Travis John (00:01.654)
Welcome back to another episode of RWA Builders. I'm Travis John, your host. And today we have a special guest, Steven Gaertner He's the head of Tiamonds, and he's here revolutionizing how you can purchase and own diamonds on the blockchain. Welcome, Steven.

Steven (00:17.421)
Hi Travis, thanks for having me, it's a pleasure to be here today.

Travis John (00:21.962)
Likewise, likewise. So lots of exciting things happening on your side of the blockchain with Tiamonds and tokenization of diamonds. So would love to get a little more information first, just kind of as ahead of Tiamonds ends and leading strategy and all these new things on chain with real world assets and tokenization.

Maybe just tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how this project started, maybe a little bit of your background of what led to this.

Steven (00:54.677)
Absolutely. So my name is Steven. Like I said, I was born in Belgium in Antwerp. And Antwerp used to be the capital of diamonds for the last 400 years. The last 20 years, it's still a very strong capital of diamonds, but the business moved a bit back to India, Mumbai, New Delhi.

in Surat, where people are manufacturing diamonds like we used to do in Antwerp prior to that. So I grew up there, being surrounded by the diamond industry, by friends, by family into that industry. So yeah, this is how I got first in touch with diamonds.

Steven (01:47.161)
For a period of time, I didn't work into the diamond industry. But when I turned 30, I started to work for a diamond manufacturing company. And I was sent over to Hong Kong to open a diamond trading, trading of polished diamonds over there, where I stayed for 10 years. I stayed over there serving our Asian customers.

and Chinese customers, of course, China was since 2005, very hungry for diamonds. The doors of China opened and really they were crazy about that. It's I think the Chinese culture has always been very hungry, if I may say, for gemstones and colored stones, but diamonds as well.

Travis John (02:42.762)
Love that. I mean, that's an amazing origin story of how this came together, you know, from where you were born to your career path there. I think what's interesting, and I think as we, as I alluded to at the beginning, of course, you're democratizing not the access, you know, diamonds are scarce and also like democratizing ownership of diamonds. So we'll get into that, but I'm interested to mention, because I think your background kind of hits on that, is how important is it?

I know this is a leading question, but just of the importance of gems and gemstones. Obviously, we know diamonds are universally valuable and beautiful, but your background, how does that play into your project positioning and unique fit?

Steven (03:34.813)
Good question, but I will try to take one step back and first maybe to give some numbers about the diamond industry. The diamond industry is a US$100 billion market a year. The polished diamond part, because you have rough diamonds and polished diamonds. The polished diamonds are those that are cut.

and I use what we know, what the majority of the people know, are used for jewelry. Either a big part is for bridals or for getting married or to propose. Let's say over, more than 50% of that is for that. But let's separate the industry in three parts. So you have the jewelry section, which occurs between 50 to 70% of the business. 25 to 30% of the business is in

industrial diamonds and why industrial diamonds? Because we know that diamonds is a very strong material and it is still today used for machinery, industry use everywhere in the world. The remaining 2 to 5 percent of the business is diamonds as an investment, investment diamonds. And this is where we came into it with diamonds.

maybe a few words about diamonds or maybe before that, how did I get into crypto? Because I think it's also an interesting thing and then you will see how those two things joins together.

Travis John (05:09.746)
Yeah, I love that. You read my mind. That was why I was looking for that synergy of where that impact happened of diamonds and crypto.

Steven (05:18.261)
Absolutely. So while I was working in Hong Kong, Hong Kong has three big trade shows over the year where people basically from Asia come to Hong Kong to purchase their polished diamonds and we had like an

also people from Europe and other countries. And one day one of our clients that used to come every trade show comes and he tells us, look, I want to purchase diamonds as last time, but the problem is my country doesn't let me pay in US. So it was obviously a country that has some restrictions with payments. And so he told us, but can I pay you in crypto?

And we looked at him and we coming from the diamond industry, having no knowledge about technology or whatever, we said, what are you talking about? And then to make a long story short, we got into that. We said, okay, at the end of the day, we said, okay, make your purchase with crypto. It was an instant payment. We were very surprised. And this opened up a door for us. First of all, we kept the customer and we opened the door for other customers to be able to pay.

like that. And this was for me the turning point, let's say.

Travis John (06:34.709)
Yeah.

