] Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups ] are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel. ] ] Next up: the computing industry. ] ] By Joshua Davis ] ] Aron Weingarten brings the yellow diamond up to the ] stainless steel jeweler's loupe he holds against his eye. ] We are in Antwerp, Belgium, in Weingarten's marbled and ] gilded living room on the edge of the city's gem ] district, the center of the diamond universe. Nearly 80 ] percent of the world's rough and polished diamonds move ] through the hands of Belgian gem traders like Weingarten, ] a dealer who wears the thick beard and black suit of the ] Hasidim. ] ] "This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in ] thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color ] are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 ] thousand dollars." ] ] "I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell ] him. ] ] He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for ] the first time. I place the other two stones on the ] table. They are all the same color and size. To find ] three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a ] coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails. ] ] "These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much ] hope. ] ] "No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine ] in Florida for less than a hundred dollars." Wired 11.09: The New Diamond Age |