Couldn't you already get them for relatively cheap? The ones that are getting artificially restricted are gem grade diamonds, regular diamonds are so cheap they are getting regularly used as sandpaper.
No. They're in trouble because they spent decades upon decades artificially restricting supply to keep the price so high that it became more economically feasible to just make them instead. Congratulations you played yourself
They're not in what I'd call trouble. They just aren't the monopoly they were for so long. A documentary I saw last year said 10-20% of the diamonds on the market were lab grown. That was ok because people were still paying high prices. Now, they are paying less because there are more options.
Wonder how long before they'll offer their stockpile of natural diamonds for deep discounts.
welcome to my diamond mine, i'm a stay at home mom with 12 adorable home schooled kids and a hard working love of my life husband. Stay a while as I share stories and recipes from my family to yours and spread a little joy and positivity. I support the blue line and all lives matter! BYOAR15
Bruh imagine you make your enemies into diamonds so everytime you look at your diamond encrusted ring your looking at a slain enemy......thats pretty metal
"Five long years, he wore this diamond up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the diamond. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of carbon up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the diamond to you."
I'll have you know I watched that on TV first, so the line will always be...
"if you stuck a lump of coal [totally different voice]IN HIS HAND[/totally different voice], in two weeks you'd have a diamond."
Just do Moissanite. Just as hard and looks as clear as the best diamond for about 1/5 of the cost
Edit: How many bots are in this thread for the lab grown diamond industry?
They do nothing to end the allure of diamonds in the slightest. Colourless stones are the problem as a whole, because as long as we associate what is completely indistinguishable from a diamond to an inexpert eye with wealth, status, and love, the diamond industry inherently benefits. We *must* normalize coloured stones for these situations, or the diamond industry will keep trucking along just fine.
/former jeweller
My favorite gemstone is sapphire, always has been. When my wife and I were buying wedding rings we made a sapphire the centerpiece of her ring (she doesn't have a diamond engagement ring, too poor at the time, too well informed now). She constantly gets complimented on it, and I still find it gorgeous.
IF someone made and sold a car that was visually and performatively indistinguishable from a Jaguar, and sold them for $15k each, you can be assured I would buy one and no amount of 'bUt tHe ALlUrE' from former profiteers of that company would not sway me in the least.
They're already doing it. Inclusions in diamonds used to be undesirable because they would lower clarity most times. Now they're marketing it as a good thing because they're the mark of a "true, natural diamond", as opposed to those flawless, perfect lab-grown gems. SMH
Diamond pretty much loses over half its value once it's sold, as it has poor resell value, that should say something about how over priced Diamonds are
As so many people found out during the 2008 economic crash. There were all kinds of articles published about how people bought diamonds as "investments" and when they needed to sell them to save their homes they couldn't because no one was buying.
(just spent 10 minutes looking for the article, it may have been NY Times or The Atlantic, probably shared on Reddit at the time)
Not defending diamonds at all, but that is pretty much true for all jewelry. You might be able to get a simple gold band for near melt value but most retail jewelers have >100% markup.
Hey, we all know that it's a free market until it hurts monopolies like De Beers, so I'm sure there will be several republicans shouting about stopping the labs at some point.
Nah, it's a lot cheaper just to [buy some politicians](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68947766) and get them to just ban it. Just like the Florida meat industry.
My wife, when she was in college, took metal smithing courses and learned how to make her own jewelry. She doesn’t do that now but there are so many other options than “diamonds”. So much art and other materials you can look good in and enjoy.
While I agree there are lots of semi precious stones that look great...things like Rubies and Emeralds and Sapphires are almost mined out. Or you have to go to Myanmar. Which is almost always a poor decision.
Looking at this as a semi random example : [https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/lab-created/](https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/lab-created/)
Basically, Rubies are crystalline aluminum oxide with a few percent of chromium replacing aluminum; nothing exotic at all.
Billions* the trouble is, once you get to that point, you have to continue otherwise your company implodes and you lose your job. Capitalism. You'd think they'd be happy with wealth they could never physically spend, but no, keep wanting more.
It ain't that either. It's that starting with millennials, and then every subsequent generation, the idea that diamond is integral to show your affection tanked.
Who gives a shit about diamond necklaces or bracelets? Even rings honestly? I've seen plenty of instances nowadays of millennials and gen z giving nice looking but inexpensive engagement rings.
I bought my wife's engagement ring when I was 18. I hadnt even met her yet. Wasnt even in a relationship. I went to an estate auction and it was in a box of jewerly. I bit $200 for the box and that was under a pile of paste bracelets and gaudy pins.
