In July of last year, Icecap announced the launch of their trading marketplace for diamond investors. The platform uses the Ethereum blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to give GIA-graded diamonds their own virtual token.
Tokens represent a specific diamond that is housed in a vault protected within the Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre (DMCC). The tokens serve as a tradeable asset in the cryptocurrency industry.
Luxury diamonds as NFTs
On Friday, the company released a new collection of NFT diamond collectibles from their new offices in Dubai. The tokenized “Icecap Collectibles” not only include loose stones but also completed jewelry pieces.
The loose diamonds range from exotic colored stones in red, yellow, and green, to ultra-high-end gems with prices north of $1 million.
The diamond tokens, once purchased, are available to be traded on OpenSea.io. As with any high-end product, the diamonds may be held as an investment or liquidated for sale. A third option is to redeem your NFT token so you can show off your bling in person.
If a buyer does take delivery of the physical diamond, it can later be sent back and re-tokenized as needed.
Revolutionizing diamond collecting
CEO of Icecap, Jaques Voorhees, explains that each diamond “has all the pieces of authenticity and grading attached to it. That goes in a vault and the NFT representing ownership is free to safely go out in the wild and be traded back-and-forth without any question whatsoever of the diamond being damaged or being switched or played with. That’s where the value comes from that you’re able to take the fragile thing, not that diamonds are fragile, but they’re problematic in terms of the things that can happen to them out there in the wild”
The goal of the project is to meet collector demand for high-end diamonds in a new way. Something Jacques Voorhees is no stranger to. Voorhees was responsible for introducing the online trading of diamonds back in the 1980s. A move that revolutionized the industry forever.
The Icecap project was the brainchild of himself and his son, Erik Voorhees. Erik is a bitcoin advocate and founder of ShapeShift, a platform for trading digital assets.
