece

What the desk could not verify

• Who holds any .si name. The desk did not query the registry WHOIS service, did not look up any registrant, and the registry limits public information on natural-person holders (IBTimes UK). Whether the registry’s WHOIS terms restrict copying or publishing was not checked by the desk and is not asserted.
• Cochran’s counts: about 55 registrations a day in 2023-2025, more than 400 on 24 June, more than 7,000 in July, about 12,000 AI-related or MAGA-related names, and the 53-day cluster. Daily registry data of that kind is not public; Snopes reports a registry graph showing about 5,000 registrations in each of May and June, and the desk could not reconcile that with his July figure.
• The size of any resale profit. No September completed-sale total was found; asking prices are not sales.
• The final result of the 19 September poll and a follow-up poll. Mashable, Truthout and others report different options and shares; the archived 19 September post lists Superior Intelligence (SI), Extreme Intelligence (EI) and Supreme Intelligence (SI). Truthout describes the options differently from the archived post. No source the desk fetched gave a final tally, and the desk did not locate the primary for the later poll.
• The Slovenian citizenship of Melania and Barron Trump. Netcraft and the thread state it; FactCheck.org confirms only that Melania Trump was born in Slovenia and became a US citizen in 2006. The desk found no government record.
• The White House denial reported by Snopes. It is Snopes’s report of an email; the desk did not contact the White House, the registry, ARNES, Netcraft, Hostinger or Cochran.
• Registry figures differ across sources (August 2026: 3,515 per Netcraft, below 2,000 per the BBC quoting the registry spokeswoman; the BBC also dates the UN speech 11 September where the White House release says 22 September). The UN-supplied transcript is machine-generated and the American Presidency Project warns it may contain errors; the desk quotes it only for one short sentence.
• Where the registry’s income goes. The sources do not say.

Sources

• White House (Executive Order 14434)
• White House (fact sheet)
• White House (UN remarks release)
• American Presidency Project (UN-supplied transcript)
• Trump's Truth (Truth Social archive)
• Mashable
• Truthout
• PolitiFact
• Foreign Policy
• Netcraft (24 September post)
• Netcraft (1 October post)
• Register.si (notice, Slovenian original)
• The desk (translation of the Register.si notice) (desk-made; sha256 ac00c19d714d2e64…)
• BBC News
• TechCrunch
• Euronews
• The Next Web
• Domain Name Wire (11 June)
• Domain Name Wire (28 September)
• Domain Name Wire (1 October)
• IBTimes UK
• Gizmodo
• Snopes
• Forbes India
• IMF
• Adam Cochran (X thread)
• FactCheck.org
• The desk (arithmetic and timeline) (desk-made; sha256 ddec3808820d1b54…)