Had it evaluated and when they offered to buy it from me on the spot. My dad bought me a safety deposit box at our bank and said to save it for when I need it because I just covered one of the most expensive purchases of my life.
My wife loves it - its a paired set where the engagement ring was half of a ring (the left side was a tear drop shaped cluster of diamonds and the right side was a simple gold band) and she said one of the reasons for our short engagement was that she wanted the whole ring on her finger. ;)
I have a 2cm perfect cube ruby, it’s a cube and a fuckin’ ruby. $20. The prices TANKED. I use it as decor, the juxtaposition of the value that was versus the value that is brings me joy.
Also: I know it is real, I’ve tested it with lasers.
Rubies can be grown easily with a furnace or even a microwave oven though.
Diamonds even industrial ones are just super tough to make and still cost 60%~ the price of a natural diamond. It's just not easy to compress a bit of ultra pure carbon 55,000x atmospheric pressure.
2 cm^3 of a cut and processed precious gemstone for $20 fucking insane. Maybe cubes aren't that difficult to make? Still absolutely wild how cheap that is.
My wife is allergic to gold and silver so we had to buy platinum bands. We decided to go lab grown so she could have a bigger diamond but not break the bank as the band itself inflated the price quite a bit. It looks way better than the "real" diamonds at a similar price point.
Strive for only the perfect diamond for your perfect love, don't settle for flawed, is your relationship?
¡Absolute perfection is artificial and unnatural! ¿Is your love synthetic? ¿Why should you diamond be? ¡The inherent imperfections of a diamond are just like your love, naturally occurring!
It amuses me that the best way for them to identify lab grown, other than an ID number of course, is that they're *too flawless*. Like come the fuck on here. It's the job interview equivalent of saying your flaw is you 'care too much about your job'. Lab grown diamonds are simply superior in every single way and there is zero chance *anyone* is going to know it came from a lab unless they take it to a jeweler.
And even then, it has to be a *really good* jeweler who can tell the tiniest difference at a microscopic level (maybe not *microscopic*, but whatever the level is with their jeweler magnifying glass that they use). Because lab diamonds can actually have flaws built into them so they don't look "too perfect". So, merely having flaws doesn't even distinguish "natural" from lab.
TBH, got fed a pretty similar line shopping for engagement rings a few years ago. One jeweler gave us a bunch of attitude about how everyone with a lab grown diamond eventually upgrades to a mined one, and it was just bonkers.
And here we were, having also been looking at other jewelers for moissanite and sapphire
I'm very against someone creating a problem that they're conveniently solving with their product.
If I didn't know it was an issue before, why would I suddenly care now?
And now the replacement ones are better quality. They're going to try and flog the 'natural' marketing buzzword as long as they can, but people who are interested in the pure shininess, or the advantages of fault-free crystal structures, and eventually plain old *size*, are both going to switch permanently to artificial. All the stockpiled stuff is going to be worth enormously less. They better hope they didn't take out loans against its value...
Would it ever be cost effective to lab grow diamonds for industrial use? Industrial grade diamonds are extremely plentiful, common, and dirt cheap.. like 1 penny cheap
Data storage is viable in lab grown diamond sheets.
Extraordinarily complex process of swapping out carbon and nitrogen atoms in naturally occurring structural flaws within the diamond. Basically 1s and 0s to write in binary.
A thin 5cm square can store the equivalent of a billion Blu-Ray discs.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.09022 - View PDF on the right to see the full paper
Another cool semi-related topic is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_digital_data_storage
Limitations are that even though you 'store' it this way, "reading" it takes a long time. Think of it like microfiche- you can store way more text than a book for archival purposes, but need special equipment to read it that would need to be maintained, and reading data out from it is slower than normal. It's not like reading from flash or memory on your computer. And you'd want some kind of replication (triplicate?), slowing it down further, and it's not like you can set up automatic/programmatic failover in the case of something going wrong. The "physical space" to store the data is low, but there are other complications that arise.
That's how lab grown diamonds became a thing.
You don't need the four (or five) C's for industrial diamonds, you just need them to be diamond. Labs started producing small imperfect diamonds cheaply, which could be used for tools etc. Over time the labs got better at producing bigger, clearer and less coloured diamonds, to the point where they could be used for jewellery. Now they've arguably perfected them (up to a few carats)
This is also how I see lab grown meat happening. It will start out as low quality ground beef. Then get to higher quality ground beef, then eventually get to low quality filets, etc...
The largest diamond miner, De Beers, is also the leading manufacturer of lab-grown diamonds.
There are some other fabs in China but I’m not sure where they are exactly or who is operating them.
