Diamonds were the original bitcoin. Knew a bit about the diamond business from g... | Hacker News

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		motohagiography on May 30, 2018 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds Diamonds were the original bitcoin. Knew a bit about the diamond business from growing up. - Required huge proof of work. - Few practical use cases. - Store of value. - Highly portable. - Price a function of liquidity. - Clustered around use cases like capital flight, high denomination cash, opacity, and black market transactions, asset protection/hiding. I would argue blockchain has done more harm to the diamond market than synthetic diamonds have. Between the two, it's been a perfect storm.

gowld on May 30, 2018 [–]

Diamonds are a very poor store of value, as they depreciate 50% or more after initial purchase.

Portability / Launderability, perhaps, but that's a bit different from "store"

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