Attempts to make some kind of centralized website to trade gem materials, and not just diamonds, but also colour gemstones which is actually a much bigger business failed many times. (First was Gemkey.com, about 10 years ago and 75 million dollars down the drain.)

These days, there are a lot of private and semi-private B2B sites where you can trade diamonds (i.e Polygon, Canada Diamonds, etc).
And “no real fixed price for polished diamonds” is a false statement. There is and it’s called “The Rapport report”. Everyone uses it as a reference point. Basically, diamonds is the only gemstone commodity which has more or less fixed and transparent pricing, thanks to
De Beers Consolidated Mines and industry “4c” grading standards.

The biggest diamond consumers are jewellers and they don’t buy diamonds, they get in on memo, which is not possible at DODAQ, according to their “cash market” statement. Which makes me think, that the biggest challenge for the DODAQ, would be convincing large jewellery manufactures that they can have a good deal on diamond contracts in credit terms and price. I would also think, that if the “polished diamonds are locked in a vault facility together with their certification documents” which would mean that diamonds must be in Belgium, which makes someone wonder how it will work for sellers from India, Russia and Israel.

+1 for coining a new term.

Diamonds can be synthesized, Gold cannot. http://www.post...6/754167-28.stm

In the book listed above, Harry Oppenheimer (owner of De Beers) admits that they pay off international governments each year, so as to keep a virtual monopoly on the Diamond market.

Why is it based in Belgium? Does this have something to do with de Beers?

Also, it doesn’t look like they distinguish between different sources of diamonds – there are a lot of people who want to avoid conflict diamonds.

Maybe they can get DeBeers involved?

http://www.thea.../198202/diamond

jk, actually right now diamonds are priced per the rappaport report or some bs like that.

the only problem is that a lot of jewelers base the pricing that they can acquire a diamond for a customer off that report and the cost is known when the customer is there. If there is an auction, the price is up in the air for two days.

Either the people behind this idea don’t really understand how diamonds are graded and traded in the real world, or they are hoping you don’t really understand how diamonds are graded and traded in the real world.

I’m betting the latter.

As a financial instrument, why not trade diamonds like any other commodity? But, if you are choosing just ONE diamond for your fiancee, I highly recommend seeing a stone in person. Any gemologist will tell you that no two stones are ever the same, and that each has its own “fingerprint” and will handle light refraction differently. There are 57 angles to a diamond, and each stone is cut slightly differently, according to the natural growth of its crystals.

Two stones of the same 4 C’s can produce very different effects of light and sparkle. This is a subtlety that is often times lost when people compare diamonds, site unseen, and assume the 4 C’s tell the whole story. But when you put the two stones next to each other, you might be surprised at how obvious of a difference there could be.

It’s very helpful to categorize diamonds with the 4 C’s, but as you can imagine, a 10 minute crash course in the 4 C’s can’t replace a lifetime of experience in diamonds. It’s the same in any industry, where reading a wikipedia article on something doesn’t make you a real expert. You’ll have solid footing, though, and that’s a good start.

If you are really interested in knowing more about DODAQ, visit their Support and Knowledge Base section. DODAQ has provided us with adequate information about its online certified diamond exchange there; feel free to dig through their Support and Know…

“All diamonds published on the DODAQ platform have first been graded by a recognised gemological grading laboratory and are received with their original certificates into the DODAQ vault.”