One of the world's smallest economies stumbled into a fortune it never built. Tuvalu happened to be assigned the internet suffix '.tv', and leasing those two letters to the world now underwrites one of the biggest streams of income its government earns on its own

One of the world's smallest economies stumbled into a fortune it never built. Tuvalu happened to be assigned the internet suffix '.tv', and leasing those two letters to the world now underwrites one of the biggest streams of income its government earns on its own

Tuvalu leases its internet suffix, .tv, to a commercial registry operator, and the payments come back as a budget line worth more than A$10 million a year. Among the revenues the government raises on its own account, only tuna licences and taxation bring in more. Nobody in Tuvalu designed the asset, chose it, or bid for it. How Tuvalu came to hold the letters Country code top level domains are not awarded on merit or sold at auction. They follow…