While it's undoubtedly been a turbulent couple of weeks for Demonoid, its loyal users still had hope that one day the site might return. However, today the chances of that happening appear to have been cut from an optimistic 50/50 to much, much less. All key Demonoid domains are now up for sale to the highest bidder, signaling what could be the start of the end of an era

With an army of passionate fans, Demonoid was spoken about fondly by many in the torrent community. Just two weeks ago it was one of the world’s largest and most thriving torrent sites but a DDoS and hacker attack followed by a police raid brought it to its knees.

After days of silence, last Thursday the IFPI took credit for the complaint behind the takedown.

“The operation to close Demonoid was a great example of international cooperation to tackle a service that was facilitating the illegal distribution of music on a vast scale. I would like to thank all those officers involved in this operation to close a business that was built on the abuse of other people’s rights,” said the IFPI’s anti-piracy director Jeremy Banks.

Last week a source at ColoCall, Demonoid’s former webhost, said he believed that the site’s management was based in Mexico. It was later confirmed that a criminal investigation is underway in the country and that a number of arrests and asset seizures had already taken place.

However, in the middle of all the chaos and arrests TorrentFreak maintained contact with the site’s technical admin who still has control of the site’s domains. Due to his presumed position of freedom hope remained that one day the site would return, but today that seems more unlikely than ever.

The three key Demonoid domains – Demonoid.me, Demonoid.com and Demonoid.ph – are now all up for sale on Sedo, a popular domain name and website marketplace.

Selling the domains now while traffic to Demonoid remains high should ensure a good price for the vendor, but it seems unlikely that any buyer would look to relaunch as a torrent site.

Of course, “up for sale” doesn’t mean “sold”, but at this stage hopes that the site might one day return appear to be dwindling faster than ever.

Later today we hope to obtain a comment from Demonoid on this latest development and will update this post accordingly.