It is well-known that the world's biggest marketing scam is none other than diamonds.

The reserves of diamonds are not actually rare; there are 2.5 billion carats of known reserves worldwide.

So, why can diamonds sell for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per carat?

The answer lies in artificial manipulation.

If you want to sell something at a sky-high price, the first step is to control the supply.

As early as the 17th century, small amounts of diamonds were discovered in India and Brazil, where the cost of manual mining was high and daily production was low, making diamonds quite rare.

By 1870, miners in South Africa accidentally discovered a huge diamond mine, accounting for 90% of the known reserves at that time.

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South Africa was a British colony at the time, and British diamond merchants understood that if this diamond mine flooded the market, it would severely impact the market price of diamonds.

If diamonds were everywhere and as common as stones, would anyone still buy them?

Consequently, several of the largest British diamond merchants joined forces and established the De Beers company, purchasing the South African mine and laying off a significant number of miners to reduce production.

As a result, not only did diamond prices not fall, but they also rose due to supply not meeting demand.

British diamond merchants monopolized 90% of diamond resources, making them extremely profitable during those years.

De Beers was not satisfied with just this amount of money; it wanted everyone in the world to buy its diamonds.

How could the concept of diamonds become deeply ingrained and indispensable?

De Beers invented a brilliant marketing strategy, tying diamonds to love.

Everyone yearns for love, and if diamonds could be associated with love, wouldn't everyone want to buy diamonds?

Thus, De Beers planned the slogan "A Diamond is Forever."

The hardness of diamonds symbolizes the fidelity of love, their sparkle symbolizes the purity of love, and their value symbolizes the uniqueness of love.

To make young people cherish diamonds even more, they also introduced the marketing strategy of "one custom-made diamond in a lifetime," turning diamonds into a love belief for couples and even a necessity for marriage.

As the industry leader, De Beers, to further strengthen its monopoly, set various standards and raised industry barriers, excluding some competitors from the industry.

This included hiring top designers to create diamond shapes and employing high-end craftsmen to cut diamonds, making them more valuable for viewing and collecting.

Today, De Beers is one of the most well-known diamond companies in the world.

Established in 1888 and headquartered in London, it is one of the world's largest diamond producers and suppliers.

De Beers plays a significant role in the diamond industry, covering the entire value chain from mining to processing and sales.

The company owns some mines and mines diamonds itself, while also collaborating with other mining companies.

De Beers is famous for its unique business model, known as the "contract supply system."

Under this system, De Beers controls about 40% of the global diamond supply.

By signing long-term contracts with specific diamond processors and setting annual supply volumes, it maintains stable market prices.

Additionally, De Beers promotes certified high-quality diamonds through its brand Forevermark and has opened boutiques and retail channels worldwide.

However, De Beers, which deceived the world for over a century, never expected that its painstakingly built commercial empire would be toppled by people from Henan, China.

Diamonds, with their high hardness, are widely used in industry, such as glass cutters, wire drawing molds, and gyroscopes used in the aviation industry.

Due to the high cost of natural diamonds and their monopolization by the British, China needed cheap diamond materials for industrialization.

Therefore, as early as 30 years ago, the Chinese Academy of Sciences began researching synthetic diamonds.

Finally, in 2019, they broke through the key technologies of indirect heating and synthetic presses, successfully creating synthetic diamonds, which were then promoted in Tuocheng, Henan.

Laboratory data show that synthetic diamonds produced in China have a color and purity far higher than natural diamonds, with market prices of less than 300 RMB per carat.

A small county like Tuocheng in Henan has managed to capture 47% of the global market share.

British journals claim that the Chinese have manufactured molecules with higher clarity than natural diamonds at only 5% of the cost.

Overseas diamond merchants still consider Chinese synthetic diamonds to be inferior and unable to compete with natural diamonds.

However, the Federal Trade Commission in the United States has issued new guidelines recognizing that there is no difference between Chinese synthetic diamonds and natural diamonds.

With this, the commercial empire of De Beers finally came to an end, and international diamond prices have plummeted by 65% in recent years.

It is a reminder that even the most powerful commercial empires can crumble in an instant when faced with technological innovation.