In recent weeks both the Arnault family and Tiffany & Co. have made headlines when it comes to the Metaverse. Days after his father, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault signaled his wariness of the metaverse "bubble", Alexandre Arnault changed his profile picture on Twitter and Instagram to a Cryptopunk NFT (PFP). Alexandre, who is the executive VP of product and communications at Tiffany & Co., purchased an NFT titled Punk #3167 for ETH 160, roughly USD 415,000.

Sarine announced it is commencing beta testing of its new AutoScanTM system, an innovative robotic system that executes fast and accurate data acquisition of rough diamonds for traceability and other purposes.

The Bonas Group, a global tender and auction house, announced they are adopting the Sarine Diamond Journey traceability program and will offer stones with a registered geographical origin.

Bonas brings diamond output directly to the market. Therefore, the origin can be confidently assured. The diamonds will be registered using the Sarine Diamond Journey ecosystem. The rough diamonds will be accurately scanned, allowing their subsequent traceability throughout the polishing process, providing retailers reliably traced diamonds from varied origins.

Sarine Technologies announced the French High Jewelry Maison Boucheron is launching a new fully-traceable bridal jewelry line, Etoile de Paris, for which it has partnered with Sarine to provide Boucheron-branded digital diamond reports "powered by Sarine".

Opsydia announced they can now place permanent identifiers in melee diamonds without affecting their surface polish. It’s an important advancement for volume manufactures to secure their supply chain and protect it from undisclosed synthetics.

Through this new technology, diamonds that are just 0.5 millimeters in diameter can have an alphanumeric sequence, coded shape or logo placed beneath their surface to create a physical link to a supply chain record or branded jewelry origin.

In Sotheby's single-lot live auction in Hong Kong, the pear-shaped, 101.38-carat, D-color diamond known as "The Key 10138" sold for US$12.3 million. The sale marks an industry-wide breakthrough, making the price achieved for this diamond the highest for any jewelry or gemstone purchased with cryptocurrency. The buyer was a private collector.

ALROSA introduced its revolutionary diamond-tracing technology using non-invasive laser markings. Unlike traditional laser engraving, these inscriptions could not be destroyed or polished off. The markings are made inside the crystal lattice, across the atomic structure of the entire diamond, making it invisible without a scanner. These diamonds can, and have, been certified by the GIA. The purpose of these markings would be to distinguish ALROSA diamonds from others, including lab-grown.

Opsydia, a UK-based diamond security innovator, announced former De Beers Group Senior Executive, Jonathan Kendall, would join their non-executive Board of Directors, starting immediately. The company, known for its sub-surface laser technology, can create nano-scale identifiers requiring a 100x microscope to be legible.

Grib Diamonds, the Belgian rough diamond company owned by AGD Diamonds, is joining the Sarine Diamond Journey^TM traceability program. The company, which has mining operations in Russia, can now offer customers stones with "birth-registrations" authenticating their origin. By augmenting their data to include the registration of origin and other information derived at the source, Grib will enable their midstream manufacturing customers to provide their downstream retail clients with fully documented traceable diamonds from the mine and throughout the polishing process.

Sarine Technology, a leader in precision technology products for the planning, grading, and trading of diamonds and gems, announced it had joined HB Antwerp as a technology partner. The partnership aims to demonstrate that transparency and open collaboration can benefit all the stakeholders throughout the value chain.

In 2020 close to 8 million luxury watches were listed on eBay, of which 200,000 were sold. As consumers expand their investment opportunities, platforms like eBay are trying to enhance the consumer experience by launching programs like the Authenticity Guarantee program; where each watch priced over US$2,000 is physically checked by an expert. As the company intends to expand its offerings, they have now introduced an escrow service for luxury watches to enhance consumer trust in high-end digital shopping.

Consumers don’t like feeling rushed when making luxury purchases, and brands like Breitling have found a suitable solution. #BreitlingSelect allows subscribers to try up to three Breitling watches in a year from a dedicated portfolio of timepieces. Part of the offer is that the subscribers will then be able to purchase one of the three watches at a special price.

Opsydia, a UK-based diamond security innovator, announced its sub-surface laser technology can create nano-scale identifiers requiring a 100x microscope to be read. This breakthrough would make it possible for internally flawless natural diamonds to have a logo, serial number, or encrypted code placed beneath its surface without affecting its clarity grade.

