Rare Black Diamond Bought For More Than $4M Bitcoin At Sotheby's

A billion-year-old black diamond, claimed to be the largest cut globally, was purchased in an auction held by Sotheby's using Bitcoin worth £3.16 million (about $4.3 million), in a sign of steady adoption of cryptocurrencies by centuries-old auction houses.

Sotheby's did not disclose the name of the purchaser, but businessman Richard Heart, the founder of Hex, the world’s first high-interest blockchain certificate of deposit and PulseChain network, took to Twitter to announce that he has acquired the 555.55 carat stone and would rename it as "HEX.com diamond," after his company.

Auction houses have adapted well to cryptocurrencies. Christie’s allowed payment in Ether for a set of digital artworks in February 2021. Sotheby’s accepted cryptocurrency as a payment option for a physical work of art for the first time in May.

In July, Sotheby's Hong Kong let a mystery buyer pay $12.3 million for a rare 101.38-carat diamond.

As per the information released by Sotheby's, the beautiful jewel was purchased for £3.16 million, with the bidder "opting to use cryptocurrency for the purchase."

According to the details released by Sotheby, this rare, naturally occurring, black-colored diamond was displayed in Dubai and Los Angeles before being displayed in London.

“The Enigma” falls under the category of carbonado diamonds, which are found in deposits close to the earth’s surface, indicating that these gems have extraterrestrial origin.

According to a note from the auction house the diamond ".. was created either from meteoric impacts producing natural chemical vapour deposition or an extraterrestrial origin - from supernovae explosions that formed diamond-bearing asteroids which ultimately collided with the Earth."

The diamond's sources are assumed to be from interstellar space, and it has been hailed a "cosmic wonder" and "treasure from interstellar space" by auctioneers Sotheby's. This theory has been confirmed by Stephen Haggerty, a professor of earth and environment at Florida International University.

These types of jet-black diamonds are thought to have been created due to an unknown cosmic event that occurred 2.6 to 3.8 billion years ago.

Sotheby's also mentioned that the structure of carbonados makes them extremely difficult to cut and polish, and it took over three years to sculpt The Enigma into its final shape. "The Enigma" supposedly weighed over 800 carats in its original form.