That's amazing. And I think we're seeing, obviously, this unlock happen across multiple industries where crypto is becoming an accepted payment. And as you know, I think it doesn't make sense to use your Bitcoin or your ETH to buy pizza, usually. But ultimately, for diamonds, that's where this use case makes a lot of sense, clearly. So that's great.

That is where a lot of people look at the industry. They look at it in the jewelry side and the proposals and weddings and marriage side of things. And understanding that breakdown I think is really key. So about 2% of the market is what you're impacting from an investment side. Now, do you think that would increase theoretically because of now this access point, where...

Steven (07:24.278)
Absolutely.

Steven (07:31.149)
Yeah, we theoretically think that it will increase, by the way, and we'll dive deeper into the project itself, but we are kind of democratizing the access to invest into diamonds, something that if you want to invest tomorrow in a diamond, I'm not sure where you should go or you're going to search on the internet and is it reliable? Who are those people?

Do you know what you're buying? And so on. So I think, of course, there's a lot of education that is needed, but at the same time, you could technically, with our system, be in your living room or be at a bar in the evening. And you know what? You see a beautiful woman, you want to purchase her a diamond, be my guest. Go on the platform and it's one click away, by way of speaking.

Travis John (08:21.218)
But I think this is a perfect gateway, just to getting into what is Tiamonds. You know, tell us a little bit about the elevator story of Timon's and just overarching. And then, like you mentioned, we'll kind of get into more of the details of exactly how it works and how to get involved. But yeah, let's understand a little bit about just the overarching story first.

Steven (08:44.177)
So yeah, so Tiamonds basically is a Web3 tree marketplace that changes the way of how you own, how you trade and how you deal with diamonds. So basically what we are doing, we are bringing real-world diamonds onto the blockchain and I will give you the reasons why we think it's

It's an upgrade for that industry and what are the added values that the blockchain brings to that industry. But basically we are helping people to trade easily into diamonds without the need to technically ship the assets or to technically pay importation taxes or shipment costs or stuff like this. But they are able to trade the assets.

on their computer or on their mobiles without the need to move the asset around. And so why I'm saying that, so how do we proceed technically? So we are purchasing real-world diamonds from renowned diamond dealers, and that's an important fact we'll talk later, I think, about the origin of the stone and knowing that you are...

purchasing non-conflictual diamonds and so on. But that's a big paragraph. We can talk about that deeper later. But basically, so we are bringing that into the blockchain. How do we do it? So we purchase it from renowned diamond dealers. Then we have a partnership with LCX. LCX is the Liechtenstein Crypto Exchange with several licenses.

in Liechtenstein to operate as a crypto exchange first of all. They have nine licenses in total. And one of the licenses is the physical validator license. This physical validator license to simplify it, it's technically, it act as a notary where you send a real asset to them. They will authenticate that this stone is perfectly matching with the passport. And the passport is the GIA certificate. So GIA is the Gemological

Steven (11:01.405)
gemological Institute of America that gives the properties of a stone like the carats, the color and the clarity and the cut of the stone and then they will see that this asset is not borrowed out to someone else, it's not a stolen asset, it's a real physical asset and then they will give us that stamp as a validator. They act under the government of Liechtenstein so it's a very strong validation. Once this is done

they will log the assets to a third party in Liechtenstein in a physical vault. And so the stones are located over there. They will be insured by Lloyds. And then we tokenize the assets. So we are bringing those assets. We are creating a digital twin. And this digital twin on Ethereum for now will be put on our marketplace or on

any other marketplace that supports the ERC 721 protocol to be able to be created as well. So basically this in a high level this is what we're doing.

Travis John (12:13.433)
Right. Yeah, I love that. And I think we're...

where I started out at the beginning was just saying, some of the, going and purchasing these diamonds from renowned gemologists, I think some of your background probably plays into understanding who those gemologists are, of course, and as you mentioned, I mean, because you're taking away all the need to shop for the best gems, because you guys are already figuring that out. And then you're essentially, you have a validator.

you know, that's going to validate the GIA certificate, which a lot of people know that, you know, worldwide, like the diamonds have a GIA certificate number, they come with certificate. And of course, from that point there, and I'm just reiterating this, you know, for the audience, but basically then from that point there, that's also ensured once it's validated and approved and all everything checks out, it's then put in a vault in Lichtenstein and those diamonds.

the physical twin one is then insured by Lloyds of London as well, so that if anything were to happen, that gem is insured. Is that... Okay, perfect. Yeah, I mean, because I think that's one of those things where... And I just reiterate these things mainly because obviously we focus on getting these messages out to audiences that are...

