Bloody diamonds? Synthetic diamonds? No, the future is Digital diamonds

The impossibility of guaranteeing an ethical purchase of natural diamonds and the least attraction on the Millenials have brought giants like DeBeers to evaluate solutions such as synthetic diamonds and traceability on Blockchain. But the real breakthrough could come with Bitmonds digital diamonds.

Bruce Cleaver, CEO of De Beers, says that with the creation of Lightbox Jewels company they have focused on a different slice of the market: “We will offer consumers a laboratory product that they have told us they want, but that they can not find: cheap and fashionable jewelry, which maybe is not forever but is perfect for this moment”. In other words, the market requires less quality and we are happy with them. The important thing is to sell perception.

According to Morgan Stanley, penetration of synthetic diamonds should reach around 15% by 2020 despite high energy consumption for production. But this opens up another kind of problem. Who Millenials is not, and has the money and the willingness to invest in a natural diamond can feel comfortable? The answer is no. Even experts with the naked eye can not identify the nature of a diamond. They need expensive machinery that is not available to everyone. The risk of fraud has now become very high and the struggle for the natural diamond market has become even more ruthless.

Yes struggle. Because the migration theme due to wars in the Central African area is very common.But perhaps too little we ask how these are financed and perhaps it would be enough to look at the jewelers’ window.

Diamond-rich territories are free zones, where it is impossible to develop activities. The lands are expropriated and the only activity that remains to the local population is the garimpo, the irregular extraction of diamonds. Despite the introduction of Kymberly Process (the passport that allows valuables to access the international market) there are still many bloody diamonds around, that finance terrorism and dictatorial regimes.

De Beers promoted a project for the traceability of gems with Blockchain technology, a noble attempt (in part dictated by a direct interest) but that does not seem to be an effective solution, because it does not consider the human factor in the supply chain.

According to a report by the Partnership Organization Africa Canada (CAP), the issue of obtaining the Kimberly Process certificate is easily circumvented by making Cameroon appear as the country of origin, instead of the Central African war-theater republics. All thanks to a criminal traffic of stones and certificates. The introduction of the Blockchain for tracking does not help much if the certified source is not reliable.

But if the natural diamonds are “bloody” and the synthetic diamonds are essentially stones created ad hoc to feed a “market of perception”, why not try the full digital road to talk to the new generations??

This is the challenge of Vanilla Rocket, an Italian startup, which recently launched the Bitmonds.com project. And the market seems to approve, in a few days 2700 digital diamonds were generated by 350 active customers.

Bitmonds are 3D digital diamonds in high definition with which it is possible to interact like physical diamonds. But they are always available and can not be stolen because the property is registered on the Blockchain network (without cryptos, just paypal) It is possible to give them away, sell them or wear them via smartwatch or in the future on dedicated digital jewelry. Each Bitmonds has a certificate certifying its purity characteristics, similar to those of physical diamonds. On the basis of which the concept of rarity is also reproduced. The generation has a relatively low price, while in the Marketplace there are already models for all budgets.

In the future, the marriage proposal will no longer be presented with a solitaire ring, but with a smartwatch and a Bitmonds?