I met the founder of a company who claimed they at one point owned every 3 letter .com domain they could get their hands on. Claims they had around 5000 of them (17576 total), and about a 100 2 letter domains. They had trouble figuring out what to do with them so they let them expire.

After working with them for a few years I believe this story, and especially the part they weren’t competent enough to know what they really had at the time.

What scares me is that you can now rent domains names you don't own from squatters

So you're now paying monthly money on a name you don't own which you wouldn't own anyway.

Wow I'm 1/456,976!

now do subreddits. It used to be cars.com was soooo valuable but now a days, for many words, the https://www.reddit.com/r/cars sub is more.