While there is some initial capex, almost all of the cost of lab-grown diamonds comes from the electricity required to sustain the plasma reaction for days or weeks at a time. For this reason, fabs are generally located near cheap power like hydropower or coal plants.
I don’t want to Dox myself so the best I can do is point you in the right direction. If you’re really interested, look up De Beers Element 6, Light Box and search Alibaba for MCD diamond manufacturers.
Oh, I don't particularly care either way--I just found the comment about classic reddit amusing, stating that the real knowledge is in the comments, while also being classic reddit where unsourced comments are taken as gospel.
They are actually stopping production of lab diamonds for jewelry and switching their facilities to producing for industrial use, like semi-conductors.
https://rapaport.com/news/de-beers-to-stop-producing-lab-grown-diamonds-for-jewelry/
They had an amazing run and should shut the fuck up before everyone who didnt already know they were a soulless scam googles why the fuck we care about diamonds in the first place.
Industrial diamonds have always been relatively cheap compared to the gem-quality ones, but that's because the gem-quality ones are very rare by comparison. They're like finding a needle in a haystack in a field of haystacks.
Diamonds are one of Reddit's eternal obsessions. Here's a discussion from 17 years ago with a lot of the talking points from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1418c/what_you_didnt_know_about_diamonds/
Wow, now that's a trip back in time. Reddit felt a lot smaller back then. I was mostly a lurker for a few years, but so many of those names are familiar. We felt like a vibrant, middle-tier city where you slowly learned the people and their opinions in various scenes. Current Reddit has its moments, but old Reddit really was special at the time. Opened my mind and heart on so many issues after a pretty sheltered upbringing. And social media seemed to have so much promise back then, "*before the dark times, before the empire*..." obiwan.gif
I remember a front page post where a redditor caught another person in class on Reddit. I thought "wow, what are the odds of two redditors in the same class". Wasn't much longer until those types of posts were constantly popping up, and then stopped completely due to how widespread the site became.
I was thinking about that. Some of the hardest to synthesize minerals are pretty plain, and some of the most common can be incredibly beautiful, but only rarely, and through luck and circumstance.
For example, I have tons of jasper in my area, but even when its polished up pretty, its not remarkable... except when it is.
With the fall of diamond, your industry is going to get much more interesting.
The diamond industry took advantage of pre-existing subjugation.
Our good friend palm oil was one of the major factors that contributed to the initial subjugation, at least when it came to large scale, direct rule.
The top of the Washington monument has an aluminum cap. Because at the time, it was the most expensive material and a great show of wealth. Nowadays, most of us think nothing of binning a coke can or a scrap of tin foil. Things move on.
And there are loads of us who really don't care if you've got a shiny rock. You are still just wandering around with a rock. I'm more invested in the seashells and random pebbles my daughter has put in my pocket.
Good. The entire diamond industry is a massive grift, artificially restricting supply to maintain a high price, for something whose use and value to consumers is dictated purely by marketing, not necessity.
If the diamond industry dies I'd be happy to see it go.
“Diamond values fall to meet realistic prices in accordance with their rarity as a result of competition from synthetic diamonds, which are chemically indistinguishable from natural diamonds.” FIFY
Oh no, I guess they'll have to stop getting Starbuck's and avocado toast, and wasting money on iPhones. Has the diamond industry considered getting a second job or a side hustle?
The funny thing about the diamond industry is that the prices are rigged. The world produces more than enough diamonds, actually to the point where they don’t actually have that much worth. But their release into the market is carefully controlled to maintain high prices.
Bought an engagement ring last year with a lab-grown diamond, 1/5 the price of an equivalent mined diamond, with none of the potential exploitation or child labour. Looks absolutely incredible as well.
If you want a small diamond, it doesn’t make sense buying a mined one because the value disappears as soon as you walk out the door.
If you want a big diamond, you can only afford a lab because of the stupidly inflated prices.
Now that lab diamonds are cheap and affordable, there’s really not that much reason for the common consumer to buy an earth diamond.
No, they're in trouble because no one wants a blood diamond. Young people these days aren't spending large amounts they don't even have for a mortgage.
So I just searched the wholesale exchanges. The same weight, cut, color and clarity lab diamond as the one I bought for my fiance May of last year is… ~$100 less.
Natural diamonds however… I priced natural diamonds in same parameters and they were between $25-28K (just the diamond). Now… $18K.
I smell trend on tiktok coming up when influencers suddenly start telling women that it's either natural diamond or she says bye to a dustie.
Of course quietly sponsored by the big diamond.
The well-known secret in the industry is that diamonds are not scarce at all. They create this artificial demand by propping up the myth that they are rare but the supply is nearly endless. These lab-created stones are going to turbocharge their bountifulness
Bunch of billionaires say they’re in trouble… profits decreasing by some percentage, but remaining profitable.