Steven (13:28.757)
Absolutely.

Travis John (13:42.058)
maybe new to crypto, new to these ideas, like diamonds looking for other investment vehicles, et cetera. And one of the biggest things of course is, we know, call it what it is. I mean, crypto is certainly littered with things that are not so positive in some cases. So we're moving forward and I think we're moving past that daily into a better place, but...

The more that I can get the message out and refocus on what you guys are doing as builders and how meticulous you are in all the boxes you're checking, just like you would in any other business. You're not moving fast and breaking things and having a reckless approach to building this to gain crypto payments. So, no, I love that. And I think what's interesting, and we can talk about this more, plus some technical stuff.

When you say the ERC-721, that's an NFT standard, correct? So someone purchases a diamond, they're going to get a non-fungible token. And like you mentioned, in current standard, that's ERC-721. I know you've discussed without us getting too terribly technical also, but...

Steven (14:42.004)
ERC-721 standard, yeah.

Travis John (15:02.222)
You do have plans on kind of going multiple chains because obviously the future is not just one chain. You know, people are going to be introduced to blockchain and crypto through multiple ways in different areas. And I know you guys are you mentioned and we've talked before just you're also focusing on that as well. So the more you can democratize even through the blockchains of what blockchains people are using and provide your offer to people where they are. So.

Steven (15:27.241)
No, exactly. Exactly. Maybe two things that I wanted to emphasize is, first of all, like you said, we worked quite long and invested quite heavily in the legal framework. For us, it was a priority, knowing what happened with all the stories, FTX, just not to name them, and all the others. I think it's important to give, how to say, to give some certainty and to give back some

Travis John (15:47.922)
Right, yeah.

Steven (15:55.945)
insurance to people. So not only by taking an insurance, of course, at Lloyd's, but to see that we are working in a very regulated and licensed way. That's one thing. What I didn't end the story of Tiamonds, it's not the end of the story of Tiamonds, but what we are also giving to every user is the option to redeem the asset at any point of time. So if you purchase the assets and it's locked in the physical vault, when you want, you

go to a platform and say, look, I'm the owner of the asset. I want to have it at home. So no problem. The procedure is you pass through the KYC again on the platform. And then we will ship the asset to you physically, to your home address, to your office, or wherever it is. So in that way, you don't feel that you're only investing in something that is not really existing or is in the cloud.

But at any point of time, you can always redeem the assets. So that's something that we added to the project that I think is super important to people.

Travis John (17:06.078)
Yeah, that's amazing. And I think what I also like to kind of nail it down into is what are the purchasing options? Like is it only a whole diamond? You know, I know there are varying prices of diamonds so that obviously still gives a spectrum, but how does that work? Obviously in your use case, you just explained that's a whole diamond, but are there fractional opportunities? And maybe explain a little bit to the viewers and listeners how that works.

Steven (17:31.225)
So for now it's only one of one diamond. So when you are purchasing an asset on the or diamond on the platform, you will get a full diamond for you. The ERC721 system is like a contract. It's an ownership contract to prove that you or me are the sole owner of that asset. Of course.

And I think with time, we will evolve into that direction as well, is to have more pricey diamonds on the platform, maybe collector items that can be very pricey as well, but not only. We want to be there for every range of prices. I think a diamond is like a car. You can have the...

very expensive Rolls Royce with electric windows and whatever options that you want, but you can also buy a Lada with manual windows. So we have everything on the platform from lower prices, ranging from like three, four, $500 up till like much more with a diamond of a million dollars on the platform. But...

Why I'm saying that, I wanted to say that we, for now, we are doing, yes, one of ones, but if we think about the future and one of the future plans is to fractionalize the assets. The fact of tokenizing or breaking the assets, not physically, but through tokens and have, let's say, for a pink diamond, which can be valued at $500,000, but have like shares or like stocks occurs for...

companies, you could have one token of that whole stone, if you imagine that there are 5,000 different tokens of that stone, and you could be an owner of only a share of that diamond. The advantage is you democratizing the access to anyone to enter in those kinds of investments, and technically those high priced stones, be it a

Steven (19:43.737)
the flawless stone, which is the top color and top clarity of diamonds, or a pink diamond from the Argyle mine in Australia, could be a good investment. Why? They closed the mine two or three years ago. So obviously there's a scarcity out there and logically the price will grow.