In a press release, Antwerp-based HB Company, announces that Boaz Lev, top man at diamond shipping and logistics firm Malca Amit for the past twelve years, is joining the company as one of its managing partners.

Sarine Technologies could not overcome the market-driven losses sustained in the first half of 2019, ending the year with a net loss of US$1.4 million as group revenue fell 12% to US$51.3 million amid tough industry conditions. The group stumbled to a net loss of US$2.8 million in the first half of FY2019 before the gradual stabilisation of conditions in the industry in the second half of 2019 helped them halve that loss by the end of the year. Sarine made a modest net profit of US$0.2 million in Q3 2019 with further improvement on profitability to US$1.2 million in Q4 2019.

Anglo American and Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) have joined forces to develop what will become the world's largest hydrogen powered ultra-class electric mining haul truck. The monster truck is key to Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan and is part of their efforts to live up to their assertion that mining ought to contribute to a low-carbon world.

International rough diamond brokerage and marketing service provider I. Hennig today announced the launch of its innovative state-of-the-art online rough trading platform: “Virtual Broker”. Virtual Broker (VB) provides a secure environment for rough diamond trading where sellers and buyers negotiate online directly between themselves on a wide range of goods.

Alrosa, Tencent and Everledger are launching a new WeChat Mini Program e-commerce solution for Chinese retailers. The pilot will employ blockchain technology to enable full traceability of diamonds from mine to consumer, providing full transparency of their origin, characteristics and ownership history.

Teaming up with Sarine Diamond Technologies, Alrosa has launched a pilot program to provide digital mapping of its rough diamonds on tender so buyers can better assess the polished output and lower their purchasing risk. In a press release, the Russian miner said it provided the Digital Tenders information for the first time during the October 2019 trading period, offering its clients a full digital scan of each rough diamond for detailed analysis.

In a preliminary update for Q3 2019, Singapore-listed diamond equipment and services provider Sarine noted that "the significant drop (40% less y-o-y) in the quantities of rough stones entering the production pipeline" has temporarily eased the excess inventories in the midstream, "somewhat alleviating" the issue of working capital in the short term.

Lucapa Diamond Co. has exported a 46 carat Lulo pink diamond to Antwerp and it is currently undergoing studies for polishing (initial possible polished solutions pictured above). A decision on the optimal polished solutions will be taken by the Sociedade Mineira do Lulo (SML) and the Lulo partners once the studies are concluded. While Antwerp is not the manufacturing center it once was, many of the world's most valuable and complex rough diamonds still find their way to Antwerp for analysis and polishing.

De Beers Group Auctions today announced the launch of its new auction portal, the company stated in a press release. The new platform "provides customers with an improved bidding experience through a range of enhancements to functionality and to the user experience. The portal harnesses cutting-edge technology and incorporates a range of valuable insights garnered from customer feedback," the Group writes. They describe it as a "better, smarter and faster way for customers to purchase their diamonds." See the announcement in annex below.

UK-based technology company Everledger, which specializes in asset traceability, provenance and supply-chain transparency solutions, has completed its $20 million Series A funding with the backing of Tencent Holdings Ltd, China’s leading internet-based services provider and the company behind WeChat, among other applications. Graphene Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Rakuten, Fidelity and Vickers Venture Partners have also participated.

In a remarkable constellation of art and science, artist Diemut Strebe, in collaboration with MIT scientist Brian Wardle, has used the blackest black ever created to make a 16.78-carat yellow diamond completely “disappear.” The project is called "The Redemption of Vanity", and the super-black diamond currently sits on view in an unlikely, but very fitting venue: the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street.

Sarine Technologies is expecting its second straight quarterly loss as the "prevailing negatives in the diamond industry midstream" are hurting their financial results. Demand for their diamond-manufacturing equipment relies on the manufacturing sector and thus indirectly on the rough trade that supplies it - two segments in the midst of a slump. 

The Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) has decided to discontinue its unrestricted funding of the independent Belgian research center WTOCD (Scientific and Technical Research Center for Diamond), citing the downturn in the diamond market and the sharp decline of diamond manufacturing in the city. “The current market situation has led us to take this decision,” says Margaux Donckier, AWDC spokeswoman.