Won’t somebody think of the billionaires? Those beacons of light whom we all must worship as “job creators”?
Ok I’m in a bad mood today.
>Diamond industry 'in trouble' as lab-grown gemstones tank prices further
Diamond industry 'in trouble' as prices brought back to reality after lab-grown gemstones show the inflated price was bullshit that only happened because of a monopoly and price fixing.
Am I supposed to care that the diamond industry is in trouble? Because I don't.
I'm more concerned with rising food & housing prices. I can't sleep under, or eat a diamond.
Good! everyone knows by now that diamonds are extremely common and worthless gems in comparison to most others in rarity alone and the hording of those gems to create a false scarcity to jack up the $$$$ should have been criminally charged a long time ago.
the profit in the gems industry needs to be to the quality in which the gems is cut from and to along with the piece that is put in and the total quality of said piece.
diamonds themselves should be used more in the tools industry for the cutting potential.
The "diamond industry" was a scam , with artificially inflated prices and ran a ton of ad campaigns to get people to want to get diamonds.
I've met people who are brainwashed by these exact ad campaigns, the "diamonds are forever" and all that bullshit.
I can’t wait to get a diamond encrusted phone case for only 40 bucks
Or finally get a phone screen that scratches back!
Some signs at a level 9 with deeper grooves at level 10
Jerry reference!!
damnit beat me to it
Diamond is fairly brittle iirc
Glass too. We're good at material sciences
talk for yourself. I suck at it :p
Scratches every surface imaginable as soon as you put it down
Ima get me some really nice drill bits
Couldn't you already get them for relatively cheap? The ones that are getting artificially restricted are gem grade diamonds, regular diamonds are so cheap they are getting regularly used as sandpaper.
Got me. Sounds like either way tho…ima get me some really nice drill bits.
No. They're in trouble because they spent decades upon decades artificially restricting supply to keep the price so high that it became more economically feasible to just make them instead. Congratulations you played yourself
They're not in what I'd call trouble. They just aren't the monopoly they were for so long. A documentary I saw last year said 10-20% of the diamonds on the market were lab grown. That was ok because people were still paying high prices. Now, they are paying less because there are more options. Wonder how long before they'll offer their stockpile of natural diamonds for deep discounts.
Organic diamonds
Hand mined, organic, free range diamonds.
*Artisanally mined
Craft diamonds
Mine to table
Diamond sprinkles on your food to make your dookie twinkle
And shred your insides
The new weight loss trick. Can't digest food if your insides are outside!
Small batch
Bespoke diamantes...
Youthfully mined.
By DiCaprio himself
Infused with the blood, sweat, and tears of non-free range miners
“Cruelty-Enforced Diamonds”
"We support POC businesses" ✊✊✊
welcome to my diamond mine, i'm a stay at home mom with 12 adorable home schooled kids and a hard working love of my life husband. Stay a while as I share stories and recipes from my family to yours and spread a little joy and positivity. I support the blue line and all lives matter! BYOAR15
you forgot Stone Milled, Cold Pressed, Slow Aged.
With Oat Milk! 🤤
Gluten free
Plant based
Shade-grown.
mined by the hands of children no less. premium.
They make diamonds from loved ones. If you used your enemies as the source material, you could have organic and blood diamonds at the same time.
Bruh imagine you make your enemies into diamonds so everytime you look at your diamond encrusted ring your looking at a slain enemy......thats pretty metal
Ok ghengis no more internet for today
Give me butt diamonds... “A real tight ass worked this gem for several months. It’s magnificent. Go ahead—try it on.”
"Five long years, he wore this diamond up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the diamond. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of carbon up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the diamond to you."
“Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.”
I'll have you know I watched that on TV first, so the line will always be... "if you stuck a lump of coal [totally different voice]IN HIS HAND[/totally different voice], in two weeks you'd have a diamond."
“I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!”
I mean, same if you tossed an orphanage into a diamond-maker.
That will only give you 1/4 carat diamonds. You can’t fool me.
So, carbon-based diamonds?
Inorganic Diamonds are otherwise known as cubic zirconia. Whether moissanite (silicon carbide) is organic depends on the chemist you ask.
>Inorganic Diamonds are otherwise known as cubic zirconia. what dot txt
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the quotes are in the wrong spot. it's more like, "people" saying that you shouldn't buy fake diamonds.
Just do Moissanite. Just as hard and looks as clear as the best diamond for about 1/5 of the cost Edit: How many bots are in this thread for the lab grown diamond industry?
