Sotheby’s Sells 555.55ct. Black Diamond for $4.3M

RAPAPORT… Sotheby’s has sold the Enigma, a fancy-black diamond weighing 555.55 carats, to cryptocurrency entrepreneur Richard Heart for GBP 3.2 million ($4.3 million).

The auction house offered the stone without reserve at a one-off sale last week. It is the largest faceted diamond of any kind to appear at auction and is believed to have originated in outer space, Sotheby’s noted.

While Sotheby’s did not publish the buyer’s name, it revealed on Twitter that the purchaser had used cryptocurrency for the sale. Heart also posted a tweet explaining he had purchased the Enigma and would rename it the Hex.com diamond as a nod to his Hex cryptocurrency platform. Hex has a “5555 day club” comprising people who hold 5,555-day Hex stakes — the longest possible stake in the electronic token.

The diamond, which also has 55 facets, is a “match made in heaven” for his platform, Heart added.

The Enigma is a carbonado diamond, meaning it is composed of many randomly placed diamond grains, which impede light refraction and increase absorption, making it appear black. Further analysis shows this particular stone has minute red crystals spread throughout, which could be red diamonds.

The rough stone was originally bought in the late 1990s and weighed approximately 800 carats. It took over three years to cut and polish. 

Image: The Enigma diamond. (Sotheby’s)