Sotheby’s, the 277-year-old British auction house, has sold a super rare black diamond with potential outer space origins dubbed “The Enigma” for $4.5 million in cryptocurrency. The 555-carat diamond is estimated to be 1 billion years old.
The diamond was declared the largest cut diamond in the world in the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records and was recently put on display in Dubai. Its origins aren’t completely certain, although most believe it’s the result of a meteoric collision or the remnant of an actual black diamond-bearing asteroid.
Sotheby’s likely accepted cryptocurrency payments for the black diamond after its success in earlier auctions where diamond collectors were stunned by an anonymous buyer who paid in cryptocurrency $12.3 million for a rare 101.38-carat diamond.
While Sotheby’s did not reveal the name of the buyer who paid $4.5 million for the super rare black diamond, Hex ($HEX) creator Richart Heart has claimed on social media he was the anonymous buyer.
In a tweet, Heart said the diamond will now be called the “HEX.com diamond” and promoted the acquisition as a success for the HEX community.
As CryptoGlobe reported Sotheby’s launched its own non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace called “Sotheby’s Metaverse” in October 2021. Sotheby’s Metaverse auctions NFTs, and accepts fiat currency in addition to Ethereum, Bitcoin and USDC. The auction house features NFTs created on Ethereum, as well as blockchains that are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
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