In the twentieth century the diamond market was entirely controlled by only one company called De Beers. Total control meant that De Beers had set diamond prices. By the end of the XX century the monopolist faced competition from 3 other major producers, Rio Tinto, Alrosa & Anglo American. Today the market share of De Beers amounts to 35%, but the industry is still monopolized with the only difference that now it’s owned by a cartel. The cartel controls diamond prices around the world through its rough sight pricing & network of sightholders.

The cartel owns a relatively small number of mines in Russia, Canada, Australia, Botswana, DR Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe and South Africa. After extracting, raw diamonds are getting cut and polished mostly in India and Africa, before eventually making it to the hands of traders in countries such as Belgium, where the world’s oldest diamond exchanges are located in the city of Antwerp.

By 2015 the cartel faced difficulties in maintaining long-term demand for diamonds, especially among millennials, who didn’t associate themselves with the values, imposed by De Beers in the mid of XX century (“Diamond are forever” global campaign). This very year the Diamond Producers Association was formed with a three-year $18 million budget for advertising to drive younger demographic consumer demand.

Despite of this, polished diamond exports from Antwerp have been declining 4.5 percent year by year. The last years was the time of uncertainty for the diamond industry. As the expectations were inflated by the ads budgets and conceptions of further growth in demand, the growth didn’t come.

This has led to a situation where retailers with high inventories slowed down purchases from wholesalers. The whole industry has a slowdown in business activity nowadays. The reasons behind it are obvious — the greed and the inflexibility of the monopolized diamond market for which a price reduction would be tantamount to a defeat. But the truth that industry is in the dead-end and only totally new solution can show a way out.

That is why we decided to build Diamond Open Market — a decentralized blockchain-powered transparent marketplace indicating real supply and demand. The platforms’s target audience is a wide community of individual holders, traders, jewellers, wholesalers, small-scale producers around the world. Every market participant will be able to sell and buy natural or lab-grown diamonds, paying by fiat or cryptocurrency and using a convenient search system. Diamond Open Market will change the rules diamond industry lived to this day and bring new opportunities for every party.

Diamond Open Market is a decentralized commodity exchange to buy, sell and trade any types of diamonds. Your own fair pricing, zero fees, physical delivery and other features.

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