For years, scientists have been perplexed by the origin of the carbonade diamond, which includes some of the rarest valuable metals found in meteorites.
At a Sotheby’s auction, a 555-carat diamond with enigmatic origins believed to be billion years old was sold for $4.5 million in cryptocurrencies.
The diamond’s origins have perplexed scientists, who are still unsure whether it originated from outer space or crystallised in the earth’s mantle. The diamond is easily identifiable by its opaque black look speckled with visible holes.
Carbonade diamonds are only found in two locations on Earth: Brazil and the Central African Republic. What adds to the mystery of this carbonade diamond is the fact that it includes a variety of metals, including the titanium nitride mineral osbornite, which is often discovered in meteorites.
Sotheby’s did not disclose the buyer’s identity, but Richard Heart, an entrepreneur on Twitter, claimed to be the diamond’s anonymous owner.
At the time of publication, Sotheby’s had not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment. According to the auction house, the gigantic diamond is a particularly special sort of black diamond that was generated either by meteoric hits or “an alien origin — from supernova explosions that spawned diamond-bearing asteroids that eventually smashed with the Earth.”
According to a story in The Sun, Stephen Haggerty, a professor of earth and environment at Florida International University, said that there is no credible scientific explanation establishing its earthly origin. As he stated: “There has never been a single scientifically sound alternative to carbonado’s [extraterrestrial] origin,”
In October 2021, Sotheby’s became one of the first premium auction houses to accept cryptocurrency as payment. Similarly, Lloyds Auctions, an Australian auction company, said in June 2021 that it will begin taking Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies as payment, and in September, the auctioneer sold Colin McRae’s long-lost rally vehicle for $360,000 in Bitcoin.
Christie’s, another prestigious auction house, kicked things off with the sale of Beeple’s NFT for a stunning $69 million in Ether (ETH). Since then, as cryptocurrency has grown in popularity as a mainstream, hassle-free payment method, other auction houses have followed suit.
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