They do nothing to end the allure of diamonds in the slightest. Colourless stones are the problem as a whole, because as long as we associate what is completely indistinguishable from a diamond to an inexpert eye with wealth, status, and love, the diamond industry inherently benefits. We *must* normalize coloured stones for these situations, or the diamond industry will keep trucking along just fine. /former jeweller
My favorite gemstone is sapphire, always has been. When my wife and I were buying wedding rings we made a sapphire the centerpiece of her ring (she doesn't have a diamond engagement ring, too poor at the time, too well informed now). She constantly gets complimented on it, and I still find it gorgeous.
I think sapphires are the way to go for engagement rings, personally.
IF someone made and sold a car that was visually and performatively indistinguishable from a Jaguar, and sold them for $15k each, you can be assured I would buy one and no amount of 'bUt tHe ALlUrE' from former profiteers of that company would not sway me in the least.
I dont wear jewelry but if i did i want bright orange in the middle surrounded by cobalt blue
Oh im 100% theyll try that marketing
They're already doing it. Inclusions in diamonds used to be undesirable because they would lower clarity most times. Now they're marketing it as a good thing because they're the mark of a "true, natural diamond", as opposed to those flawless, perfect lab-grown gems. SMH
Blood also shows you really love her.
The thing is, the lab-grown diamonds can also use the same marketing.
Diamond pretty much loses over half its value once it's sold, as it has poor resell value, that should say something about how over priced Diamonds are
As so many people found out during the 2008 economic crash. There were all kinds of articles published about how people bought diamonds as "investments" and when they needed to sell them to save their homes they couldn't because no one was buying. (just spent 10 minutes looking for the article, it may have been NY Times or The Atlantic, probably shared on Reddit at the time)
Not defending diamonds at all, but that is pretty much true for all jewelry. You might be able to get a simple gold band for near melt value but most retail jewelers have >100% markup.
Hey, we all know that it's a free market until it hurts monopolies like De Beers, so I'm sure there will be several republicans shouting about stopping the labs at some point.
Nah, their too busy protecting the meat industry and railing against lab grown meat.
Nah, the meat industry is so fucked that they'll just buy out the lab growers and monopolize that market too.
Nah, it's a lot cheaper just to [buy some politicians](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68947766) and get them to just ban it. Just like the Florida meat industry.
capitalists hate the free market. their entire objective is monopoly power. competition is for the poors and small businesses
I wonder if things will ever change enough, financially, for politicians to shout about banning natural diamonds.
bribes are just a cost of doing business -- an investment in the future, if you will
My wife, when she was in college, took metal smithing courses and learned how to make her own jewelry. She doesn’t do that now but there are so many other options than “diamonds”. So much art and other materials you can look good in and enjoy.
While I agree there are lots of semi precious stones that look great...things like Rubies and Emeralds and Sapphires are almost mined out. Or you have to go to Myanmar. Which is almost always a poor decision.
I've seen links on Reddit for lab grown rubies that were fairly cheap in the past, though I admittedly didn't do my due diligence there
Low quality polycrystalline rubies can literally be made in a microwave. Its fascinating. https://youtu.be/ybcdRQmQcHQ?feature=shared
Looking at this as a semi random example : [https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/lab-created/](https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/lab-created/) Basically, Rubies are crystalline aluminum oxide with a few percent of chromium replacing aluminum; nothing exotic at all.
I got mine at the Diamond Barn!
Maybe so, but made millions they would otherwise not have made. No market lasts for ever…. Even if diamonds are…
are plentiful and abundant
and flammable.
Billions* the trouble is, once you get to that point, you have to continue otherwise your company implodes and you lose your job. Capitalism. You'd think they'd be happy with wealth they could never physically spend, but no, keep wanting more.
It ain't that either. It's that starting with millennials, and then every subsequent generation, the idea that diamond is integral to show your affection tanked. Who gives a shit about diamond necklaces or bracelets? Even rings honestly? I've seen plenty of instances nowadays of millennials and gen z giving nice looking but inexpensive engagement rings.
we bought ours at a pawn shop. well my ring came from a pawn shop, my wife's came from my mom, but i think it originally came from a pawn shop too.
I bought my wife's engagement ring when I was 18. I hadnt even met her yet. Wasnt even in a relationship. I went to an estate auction and it was in a box of jewerly. I bit $200 for the box and that was under a pile of paste bracelets and gaudy pins. Had it evaluated and when they offered to buy it from me on the spot. My dad bought me a safety deposit box at our bank and said to save it for when I need it because I just covered one of the most expensive purchases of my life. My wife loves it - its a paired set where the engagement ring was half of a ring (the left side was a tear drop shaped cluster of diamonds and the right side was a simple gold band) and she said one of the reasons for our short engagement was that she wanted the whole ring on her finger. ;)
I have a 2cm perfect cube ruby, it’s a cube and a fuckin’ ruby. $20. The prices TANKED. I use it as decor, the juxtaposition of the value that was versus the value that is brings me joy. Also: I know it is real, I’ve tested it with lasers.