Travis John (20:01.782)
Right. Absolutely. And I think that to your point, I mean, and I love that you have such a wide range of pricing that opens it up. And I think the one of one makes the most sense. But to your point, I think the unique one of the unique diamonds, the very expensive diamonds

really plays very well into a, you know, obviously there's always a market for someone to just buy it themselves clearly, but, and that's a perfect example. I mean, one thing's I've been geeking out in this industry for a while. So like I participated in the Constitution DAO Dow, you know, a couple of years ago. So I was, you know, I was one of the people that got excited about that and put money into it. And, you know, that's a perfect example, you know, millions of

one guy outbid all of us, we were the second, most people know the story, but we, several thousand crypto people used the blockchain to raise money and tried to buy the US Constitution, one of the last known original Constitution copies. So to your point, I think that makes a lot of sense in that case to fractionalize it.

but also the use case was still there for a rich billionaire that wanted it more or had more money. So there's always ways to do that, but I do think again, the democratization of allowing people to own things that are very unique and valuable. And in some cases, it just...

the collector side, you know, kind of plays out a little bit there too for diamonds. You know, somebody that would love to own that pink diamond, like you said, that's rare from a mine that's been closed and you can't access that. You know, you wouldn't have the millions of dollars yourself to do it. But if you're aligning with thousands of other people or hundreds of other people depending on the asset, you're able to do that. So yeah, I love that. I think...

Travis John (21:59.614)
You may want to add on some other things there, but also as you know, and I think what's really exciting about the blockchain as you know is you're able to have secondary markets in place. So having that certificate with a diamond, selling a diamond in the open market, you can tell us more. I don't want to take your thunder, but let's walk through kind of like the...

the example of somebody that owns a physical diamond and how they would go about trying to sell that or going through that process versus how unique this is of having a selection and equality process that Tiamonds is using, allowing them to purchase it at the comfort of their own home wherever 24-7 seven, holding it digitally, being secure and how that looks to be able to get in and out of that asset.

even borrowing against it, we can talk about that too. But yeah, I'd love to hear just kind of about that because I think that's one of the most exciting parts about what comes next. Not just this big idea of owning diamonds, but what else can you do?

Steven (23:08.457)
Of course, so there's a lot of things that I could talk about, but I think you point out the nice subject. So I think, again, like I said in the beginning, we are bringing added value that comes through the blockchain to that industry. I think, generally speaking, not every industry should be on the blockchain. There are some industries that can stay out of that because it's working quite well and no problem.

In our case, the diamond industry has, of what I think, a few issues that can be, how to say, solved and not only solved, but the blockchain brings real added value. So what we saw is, first of all, a transparency on pricing. In the diamond industry, like I said, if you want to purchase a diamond now,

What is the real pricing? This guy will ask you $1,000, the other guy will ask you $1,200. Where's this 20% margin and difference? This, when you trade either on our marketplace or out there on other marketplace that supports our system as well, and this is, everybody knows about OpenSea or people who knows a bit about crypto.

I've heard about OpenSea, which is one of the biggest marketplaces. There are other very known marketplaces where you can trade the assets. But the fact of when, if I sell you this asset, it will, the, the selling dates and pricing will be recorded forever on the blockchain. So when you got, when you become the new owner and you will sell it further to a third person, he can easily trace what you paid for that.

what I paid for that and what the other person paid for that. So there's a transparency on pricing, something that we are adding to that industry. That's one thing. Also something that exists in the secondary market that is in existence in the diamond industry is that me as the creator of that tokenized asset or as the producer of that diamond, I can earn royalties on my secondary sales.

Steven (25:16.553)
I can earn royalties if I sell it to you. And when you will sell it to a third person or in a fourth person and so on, I can always get my royalties as being the creator of that asset. And I think this is also adding some value, extraordinary value to either creators or diamond dealers as well that wanna bring their assets onto the blockchain. Now...

Steven (25:45.381)
Two other points that are super important, and I mentioned something about that, is the traceability of the, it's not about transparency, but more about traceability of the origin of the stone. Knowing, and this is also true blockchain technically, you can really trace the asset from the mine to the vault in our case, or to the finger when someone redeems it. So we know exactly from who we purchased.

where it went and you can trace the whole story of that diamond. Why is it important? Just to mention something, since the 1st of January, there is a new restriction that has come out from the G7 countries. So they signed an agreement to not let Russian diamonds enter the G7 countries. So...

