A black diamond weighing a staggering 555.55 carats is going up for auction at Sotheby’s and living up to its name “The Enigma.”
Bidding opens on Feb. 3 at 6 a.m. PST (1400 GMT) and closes on Feb. 9, Sotheby’s said, adding cryptocurrency will be accepted for payment of the diamond.
Sotheby’s said it is the largest faceted Fancy Black Diamond known to ever appear at auction and was listed as the largest cut diamond in the world in the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records.
Also known as a carbonado diamond, it is possible the black diamond came from outer space. Carbonados of this structure have only been found in Brazil and the Central African Republic, and scientists have long theorized about their origins.
“They are shrouded in mystery as to the origin or formation because there’s not that many of them found on Earth,” geologist Aaron Celestian, the curator of mineral sciences at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, told Reuters on Wednesday.
