This actually sounds pretty similar to what happened to feddit.de - the former main admin/infrastructure owner stopped being active, and eventually the active admins had to move to feddit.org when technical difficulties sprang up that they couldn't solve with their access level.
Only difference is that feddit.de didn't go up for auction, it's still running just with minimal user interaction. Apparently it was somewhat recently deactivated.
Oooh, 4 bidders and 14 bids too so it sounds like a real fight.
As much as I'd love to put my name in that hat and make the domain redirect to a gif a Xi Jingping getting anally penetrated, I feel like that amount of money would serve better purposes.
Over on the /0 general chat room we were coming up with things we could do with it, and I had the idea of putting up a page for donating to the families of Uyghurs Muslims detained by the CCP, and also for purchasing drones and other equipment for Ukrainian soldiers.
Every grenade dropped would be engraved with "From Hexbear, With Love"
How do they verify that? Every domain I've ever registered is for a neighbors address on the same street as mine with a different name. It's never been an issue.