Technically the reason we all understand why, just to give a bit of numbers here, Russia occurs or occurred for 30 to 35% of rough diamond exports in the world. So a third of the diamonds came out of Russia. Now, a third of that is owned by, it's governed, like owned by the government. And so obviously the G7 sanctions,

are occurring because of what's happening out there in Ukraine and the conflict in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia. So technically they are, by the way, no stone from Russia has entered the US since a few months, technically. But now they need to prove it, to know how to do it, they need traceability. And this is something that we can bring to the table, which is much more complicated if it's only a paper and if it's not on the blockchain.

Travis John (27:07.81)
All right.

Travis John (27:39.674)
I think that's one thing that not enough RWA projects are talking about. And I think like to your point, this is like a mandatory thing because of compliance and regulation. Uh, but I do think traceability is, is an important part of RWA projects in general. I mean, I've, uh, talked to projects in the wine industry, you know, and you can trace every grape where, you know, or every, every crop.

Was it grown in France? Was it Italy? Was it at a higher elevation, a lower elevation? Was it this farm? When was it harvested? All of these things, the traceability.

That's something that from commodities, like all kinds of commodities, not just diamonds, but all of these things, the traceability that can be attached to your projects and the peace of mind and the ability to check that with any internet connection, to see that is, that's amazing.

Steven (28:40.961)
I think it's a very important thing for the Gen Z as well. When I talk to Gen Z people and they talk to me about the new t-shirt that they just bought, they want to make sure there was no child labor or it doesn't come from a conflict zone. And I think even, never mind if it's a diamond or a jewelry or a watch, it's also true for t-shirts and it's also true for anything that you purchase today. You want to be sure that you are buying

how they call it but buying a...

Steven (29:18.901)
Yeah, but with knowing exactly, yeah, authentically or responsible by exactly.

Travis John (29:20.318)
authentic or yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think this is a perfect example. I mean, one thing that I saw recently in a comment was just an example would be like brands like Rolex, like the technology in a Rolex.

really overall can be replicated and has been replicated in very inexpensive watches for decades. Like Rolex has been around a long time, but people are still willing to pay and interested in paying for Rolex when it's an authentic Rolex.

Even though it could be argued that someone made one that looks similar, that they're calling a Rolex, and it maybe is even more reliable. Who knows? It's very possible. But that's where this traceability comes in, because when you're making this investment, you want to know that that...

Diamond, you know is specifically lines up and like you mentioned it's not coming from Russia Which would be another huge thing for a lot of buyers is understanding Hey, you know is timings complying with these new regulations, you know, so that's yeah That that was one of those things where I would never have thought to ask you that one. That's that's an incredible Reason and an incredible use case for traceability

Steven (30:42.901)
No, absolutely. There's maybe one point that you touched also about lending and borrowing that I think it's super interesting. We still, a lot of people are trying out some stuff and we are also looking into that. I'll give a few points about that. So I think what's happened in 2021, 2022 when there was a real hype about NFTs and.

Travis John (30:50.99)
it is.

Steven (31:08.653)
people were investing in the Bored Apes or the CryptoPunks or it became like a crazy thing. And unfortunately, it was a bubble that exploded. A lot of projects disappeared. You can't find them anymore. And the value of those assets are nearly zero or even...

even not like they don't exist anymore. Some of the projects and there is a reason for that also I think and there's a reason because at the end of the day when you when I try to explain to someone what is an NFT and people were looking at me like man you investing in a jpeg like it's a picture that I can print I can put it in my living room and

Travis John (31:33.127)
Exactly.

Steven (31:53.057)
but it's worth nothing. Like I can have a duplicate or I can have the same and what's the real value behind that? And it's true. Some of the projects were strong communities or still strong communities. I think Yuga Labs is a strong company, they have great projects and so on. And one of the projects that I really like also and why it stayed super strong is Pudgy Penguins.

But why is the reason? Because they went out to the web too. They started to merchandise their assets, and it became real assets, real, how do you call it? Like real penguins that you can play with, that you can buy at a plush toys, exactly. And why I'm saying that, I think with real world asset tokenization, the first thing that we

Travis John (32:35.07)
Yeah. Real plush toys. Absolutely. Yeah.

Steven (32:46.557)
We have an image, of course, a beautiful image, 3D image of a diamond and stuff like this. But behind that, there's a real diamond that is sitting in a vault, fully secured. So if whatever happened with the image or the company or whatever, you can still go to Liechtenstein and claim your assets. So somehow it's a relief to know that something, that the assets are backed by something real.

that still keeps a certain value.