Lucara Diamond Corp. continues to test and refine Clara Diamond Solutions (Clara), its digital sales platform for selling rough diamonds individually, launching its fourth test run this week. Lucara CEO Eira Thomas and Steve Lincoln, Sales and Marketing Operations Manager at Lucara and Director Sales and Marketing of Clara sat down with The Diamond Loupe to clarify a few aspects of the system and discuss their progress as they gradually expand their trial phase, which commenced in late November 2018.

The Diamond Producers Association (DPA) and Signet Jewelers have published the first results of their ASSURE Program to independently and objectively test the performance of laboratory-grown diamond detectors (Diamond Verification Instruments). The program intends to eventually test and identify each machine on the market concerning how well they detected or referred man-made stones, including the rate at which they gave false positives.

Sarine Technologies recorded a fourth-quarter net profit of $93,000, down 85% from $613,000 the year before, citing challenging industry conditions, weak sentiment in the midstream and a downturn in consumer spending in China due to uncertainties stemming from the impact of trade tariffs. The company notes that credit for India’s manufacturing sector tightening, Indian Rupee exchange rate volatility and the 'legitimization' of laboratory-grown diamonds all conspired to generate weak results. 

Gübelin Gem Lab in Switzerland has launched the first colored gemstone blockchain which will track the provenance of gemstones at every step along the supply chain. Called the Provenance Proof Blockchain, its purpose is to provide the industry with a tool that enables genuine transparency concerning the origin and movement of gemstones. A gemstone’s journey begins at the mine, which is where the blockchain ideally starts.

"If even a fraction of Chinese production is upgraded to jewelry-quality diamonds, it would have a very significant impact on the global supply which is only in the low-millions-of-carats," independent diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky told Xinhua News journalists Wang Zichen and Shi Linjing.

Dutch Diamond Technologies (DD) has created the world’s first ring that is entirely made from a lab-grown diamond. ‘Project D’, DD’s name for the ring, took a year to manufacture and was created in honour of the company’s 10th anniversary. For grading this unique piece of jewelry, DD turned to HRD Antwerp, Europe’s leading authority in diamond grading, writes the grading lab in a press release.

The Diamond Pro, described as "an unbiased online diamond jewelry advisory website," has launched Ringo, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that helps any online diamond buyer determine the best diamond options based on their specific requirements. The "first-of-its-kind tool" is intended to enable buyers to determine if a diamond is clean to the naked eye based solely on its picture, and be assured they are making the best purchase based on certification, desired shape, setting style and precious metal type.

Fomer Dominion Diamond Mines CEO Patrick Evans is planning to launch a company making laboratory-grown diamonds, according to an article by Henry Sanderson of the Financial Times. Evans last month left Dominion - the world's third largest diamond producer by market value and Canada’s largest independent diamond producer - after just over a year at the helm. He is also the former CEO of Canada's Mountain Province Diamonds, a position he held for twelve years.

Lucara Diamond Corp. has completed its highly anticipated inaugural diamond sale through Clara Diamond Solutions, its digital sales platform for selling rough diamonds individually, based on polished characteristics and demand.

A diamond jewelry manufacturer from Antwerp, Giovanni Daems, is the first to develop a new, patented technology for a fully-automated diamond setting machine, which it unveiled this week at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai.

The International Institute of Diamond Grading & Research (IIDGR), a member of De Beers Group, yesterday announced that its industry-first synthetic screening device, SYNTHdetect, was awarded Industry Innovation of the Year at the JNA Awards in Hong Kong. The announcement follows the launch earlier during the week of IIDGR's SYNTHdetect XL, a larger version of the original model that provides additional efficiencies for users, allowing a multiple pieces of jewelry to be screened at an even faster rate while using the same technology as the original SYNTHdetec.

Leading Hong Kong jewelry retailer Chow Tai Fook is the latest company to turn to blockchain technology to enable its customers to know the origin and authenticity of the diamonds they are buying.

Canada's Lucara Diamond, through its subsidiary Clara Diamond Solutions, has inked a cooperation agreement to include Sarine Technology's mapping and planning technologies into its sales platform, which applies algorithms to match rough diamond production with polished manufacturing demand on a stone by stone basis.

Element Six, a synthetic diamond manufacturer and member of the De Beers group of companies, planted their shovels in tthe Oregon soil to mark the symbolic commencement of construction on their $94 million manufacturing facility for laboratory-grown gems, produced exclusively for De Beers’ new fashion-jewelry brand, Lightbox Jewelry. The new brand will offer consumers laboratory-grown diamonds in high quality designs for casual, everyday occasions at lower prices than existing synthetic offerings.