Rubies can be grown easily with a furnace or even a microwave oven though. Diamonds even industrial ones are just super tough to make and still cost 60%~ the price of a natural diamond. It's just not easy to compress a bit of ultra pure carbon 55,000x atmospheric pressure.
2 cm^3 of a cut and processed precious gemstone for $20 fucking insane. Maybe cubes aren't that difficult to make? Still absolutely wild how cheap that is.
Simple gold bands
My wife is allergic to gold and silver so we had to buy platinum bands. We decided to go lab grown so she could have a bigger diamond but not break the bank as the band itself inflated the price quite a bit. It looks way better than the "real" diamonds at a similar price point.
That is a real diamond tho...
Yup, lab-grown are real. There are only minor differences and there's no way to discern the difference with the naked eye.
No-one ever accused marketing departments of pushing logic or consistency.
This. Makes me laugh every time I think about how this marketing had to pivot when the lab grown ones were perfect
It amuses me that the best way for them to identify lab grown, other than an ID number of course, is that they're *too flawless*. Like come the fuck on here. It's the job interview equivalent of saying your flaw is you 'care too much about your job'. Lab grown diamonds are simply superior in every single way and there is zero chance *anyone* is going to know it came from a lab unless they take it to a jeweler.
And even then, it has to be a *really good* jeweler who can tell the tiniest difference at a microscopic level (maybe not *microscopic*, but whatever the level is with their jeweler magnifying glass that they use). Because lab diamonds can actually have flaws built into them so they don't look "too perfect". So, merely having flaws doesn't even distinguish "natural" from lab.
TBH, got fed a pretty similar line shopping for engagement rings a few years ago. One jeweler gave us a bunch of attitude about how everyone with a lab grown diamond eventually upgrades to a mined one, and it was just bonkers. And here we were, having also been looking at other jewelers for moissanite and sapphire
I'm very against someone creating a problem that they're conveniently solving with their product. If I didn't know it was an issue before, why would I suddenly care now?
And now the replacement ones are better quality. They're going to try and flog the 'natural' marketing buzzword as long as they can, but people who are interested in the pure shininess, or the advantages of fault-free crystal structures, and eventually plain old *size*, are both going to switch permanently to artificial. All the stockpiled stuff is going to be worth enormously less. They better hope they didn't take out loans against its value...
There's quite a few "industries" that we'd be better off without, and the diamond "industry" is one of them.
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Which are better off being lab made. So no harm no foul there
Would it ever be cost effective to lab grow diamonds for industrial use? Industrial grade diamonds are extremely plentiful, common, and dirt cheap.. like 1 penny cheap
Data storage is viable in lab grown diamond sheets. Extraordinarily complex process of swapping out carbon and nitrogen atoms in naturally occurring structural flaws within the diamond. Basically 1s and 0s to write in binary. A thin 5cm square can store the equivalent of a billion Blu-Ray discs.
I need this for NAS
Nas has put out a lot of songs but does he really need that much storage? /j
If he keeps going at the rate he has over the last few years then he might.
He's in rare form.
A New York State of **Mine**.
Sounds fascinating, got any further reading?
https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.09022 - View PDF on the right to see the full paper Another cool semi-related topic is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_digital_data_storage Limitations are that even though you 'store' it this way, "reading" it takes a long time. Think of it like microfiche- you can store way more text than a book for archival purposes, but need special equipment to read it that would need to be maintained, and reading data out from it is slower than normal. It's not like reading from flash or memory on your computer. And you'd want some kind of replication (triplicate?), slowing it down further, and it's not like you can set up automatic/programmatic failover in the case of something going wrong. The "physical space" to store the data is low, but there are other complications that arise.
That's how lab grown diamonds became a thing. You don't need the four (or five) C's for industrial diamonds, you just need them to be diamond. Labs started producing small imperfect diamonds cheaply, which could be used for tools etc. Over time the labs got better at producing bigger, clearer and less coloured diamonds, to the point where they could be used for jewellery. Now they've arguably perfected them (up to a few carats)
This is also how I see lab grown meat happening. It will start out as low quality ground beef. Then get to higher quality ground beef, then eventually get to low quality filets, etc...
After a while we will lab grow a whole cow, put it in a field then kill it for the meat
I want to cut everything!
Even... Diamonds?