Travis John (33:18.263)
Yep.

Yeah, I agree. And then that's where I think, you know, we could talk for hours about, you know, the NFT world in general, just because, you know, overall, there's a lot of misunderstanding. There's a lot of misconception. There's even quite a bit of just anger and animosity. You know, just some people just even that don't know, more so that don't know about NFTs, just the general public, they hear that acronym NFT, and they just completely

I want to tune out. And I think a lot of that has to do with how some of the things evolved. To your point of some probably the 90 plus percent of all of the NFT stuff that happened was mostly gone or were not valuable anymore. And it was all based on a very single layer image. Not a lot of value. As you mentioned, Pudgy Penguins is a perfect example.

running a brand. They have a real business and there's a real demand for their NFTs. That's a perfect example and a relatable example of what you're doing with Tiamonds is that the NFT is just amazing technology and you're making the best use of that technology to tie in the ownership and to take the most advantage of the blockchain and

the investment. So, yeah, I love that. I think it's just worth me noting that because I think we've mentioned NFT a few times in this show and I think anyone picking this up that might be listening to it the first time and interested in diamonds and interested in this idea, they might have tuned out a little bit when we started talking about how they're owning it as an NFT. So I like to overemphasize how well NFTs are built.

Travis John (35:14.514)
Number one, when they're applied to the right use case and the right business model. And Tiamonds is definitely doing that.

Steven (35:21.889)
Absolutely. So two things I still, because I always forget to answer to that question. So you spoke about lending and borrowing. So basically, because there is a value behind that image, we could think, and this is what we are looking at also as of now, to use those tokenized assets, because they have a real value. There is a real diamond.

in Liechtenstein totally safe and you could go to certain platforms, we try to build it for the moment, to gain some loans, some direct loans either from a peer-to-peer system where I would put my assets on

Steven (36:13.569)
to say like I will borrow my asset and get a get a loan against it and technically again I would give some yields to that person who gives me that loan and if I cannot return the loan in time as signed as in the beginning of the agreement then he will get the physical asset like the ownership of the physical asset will be transferred directly

to him and I think that's a real interesting use case as well. It will still take time I think to work properly but we are going into that direction.

Travis John (36:53.786)
Absolutely. Yeah, I definitely wanted to hit on that. And that's why I got on my soapbox about NFTs and why they're important. Before we talked about that aspect, because I think that aspect is very powerful. And this is no different than if you look at other assets like real estate, you think about somebody has a home, they have a loan on the home. Most people do.

And if they don't pay the loan, the property can be taken back. That's a very messy, long process. But you can also get an equity line. So if you don't have a loan or maybe you have a significantly higher value in your home than what you owe a lender, you can then obviously get money out of that by putting it up for getting an equity event. And that's essentially what we're talking about here is

The blockchain has just completely changed and simplified this process, not completely for real estate. And I do think that it'll probably get there at some point. But as you mentioned at the beginning of the show, and I think you mentioned even just a few minutes ago, not every market or industry should be pushing themselves into the RWA tokenization side of things.

It is a very hot area. It's exciting, but not every industry should try to shoehorn themselves in there just because it seems like a great place to have a business model or make money. Diamonds just make sense. It's already a worldwide...

phenomenon, it's a valuable asset, it's something that is the, as you mentioned, all of the regulation is universally understood and recognized across the world. So it makes it much easier to start with a foundational layer that makes complete sense.

Travis John (38:43.294)
And then being able to get into a marketplace where you're essentially, you own that diamond, you're able to put it into a loan marketplace. And as you mentioned, you're able to get a loan off of that. So if you're in a position where maybe you need some liquidity and you own this diamond, you're able to get this money, crypto, whatever terms that you decide based on the yield you give that person. And usually it's P2P, as you mentioned, sometimes it is a platform that's going to give that to you. But

That's another great thing is the peer-to-peer opportunity. You're not going to own a physical diamond at your house and call a friend usually and say, can you give me, I need a little bit of liquidity for this other event. Can you, I'll pay you a little bit of money if you do that. Some friends are going to do what they can to help you, but realistically, let's face it, that's not a normal conversation or normal ask. Yeah.

Steven (39:33.889)
No, exactly. But I think there's a real market for that. Just think if you should do it in the real world, like going to your bank and ask for a loan and give a collateral like my sunglasses or my watch, they will look at me like, what the hell are you asking us? And technically this is possible.

