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Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

tldr: De Beers is going to sell synthetic diamonds, after having vowed they wouldn't. (The already did but limited the synthetic ones to industrial applications.) Price will be ~1/10th that of naturals.

My reaction: "Oh, come on, this is the most insidious monopolist on the planet. What's the catch?"

I think this is it:

>The new synthetic diamonds will come in pink, blue and white, and the stones will contain a tiny Lightbox logo. De Beers said the logo won't be visible to the naked eye, but it will make the stones easily identifiable as lab-grown.

Sounds like a plan to ensure that synthetic diamonds are quickly distinguishable from natural ones and the latter still command a premium. (They had long been seeking a way to ensure distinguishability after lab-growers kept frustrating such efforts.)

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Unless if Lightbox can make their diamonds significantly cheaper than their competitors, I don't see why anyone would choose to buy a diamond with a logo on it.

De Beers has a way of monopolizing markets, so it may be difficult to find a provider of an unstamped synthetic.

No, it won't: https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN/cvd-diamond.html

“Monopoly” doesn’t mean there are literally no alternatives.

However De Beers aren't the only ones who know how to make them, and given their apparent distaste for them they probably don't hold the patent.

Unless they intend to buy every company that starts making them or pay the patent holders a fortune, I don't see how they can effectively monopolise this like they can real diamonds.

"De Beers said the logo won't be visible to the naked eye"

I think what they is saying is that a jeweller could get synthetic diamonds from another source for the same or less than Lightbox's marked diamonds and on-sell them as real. Only the original jeweller would know they aren't real, especially if the manufacturer can introduce random impurities.

What do you mean by "aren't real". In what way is a manufactured diamonds not real?

My understanding is that they are in every respect indistinguishable except for perhaps being too perfect under magnification.

In the same way that a fake Picasso isn't real because Picasso never made it, a lab grown diamond isn't "real" because the earth didn't make it.

What makes a Picasso painting a Picasso is that it was made by him. What makes a diamond a diamond is its molecular structure.

Following this logic sea salt isn't "real" salt like regular table salt (which is mined), since it wasn't mined from the earth, but created from sea water.

The catch is that they lost this war.

Might as well not fall into the innovators trap and position for market share in this new market.

Laser engraving on diamonds is old standard tech.

This is a marketing play, not a technology play.

Dont they need DRM to prevent the copying of those logos?

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