Bitcoins are scarce and have an innate mathematical beauty – properties they share with diamonds. If you prefer your beauty to take tangible form, you can now use your bitcoins to buy diamonds on Bitcoin.de. The bitcoin exchange is the first platform on which customers can spend their bitcoins on diamonds.

With the rapid pace of technological progress you would think it would be a simple matter to take a few billion carbon atoms and compress them together into a crystal, such that each one links to exactly four other atoms. Despite advances in synthetic gemstones, though, it’s still not that easy; the best process to achieve this feat of chemical geometry is to bury the atoms several hundred kilometres deep in the earth and cook them for a few million years.

Have you ever wondered why diamonds – the end product of this process – are some of the most expensive objects on earth? They are not only striking beautiful, but also extremely rare. This scarcity is shared by diamonds, gold – and bitcoins. So perhaps it’s only natural that Bitcoin.de, Europe’s largest peer-to-peer marketplace for bitcoins, has integrated a diamond store into its exchange. In cooperation with diamond seller Lieblingskapital, Bitcoin.de allows customers to buy diamonds in several sizes and colours. There are diamonds of 1/3, 1/2, 3/4 and 1 carat, and as many as five different colours. Clarity and cut – the most important of the so-called 4 Cs – are of highest quality.

‘After the successful implementation of the gold store two years ago, we now offer our customers the opportunity to buy another attractive investment product with their bitcoins,’ comments Oliver Flaskämper, managing director of Bitcoin Deutschland AG. ‘Our customers buy the diamonds directly from the merchant, but on a platform they can trust – Bitcoin.de. Our customers have trust in us, we have trust in the merchant – this circle is closed with the integration of the diamond store on Bitcoin.de.’

Finn Schönefeldt, CEO of Lieblingskapital, is also pleased with the cooperation. ‘Lieblingskapital is an outlet for private investors with a taste for rare and beautiful objects. To connect those classic investment products with an innovative means of payment like bitcoin is a special pleasure for us. With Bitcoin.de we found a professional and reliable partner for this. We’re looking forward to sending out diamonds to the bitcoin community.’

All diamonds bought from the company are delivered with a GIA certificate. Lieblingskapital attests the diamonds’ provenance meets legal requirements and that their sale doesn’t finance wars and conflicts. The diamonds match the high ethical standards of the company and are in line with the ‘Kimberly Process.’

At first diamonds will only be delivered to German customers, but the service will later expand to the rest of Europe. Delivery usually takes ten days, and delivery costs are in proportion to the value of the goods.