Precious Investments Inc. and its subsidiary, BitGem Asset Management Ltd. (BAM), announced recently that BAM will launch the crowdsale of the “first diamond backed cryptocurrency in the world”, dubbed the PinkCoin, on January 18th, 2016, to begin at 9 am EST (USA).

“PinkCoin is an Ethereum (http://ethereum.org) based cryptocurrency backed by a pool of fixed coloured diamond assets kept in trust by BAM,” the announcement from the companies stated. “All escrowed diamonds have been independently appraised and certified. The diamonds are insured by Lloyds of London.”

BAM says that it has “enabled a PinkCoin token to initially represent a fraction of the initial set valuation of the Pool of Diamonds”, specifically, “the fraction representing 1 USD of the initial set valuation, thus giving the crowdsale participant a new investment tool for use in their investment strategy”.

BAM explained, further, that the diamond pool it holds will be evaluated on a regular basis and “PinkCoins are redeemable for Bitcoins or individual gems, based on the diamond pool's most current valuation as described, in full, in the crowdsale terms and conditions provided at the web address http://bitgems.io/pinkcoin-sale-terms.”

In the first crowdsale, BAM will put up 5,000,000 PinkCoin tokens for sale, as the initial diamond asset pool has been valued at US$ 5,000,000. “In future offerings, BAM can issue up to 95,000,000 new PinkCoin tokens in a non-dilutive manner as described, in detail, in the PinkCoin crowdsale terms and conditions,” the Company added.

Furthermore, the Company said that holders of PinkCoin will be able to trade it for other assets and asset pool-backed tokens on The BitGem Decentralized Marketplace which is “anticipated to be available” in Q2 2016. “Users can also store and trade PinkCoins with any wallet and exchange provider that supports tokens that allow trading of tokens which follow Ethereum's standardised contract APIs, including the official Ethereum client implementations,” BAM clarified.

Dr. Nataliya Hearn, Precious Investments Inc., CEO, commented: “We are extremely excited of this official launch and coloured diamonds are the rarest commodity in the world and quite simply the world’s most concentrated form of wealth; it is expected that this trend will continue. The current global yield of coloured diamonds mined per year will slow down significantly as the largest producer, the Argyle mine in Australia, which produces 90% of the worlds pink diamonds is already scheduled to close in the next decade. This is happening while demand from the jewellery industry keeps rising. Pink and other fancy grade coloured diamonds are the only asset class that have consistently increased in value well over 10% per year and they are the only commodity that has not decreased in price since they began being tracked in 1959. This will only enhance the validity of PinkCoins in the market place.”