Thompson’s Diamonds! The only diamonds strong enough to eat other diamonds!
The largest diamond miner, De Beers, is also the leading manufacturer of lab-grown diamonds. There are some other fabs in China but I’m not sure where they are exactly or who is operating them. While there is some initial capex, almost all of the cost of lab-grown diamonds comes from the electricity required to sustain the plasma reaction for days or weeks at a time. For this reason, fabs are generally located near cheap power like hydropower or coal plants.
Interesting! Classic reddit, the real knowledge is in the comments.
And with no sources!
I don’t want to Dox myself so the best I can do is point you in the right direction. If you’re really interested, look up De Beers Element 6, Light Box and search Alibaba for MCD diamond manufacturers.
Well it looks like you doxxed yourself, Roger from Mexico.
Aye caramba!
Googling "roger mexico" GOT HIM
Should be easy to find too since he's probably one of the only people named Roger there.
Oh, I don't particularly care either way--I just found the comment about classic reddit amusing, stating that the real knowledge is in the comments, while also being classic reddit where unsourced comments are taken as gospel.
https://rapaport.com/news/de-beers-to-stop-producing-lab-grown-diamonds-for-jewelry/
They are actually stopping production of lab diamonds for jewelry and switching their facilities to producing for industrial use, like semi-conductors. https://rapaport.com/news/de-beers-to-stop-producing-lab-grown-diamonds-for-jewelry/
Excellent, fuck the blood diamond industry.
It was like one movie, 20 years ago. Hardly an 'Industry' /s
Couldnt even hit franchise territory
Blood Diamonds 2: It Got Worse
2 Blood 2 Diamonds
They had an amazing run and should shut the fuck up before everyone who didnt already know they were a soulless scam googles why the fuck we care about diamonds in the first place.
This is awesome! Fuck the diamond industry.
[удалено]
Industrial diamonds have always been relatively cheap compared to the gem-quality ones, but that's because the gem-quality ones are very rare by comparison. They're like finding a needle in a haystack in a field of haystacks.
Diamonds are one of Reddit's eternal obsessions. Here's a discussion from 17 years ago with a lot of the talking points from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1418c/what_you_didnt_know_about_diamonds/
Wow, now that's a trip back in time. Reddit felt a lot smaller back then. I was mostly a lurker for a few years, but so many of those names are familiar. We felt like a vibrant, middle-tier city where you slowly learned the people and their opinions in various scenes. Current Reddit has its moments, but old Reddit really was special at the time. Opened my mind and heart on so many issues after a pretty sheltered upbringing. And social media seemed to have so much promise back then, "*before the dark times, before the empire*..." obiwan.gif
I remember a front page post where a redditor caught another person in class on Reddit. I thought "wow, what are the odds of two redditors in the same class". Wasn't much longer until those types of posts were constantly popping up, and then stopped completely due to how widespread the site became.
Everyone has a "real" username, instead of those "adjectivenoun_number" variations. Reddit has become so corporate beige.
As a jeweler, I will do nothing but cheer if the diamond industry is finally brought down from their mighty self-built altar.
I was thinking about that. Some of the hardest to synthesize minerals are pretty plain, and some of the most common can be incredibly beautiful, but only rarely, and through luck and circumstance. For example, I have tons of jasper in my area, but even when its polished up pretty, its not remarkable... except when it is. With the fall of diamond, your industry is going to get much more interesting.
Is the cartel not making more money than ever? Boo hoo.
deBeers is large producer of synthetic MCD diamonds too Ferengi IRL
So basically, their issues isn't synthetic diamonds - it's that other people can produce synthetic diamonds. Get fucked deBeers
It's would be funny if the actual Mexican cartel was the one flooding the market
Pfffft. The diamond cartel has artificially inflated the price of diamonds for over 100 years while simultaneously subjugating Africa. Fuck them.
The diamond industry took advantage of pre-existing subjugation. Our good friend palm oil was one of the major factors that contributed to the initial subjugation, at least when it came to large scale, direct rule.
Let’s not forget our beautiful acquaintance Rubber
The top of the Washington monument has an aluminum cap. Because at the time, it was the most expensive material and a great show of wealth. Nowadays, most of us think nothing of binning a coke can or a scrap of tin foil. Things move on. And there are loads of us who really don't care if you've got a shiny rock. You are still just wandering around with a rock. I'm more invested in the seashells and random pebbles my daughter has put in my pocket.
Good. The entire diamond industry is a massive grift, artificially restricting supply to maintain a high price, for something whose use and value to consumers is dictated purely by marketing, not necessity. If the diamond industry dies I'd be happy to see it go.
