(It’s a joke/reference, I guess it’s not 100% known though. My bad.)

I really do hate “I know what I have so you are going to pay whatever number I set” capitalism though, which is what they do here. These registrars figured out a loophole around the redemption grace period and are, from the start, set up to make you lose the domain and then spend significant money on a completely unfair auction where they have the power to plant fake bids, rather than paying the usual static redemption fees that aren’t that excessive.