Last week, the United States' Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of allowing states to collect sales tax from online retailers even when a retailer has no physical presence in that state, sending shock waves and uncertainty across the retail landscape. States argued they were losing out on billions of dollars worth of online sales taxes annually as a result of the precedent set by  a 1992 court decision, Quill Corp vs. North Dakota; the new Wayfair v.

In the context of the KP Intersessional taking place this week, which has brought the diamond world to Antwerp, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, represented by the Deputy Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Aleksey Vladimirovich Moiseev, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with HRD Antwerp for the establishment of an HRD Antwerp diamond grading lab in Moscow.

This morning, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), together with its research center the Scientific and Technological Research Center for Diamonds (WTOCD), unveiled a revolutionary technology that fully automates and accelerates the diamond polishing process: Fenix. This technology fundamentally transforms that process that has not changed since Lodewijck Van Bercken, a 15th-century jeweler and diamond cutter in Antwerp, in 1456 discovered that diamond could be polished with diamond. Watch the preview video here.

Sarine Technologies, which provides high-tech equipment and services to the diamond industry, announced yesterday that it is opening its second Sarine Technology Laboratory in Mumbai, India, as scheduled, which will offer services to the key Indian polishing centre, commencing immediately. The Laboratory, one of the leaders in the development, manufacture and sale of precision technology products for the evaluation, planning, processing, finishing, grading and trading of diamonds and gems, offers reports on a broad range of a polished diamond's parameters. 

PJSC Severalmaz, a Russian diamond mining company and subsidiary of ALROSA, has tested unmanned aerial vehicles - a quadcopter and an airplane - for mine surveying of land objects of Lomonosov Mining and Processing Division. According to ALROSA, preliminary estimates show that the use of unmanned technologies provides high survey accuracy, increases the speed and safety of work. Using a Geoscan 401 Geodesy quadcopter and Geoscan 101 Geodesy aircraft, Severalmaz surveyed the open-pit mine, dump, ore storages and other bulked land objects.

D1 Mint Limited, the creator of the diamond-backed crypto asset D1 Coin, has signed its first purchase agreement to buy 1,500 investment-grade diamonds, valued at approximately $20 million, from diamond cutting and polishing company KGK Diamonds.

The world's most recognized diamond grading institution, GIA (Gemological Institute of America) is launching a pilot program together with leading jewerly retailer, Chow Tai Fook which will use blockchain technology to deliver secure, digital diamond grading reports to consumers for the first time.

Carats.io, an Israeli blockchain startup in partnership with the Israel Diamond Exchange, has raised $1.6 million in its first funding round led by Net Capital Ventures, an Israeli venture capital fund, the organization stated in a press release. Carats.io says it is issuing the first digital coin backed by diamonds. The coin, CARAT, which is 100% redeemable for diamonds is currently in presale. The company reports that they are registering large subscriptions for the token through the company website.

In what it is hailing as an industry first, De Beers Group yesterday announced it has successfully tracked 100 high-value diamonds along the value chain during the pilot of its industry blockchain platform, tracking a diamond’s journey digitally from mine to retail. An immutable and secure digital trail was created for a selection of rough diamonds mined by De Beers as they moved from the mine to cutter and polisher, then through to a jeweller. The platform, called Tracr, is expected to launch later this year and will be open to the industry.

The Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), together with Junction Innovation this past weekend organized a three-day and two-night hackathon, the first of its kind called Hack4Diamonds. The teams gathered on Friday evening to get hacking, and applied their innovative & tech-oriented methodolgy to the diamond trade with the intention to consider specific issues and eventually arrive at a wokable plan to address it.

IBM and a consortium of gold and diamond industry leaders have launched the first cross-industry initiative to use blockchain to trace the provenance of finished pieces of jewelry across the supply chain for increased transparency, the multinational technology company announced last week. Asahi Refining (precious metals refiner), Helzberg Diamonds (U.S.

Everledger today announced the collaborative launch of the Diamond Risk Platform with the Diamond Durability Laboratory (DDL), the only gemological laboratory that focuses on diamond damage and evaluating any type diamond for potential damage, in a move that will dramatically shift the risk assessment reporting of diamond damage into an innovative realm, the company said in a statement. With development commencing in 2016 and completed in Q1 2018, the Diamond Risk Platform creates, manages and stores DDL’s leading comprehensive risk assessment