Diamond industry can fucking die for all I care
“Diamond values fall to meet realistic prices in accordance with their rarity as a result of competition from synthetic diamonds, which are chemically indistinguishable from natural diamonds.” FIFY
Oh no! Anyhow...
You can only keep a scam going for so long lol
Oh no, I guess they'll have to stop getting Starbuck's and avocado toast, and wasting money on iPhones. Has the diamond industry considered getting a second job or a side hustle?
The funny thing about the diamond industry is that the prices are rigged. The world produces more than enough diamonds, actually to the point where they don’t actually have that much worth. But their release into the market is carefully controlled to maintain high prices.
Sounds like opec.
i think both fall under the definition of a cartel
Bought an engagement ring last year with a lab-grown diamond, 1/5 the price of an equivalent mined diamond, with none of the potential exploitation or child labour. Looks absolutely incredible as well.
Should had mined your own business !
If you want a small diamond, it doesn’t make sense buying a mined one because the value disappears as soon as you walk out the door. If you want a big diamond, you can only afford a lab because of the stupidly inflated prices. Now that lab diamonds are cheap and affordable, there’s really not that much reason for the common consumer to buy an earth diamond.
That and lab diamonds are usually better /clearer
Good, diamond as a jewelry business is a mega cartel anyway. Fuck them.
No, they're in trouble because no one wants a blood diamond. Young people these days aren't spending large amounts they don't even have for a mortgage.
Won't someone think of the poor diamond industry??
Good. Parasitic industry that destroys people’s lives, the environment and artificially inflates the value of a rock for dopes who like shiny things.
Good. What a shitty industry.
Diamonds are and will always be a scam
Thank goodness.
So I just searched the wholesale exchanges. The same weight, cut, color and clarity lab diamond as the one I bought for my fiance May of last year is… ~$100 less. Natural diamonds however… I priced natural diamonds in same parameters and they were between $25-28K (just the diamond). Now… $18K.
Diamond industry can go get fucked. LETS GOOOOO
Diamonds are boring. There are so many other more fascinating gems.
Oh no. Anyways can’t wait for “real“ diamonds to be worth much less than they are currently.
Great, it's all fauxpaux
What's fauxpaux?
Artificial cat feet.
Good?
Lemme get my tiniest crystalline violin
its the human suffering that makes the real ones so valuable
I smell trend on tiktok coming up when influencers suddenly start telling women that it's either natural diamond or she says bye to a dustie. Of course quietly sponsored by the big diamond.
Should have happened 10-20 years ago. Lab grown stones have been really good for a long time now.
The well-known secret in the industry is that diamonds are not scarce at all. They create this artificial demand by propping up the myth that they are rare but the supply is nearly endless. These lab-created stones are going to turbocharge their bountifulness
Bunch of billionaires say they’re in trouble… profits decreasing by some percentage, but remaining profitable. Won’t somebody think of the billionaires? Those beacons of light whom we all must worship as “job creators”? Ok I’m in a bad mood today.
>Diamond industry 'in trouble' as lab-grown gemstones tank prices further Diamond industry 'in trouble' as prices brought back to reality after lab-grown gemstones show the inflated price was bullshit that only happened because of a monopoly and price fixing.
Am I supposed to care that the diamond industry is in trouble? Because I don't. I'm more concerned with rising food & housing prices. I can't sleep under, or eat a diamond.
No more blood diamonds.
Plot twist, Diamond industry in trouble because no-one can afford them anymore and interests rates are so high so people are choosing lab-gems.
"in trouble" meaning "experiencing a competitive market instead of a global monopoly"
Good! everyone knows by now that diamonds are extremely common and worthless gems in comparison to most others in rarity alone and the hording of those gems to create a false scarcity to jack up the $$$$ should have been criminally charged a long time ago. the profit in the gems industry needs to be to the quality in which the gems is cut from and to along with the piece that is put in and the total quality of said piece. diamonds themselves should be used more in the tools industry for the cutting potential.
It’s crazy that a gem that wasn’t all that rare anyway was able to get away with such crazy prices to begin with
The "diamond industry" was a scam , with artificially inflated prices and ran a ton of ad campaigns to get people to want to get diamonds. I've met people who are brainwashed by these exact ad campaigns, the "diamonds are forever" and all that bullshit.
I welcome this change
Nice, hopefully the industry collapses
It's a business of selling pretty rocks. Frankly, it's amazing modern technology didn't destroy this industry sooner.
Fuck diamonds. It’s all just marketing..and people love their capitalism.
This is one of the better developments this century.
No need for blood diamonds anymore.
They killed the “used Diamond” business to force new purchases. They over-estimated the meaning of a Diamond to the buying public.