Cartier Feels Blockchain Is Diamond’s New Best Friend

Anyone who knows their diamonds definitely knows Cartier. It is a premium French luxury brand that is renowned for their diamond products. The company that owns Cartier is Richemont, a Swiss giant who dabble in luxury goods. With blockchain finding its way into logistics and supply chain tracking in various sectors, it was about time since it entered the high end diamond business.

Richemont appointed Jin Keyu, an associate professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) who is also a famous economist, as their board member last year. In a recent event Keyu expressed Richemont’s desire to integrate blockchain technology into their system as a way of gaining stronghold in “parallel markets”. She stated clearly that blockchain is being used by Richemont to trace the origin of diamonds, gold and precious stones/rocks all the way back to the mines or recycling factories from where they were obtained. What the company aims to do is to keep a track of the sources of all their products that are being sold, in a bid to verify their authenticity.

Jin also revealed her future plans to join China-based blockchain startup Ultrain, where she would assume the role of an adviser and bring her expertise on macroeconomics to the table. Her academic interests and her gradual entry into the blockchain industry were also part of her speech. Harping on the importance of academic research, she identified the lack of it as the primary lacuna in the process of experimentation and policy building that blockchain tries to undertake from scratch.

She feels that blockchain played a major role in revolutionizing and restructuring the economic spectrum that already existed. She suggests a multi-disciplinary approach of combining concepts of both micro and macro economics; currency, monetary policy and regulation belonging to the latter.

Her knowledge in macroeconomics is prompting her to look into the questions concerning crypto from a specific dimension. She revealed her plans to design a cryptocurrency which would have the ability to act as a substitute for traditional currency and perform three major functions, namely storage of value, stability and unit of account.

Jin is a highly acclaimed economist who set a record by being the youngest tenured professor at LSE at 29. She originally hails from Beijing and has obtained her BA, MA and PhD from Harvard. Her position in Richemont, coupled with her expertise, makes us anticipate great innovations from the company.