Travis John (39:52.91)
Right.

Steven (39:55.093)
on the blockchain because of that peer-to-peer facility. People have liquidity, people are ready to borrow it out or to lend in some liquidities. And so it's a great added value. You are not facing a middleman as well. So you can directly talk with the lender basically and the cost will be also reduced, I think, if you compare it to banking systems.

Travis John (40:21.926)
Yeah, likewise. And as you mentioned before, I think it's just worth noting again that aside from loans and lending and maybe staking, I'd like to open the door to that conversation a little bit, but I think before I say that, I just want to reiterate that the ease and ability to sell your diamond on the blockchain is...

very easy, transparent. The marketplaces are already existing. You're creating more and more demand for that and those marketplaces are continuing to grow. But there are other ways that potentially as based on scarcity, based on programs, are you guys considering staking? What does that look like for that, for NFTs and for their assets?

Steven (41:08.457)
So basically, I wanted to mention that because we are doing automatic staking. So what does it mean? So when you purchase a Tiamond on our platform, so you pass through the KYC, you really in a fully legal way, basically you become the owner of this asset that is located and safeguarded in Liechtenstein. Every minute you will gain one token.

one TIA token. Those are the native token of the project. So, Tiamonds is three letters, T-I-A. And every minute you are getting one token, for a period of time, we start with two years. So, if you hold the assets for two years, at the end of the two years, you will get, I think in the beginning, it was like a million of tokens. It starts to be interesting because this token, it's an ERC20 token.

Steven (42:08.961)
had, just to give an example, had a pricing of less than a cent three months ago. Now we are already over a cent, it's a cent and a half. So people who technically purchased a 0.3 carat stone three months ago and suddenly and had and have kept their assets and

At the same time, every minute they're gaining TIA token, also their investments is gaining value because the token went up. So the value, maybe they gained already 10,000 TIA tokens as of now. And what was worth less than $100 three months ago is now maybe already $200. So technically, what we are bringing to the table here is to say when you're investing in a tokenized diamond, so.

Travis John (42:55.532)
Yeah.

Steven (43:01.953)
everything that we discussed before with all the advantages that it has, etc. We are also giving another advantage, something that does not exist in the real world trading of diamonds, we are giving you those TIA tokens. And those TIA tokens, first of all, you can either claim them and then exchange them, either on a centralized exchange, on LCX, or on a decentralized exchange, which is a Uniswap for now. Or...

you can use those TIA tokens to purchase your next stone. So it is like free rewards or free money that you will get like miles that you get when you take a airline, and you can use them for your next airline ticket, for example.

Travis John (43:46.734)
I love that. And I like how you tied it in to the airline and the rewards and like the points metrics because I think that a lot of projects, they have a token for sometimes not all the best reasons. It's a way for it to increase revenue or liquidity or inflows. But one of the things that I've been a

Travis John (44:16.606)
maybe you're down on more than they're up on is the whole rewards point system. If you look at Web2, Web2 is littered with miles and points and you get this and you get that and have this app and you get rewards. In some cases, the use case isn't very good. Again, this goes back to your point of...

of diamonds makes a lot of sense for tokenization real world assets. Not every industry does. And it's the same concept with points and rewards and miles. Not every business does very well by implementing a points and reward system, although a lot of them try to force it and it's not very effective. And the compliance factor of people actually participating in the rewards or using them tends to be very low.

But I think in this case, to your point, having your token as a rewards mechanism to, one, encourage holding, which most people want to hold their diamonds long-term, but it does really encourage a healthy ecosystem by having a TIA token, which gives an additional layer of you already have someone purchasing this that has an investor mindset. So the token does add an immediate interest, clearly. But where...

Sometimes it doesn't always work is that it doesn't really have a good use case in this case It's it's fueling all the things you mentioned It's fueling the reason to hold which is automatic staking and I like how you call it automatic staking and it's actually better than calling it staking because as you know, that's also something that not everybody understands what that is and It's really just a fancy term of saying you know, you're a loyal customer

so to speak, and you hold for a certain amount of time, you get those rewards. I mean, we're used to that in the Web2 two world. That's essentially what you guys are doing. It sounds like that's the main use case. And I know on your website, you also have a rewards, you know, you have that conversation about, you know, the reward system. And I like how that works.

Steven (46:25.333)
No, absolutely. You summarized it perfectly. I think this is what we wanted to do. Absolutely.

