Billion-year-old black diamond sold for £3.16m – The Khaama Press News Agency

A billion-year-old black diamond, believed to be the world’s largest cut diamond, sold for 3.16 million pounds ($4.3 million).

Black diamonds are typically between 2.6 and 3.2 billion years old, a time before the existence of the dinosaurs.

The Earth itself is about 4.65 billion years old, so it’s not much older than black diamonds.

Called The Enigma, the 555.55-carat gem, which weighs about the same as a banana, was expected to fetch more than £4.4m at the online auction.

Auctioneer Sotheby’s said: “The buyer has chosen to use cryptocurrency for the purchase.”

There are competing theories about the stone’s origins, including that it was brought to Earth by an asteroid.

Sotheby’s did not identify the buyer, but after the auction, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Richard Heart took to social media to claim that he was the buyer of The Enigma.

He told his more than 180,000 Twitter followers that “as soon as payment has been made and ownership has been taken,” the gem would be renamed “HEX.com diamond,” referring to the blockchain platform he founded. .

The gem is a carbonado, which is one of the hardest forms of natural diamond.

Carbonados are extremely rare and have only been discovered in Brazil and the Central African Republic.

Because they contain osbornite, a mineral found only in meteorites, they are believed to originate in space.

Sotheby’s described The Enigma as “one of the rarest billion-year-old cosmic wonders known to mankind.”