• The collapse of three prominent U.S. banks over the weekend led to market volatility and a lot of uncertainties as to where investors could stash their cash. Gold, the age-old safe haven, saw a boost in prices by about 5% since last week, and another asset that caught investors' attention was diamond – digitized diamond.
• Diamond Standard, a blockchain company that tokenized and standardized the diamond market to allow investors buy the previously hard-to-invest-in gemstone, said it saw a large spike in its marketplace after the banks started to shut down.
  • The company gathers physical diamonds together in a "coin" of standardized value that's stored in a vault. Each holds eight to nine diamonds. The diamond-embedded tokens are digitized through an Ethereum-based digital coin, bitcarbon, which is tradable on different exchanges.
  • Most of the buyers are existing customers, which include individuals, family offices and some smaller hedge funds, Kinney noted. During the chaotic weekend, Diamond Standard Spot Market, a peer-to-peer marketplace with a centralized limit order book, remained open 24/7 and handled a jump in volumes, the company said.

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• The firm's patented technology is designed to create a more transparent system allowing investors to track supply chains and subsequent ownership of the world’s ultimate bling more easily and efficiently. The company also standardized the value of diamonds by creating a uniform system through blockchain technology.
• Kinney said his company primarily banks with Signature Bank, though it has relationships with other banks. While the weekend’s events had been worrisome at the time, he says the company is still using Signature Bridge Bank – a new interim entity that will be temporarily run by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) – which has transferred all of the deposits and majority of the assets of former Signature Bank.

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