New “secret weapon” for investments and savings
Can you imagine an elephant hiding behind the bush? Something so big and obviously powerful but surprisingly unseen by people for years. Thousands of villagers working their crops manually with shovels and hoes and carrying large timber logs. At some moment they notice the animal and decide to employ it for their daily duties, changing nearly everything about the way their agriculture and forestry operates.
This is a very shady metaphor to describe what D1 Coin is and what it can become for investors within several months. Diamond industry is a hidden elephant of the savings and money management market: on personal level each of us understands that “diamonds are every girl’s best friends” and that inheriting “your grandma’s diamonds” by definition means obtaining something valuable.
However, diamond were never institutionalized, i.e. properly employed by the financial industry. For decades this market remained a market of private deals tightly controlled by a small group of professional producers, diamond cutters, polishers and retailers. One could dare forming a diamond basket of his/her own yet there was no generally available tradable industry index. Nothing like “diamond Dow Jones” or anything alike.
Market: huge and growing
Meanwhile, the diamond market is huge by any standards: its current estimated value is close to $1 trillion. This is big even compared to the most sophisticated and technologically instrumented market in the world, equity, which has its market capitalization at around $70 trillion globally.
And this is the market that is about to explode. In the 60s Japanese were buying any diamonds; in the 70s they acquired the Western practice of buying engagement rings with diamonds and within a decade Japan had become the second biggest diamond market in the world after the US. What is currently happening in China and India is history repeating itself, but on a scale that is ten times larger. According to Bain & Co, within the next decade a supply gap will emerge that is larger than today’s total global production of diamonds.
Coming back to our explanatory elephant, imagine that not only you become and owner of one of a kind but your elephant will be an enhanced breed ten times faster than ordinary and representing a combined knowledge and skills of a thousand. Intriguing, right? Well, with D1 this is exactly the case. D1 is using modern technology to make ownership of diamonds easier, faster, and a lot more fun. And it opens the world of diamonds not only to those with $10,000 or more to spare, but also to those with $10.
The public gave a very warm welcome to cryptocurrencies with speculative demand pushing total valuation of the sector to as much as $600 billion at its 2017-2018 peak. However important is the network trust and reliability of blockchain, frankly speaking, those price levels and valuations were never supporter by any property. D1 Coin combines convenience of digital currencies with stability of traditional assets. Effectively, D1 Coin is a diamond-backed cryptocurrency, with each D1 Coin pegged to the value of a fraction of an authentic, natural diamond. Diamonds are an ideal asset backing for a token since they are rare, taking over a billion years to develop, have several millennia of history as a recognized store of value, and are small and therefore easily stored and transported.
Transparent scheme based on trusted elements
The general scheme of thing is pretty straightforward: D1 Diamonds will be sourced from an authorized supplier. Each diamond must have an accompanying Gemological Institute of America (“GIA”) certification. The initial supply will be procured by Diamundi Pte Ltd, an experienced industry player residing in Singapore. This supply is obtained from world leading diamond miners, such as Alrosa, and top diamond polishers, such as KGK Group and Kristall Smolensk.
D1 Diamonds will be stored in secured and insured vaults in Singapore, Switzerland, and selected global locations with established logistics and storage specialists such as Malca-Amit and Brink’s, and will be overseen by the project’s venture, D1 Mint.
Users may at any point in time convert their D1 Coins into diamonds at a predetermined ratio calculated by an automated AI enforced appraisal tool called D1 Matrix, by selecting specific diamonds on the D1 website and arranging for delivery or collection (we discussed the beauty of it in details already).
Multi-purpose tool backed by deep knowledge and good math
Users who own D1 Coins may use them for a variety of purposes: payments, investing and trading. Those of you familiar with a concept of securitization will find it elegant that the token will represent a digital wrapping for a valuable asset and, simultaneously, will be as liquid and easy to operate or transfer, as your position of forex markets desk.
There are hundreds of nuances in this process. Each diamond is unique in its colour, transparency, size and form; these four parameters form a so called “4C” of a diamond: carat, colour, clarity and cut. Thousands of individual stones differ in value, and in order to streamline the valuation process, D1 Matrix proprietary pricing algorithm was created. It is based on a neuron network analysing diamond prices from established market sources, primarily Rapaport. The relationship between the 4Cs plus 7 more characteristics of a diamond and its price is analysed, determining statistically the appropriate quantity in D1 Coins for each diamond, i.e. D1 Coin intrinsic value for the whole array of stones in the vaults, and price of each of the diamond in D1 Coins.
D1 Coin is built on the Ethereum blockchain technology with transactions validated using the Proof of Work algorithm, in which miners are rewarded with coins and/or transaction fees. Understanding the security risks of blockchain technology, the D1 Mint complements the in-house team of software engineers with multiple third-party cybersecurity firms to seek to maintain a spotless track record on security. This will prevent thefts and hacking into the system, a sad but common problem for the blockchain sector and crypto exchanges.
Much more to come!
Now, this all looks revolutionary enough already but the D1 Team has a long list of future initiatives and ideas. Amongst the new developments will be:
- a high security coin vault for D1 Coins and other cryptocurrencies, providing individual offline servers for coins owners located geographically remote secured locations;
- D1 Coin investment programs to enable saving for life events by investment in the diamonds as an asset class;
- diamond-specific D1 Coins that represent ownership in individual single high value diamonds;
- Diamond Hearts, a diamond gifting program which enable D1 Coin owners to anonymously reward people and charities of their choice;
- closed market currency for Casinos/Junket Operations, gaming and online betting;
- gift coupons for the luxury retail market;
- and many more.
Dispelling some myths
Some investors have doubts about investing in diamonds since some of the stones are fueling armed conflicts. We in D1 procure diamonds exclusively from Alrosa, the largest diamond company in the World, and its downstream partners. Alrosa doesn’t have operations in conflict areas, and the diamonds in our vaults are verified by GIA
Another important fear to address is actual 100% backing behind the coin. Crypto investors have witnessed big stablecoins printed in billions of US dollars, yet unable to pass an audit of their assets at least once. We in D1 coin will be presenting the public with a quarterly report from one of top-10 audit firms.
Thank you all for joining us today! We barely were able to scratch the surface with our brief overview, so be prepared for an amazing adventure in your research. If you enjoyed the article, don’t forget to leave a clap!
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For more information and exciting updates, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We will also be releasing more great articles on Medium and through our email newsletter found at https://d1coin.io/.
About the D1 project
D1 aims to be one of the top asset-backed crypto tokens accessible by everyone, backed by the valuable and rare investment-grade natural polished diamonds.
Investors from the ultra-rich to the retirement-minded can purchase and trade these coins with the peace of mind knowing that each holds the value of 1/1,000th of a carat of hand selected quality polished diamonds.
