> Now the CEO decries what he calls a ‘huge con’ in lab-grown stones masquerading as precious.

Heh, takes one to know one.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers_antitrust_litigation for reference)

Good riddance.

I've gotten some lab grown diamonds and they're amazing. Very clear, almost too clear. If anyone is thinking of buying an engagement ring, discuss lab grown diamonds before hand because it could save you a bunch of money that you can use for a honeymoon, new furniture or more.

Lab-grown stones are great. When I buy diamonds it is for function, not proof of work. This means great dispersion, cut, clarity for jewelry or hardness for abrasive tools.

Given the vanity of jewelry and the dark past around diamonds of geopolitical bloodshed and slavery, I am very glad to see this happening.

I’m surprised to learn every time that people still care about diamonds. What a different world we live in, it seems like such a villain thing: to covet precious diamonds. Each their own obviously but interesting that people still have money to throw away given it loses most of its money the moment it leaves the store.

Diamonds were never a luxury. They were a trinket, a shiny, that used to take hoardes of slave labor to extract out of the Earth's crust. Now we can grow them in a lab, and can be higher quality than the "natural" ones, for cheaper, without the slave labor. Outside of their use as an abrasive, gem-quality diamonds have few if any uses outside of "ooooh, aaaah", much of which is a product of their perceived rarity and prestige perpetuated by De Beers' marketing.

De Beers should be having a moral and ethical reckoning, not a financial one. They should be happy they get to keep any of their ill-gotten wealth at all, let alone that the fucking gravy train is running out. Eat shit. Sorry asshole, the business is dead. Get over it.

Aww poor poor De Beers. I feel so bad for them!

De Beers and others can never fix its supply chain and can never permanently fix it

People care and incremental progress is not competitive

So lab grown and other options are fine, to the market