Billion-Year-Old Black Diamond 'The Enigma' Sells For More Than £3 Million

A black diamond believed to be the largest stone ever cut has sold for £3.16 million at auction, with the buyer paying using cryptocurrency.

'The Enigma' is believed to be around one billion years old, with auction house Sotheby's claiming it may have originated from outer space.

The 555.55 carat diamond fetched less than was anticipated at the auction, with initial estimates suggesting the gem could sell for as much as £4.4 million.

555.55 carat diamond (Sotheby's)

While Sotheby's did not confirm the identity of the buyer, crypto entrepreneur Richard Heart has come forward on social media to claim he had bought the gem, revealing he planned to rename it the 'HEX.com diamond' after the blockchain platform he founded.

In a video posted to Twitter, Heart said that the name change would be confirmed 'as soon as the payment's gone through and possession's been taken' of the diamond.

Prior to auction the diamond had been displayed in Dubai and Los Angeles, before ultimately being sold in London. Consisting of 55 facets to match the 555.55 carats, Sotheby's described the gem as 'one of the rarest, billion-year-old cosmic wonders known to humankind.'

Experts have disputed the true origins of the diamond, with some geologists saying 'carbonado' diamonds like The Enigma are more likely to have been formed within the Earth's mantle - a layer rock between the planet's crust and outer core that makes up more than two-thirds of the planet's mass.

Others point to the fact that a mineral found in the diamonds, called osbornite, is only found in meteors, making it likely the gems came from asteroids that fell to Earth.

The 'enigma' black diamond (Sotheby's)

Carbonados have only ever been discovered in Brazil and the Central African Republic, with the first black diamond found by miners in eastern Brazil in the 1840s, per National Geographic. They are known for their tough properties, charcoal-like colour and the numerous holes often found in the uncut gems.

According to the BBC, previously discovered black diamonds have been dated to as old as 3.2 billion years, meaning they existed at a time before even the dinosaurs.

Weighing around the same as a banana, The Enigma is also unusually heavy for a diamond, though it's still dwarfed by some large gems, with the heaviest diamond ever discovered weighing a massive 3,106 carats before being cut into several smaller stones.

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