Travis John (46:28.77)
Good, good.

Travis John (46:33.67)
Yeah. Well, and of course you will have people that, and again, you have people that can speculate on the token because your token is on centralized exchanges, it is on the DEX options like Uniswap. So if somebody is interested in exposure to your brand and maybe not quite ready to purchase a diamond, you know, they can...

obviously by the TIA token themselves as well. And that's just one way. Of course, they're not going to have all of the rewards that come with it because they don't have the other side of it by owning the diamond. But they can at least benefit or speculate on the upside of your token and your growth of your company. So I think that's another thing to point out just for any listeners that although...

Steven (47:02.786)
Absolutely.

Steven (47:21.26)
Exactly.

Travis John (47:26.898)
I believe the best opportunity is to look at getting in at the diamond level, clearly. But even so, realistically, some people are motivated through other ways and they want to benefit from the upside of your company. And again, that's just part of the blockchain. The beauty of the blockchain, in my opinion, is you're able to bet on the success of diamonds. And without even owning diamonds, you can own the token and you can...

you can bet on the success of what you guys are doing and what Steven's building and the history of diamonds and the future of diamonds, which is what Tiamonds is bringing together.

Steven (48:07.553)
No, absolutely. I must agree 200% with what you said. And by the way, it's super easy to either purchase the TIA token on Dex's or centralized exchange or to get onto the platform. And yeah, and look. And

have your path around that. One thing that I wanted to add and you mentioned it in the beginning, so we started to build on Ethereum and one thing that we are looking also for the future of diamonds is to be also represented on other blockchains. Just maybe to simplify for people who don't understand

Why is it one blockchain and not the other? And technically, there are interoperability issues between different blockchains. You can compare it with a program that works on a PC but doesn't work on a Mac. And why is that? That's a technological issue. But it's the same for the blockchain. So what we started to do, and I compare it also with the real life. So people who are Mac,

fans will only trust Mac and believe in Mac, that kind of fanatics, same for PCs. And you have the same things in blockchain. People who are on Ethereum, or Solana or Cardano or whatever other blockchain, they will be very, how to say, they will stay on their blockchain because they trust them, they believe in that, it's a community thing as well. And so that's why we said, instead of trying to attract people from...

Travis John (49:31.146)
Right.

Steven (49:53.173)
other blockchains to the Ethereum blockchain and kind of, how to say, like, oblige them to use the system on Ethereum? No, we are coming to them. So we started with Cardano. We did a beautiful partnership with NMKR, which is a DApp on Cardano, one of the biggest ones over there. And they are minting and tokenizing assets. So we did a partnership last October, 2023.

for the Cardano Summit in Dubai. And we launched 20 stones over there. That was like 20 diamonds on the Cardano blockchain. So for their ecosystem, it was sold out in less than 24 hours. So we saw that success. We did a second batch for the end of the year, like Christmas and New Year, every day one diamond sold out as well. And so we come in with a new batch, but a bigger batch. Let's say maybe 100 to 300 diamonds.

in the coming weeks. So this will be also for Cardano. And looking at that strategy that worked quite well for us, we are now in talks, but in very advanced talks. I told you something about that Travis earlier, but we are launching on other blockchains as well. So in the coming weeks, you will see us on different blockchains, but not only blockchains, also on other NFT marketplaces.

So this is what's in house for the coming weeks and months for diamonds.

Travis John (51:25.398)
That's very exciting. Yeah, I agree. And those are very great examples, you know, by tying in the Mac versus PC and just... The future is multi-chain, as you know, and as you mentioned, it is very much typical.

if you're doing most of your transactions on Ethereum to be more interested in making a purchase, specifically something that's a bigger purchase potentially with a diamond, through a network or where you already have a wallet established and funds ready, etc. to make that purchase.

And it's just, we all are creature of habits and we all tend to have things, we gravitate more toward one place or another. And Cardano is a perfect example of an amazing blockchain ecosystem that isn't very easily compatible from on-ramp to Ethereum. So you're opening up a completely new group of people. And in my case, I'm very much interested in many blockchains. I mean, I've...

run the stake pool on Cardano. So I'm very familiar with Cardano, run projects on Ethereum, Avalanche. So I do think a lot of the EVM chains are, obviously that's where most of the liquidity is, and most of the financial instruments and a lot of the tokenization is happening there. And mainly because as we know, accessibility to those chains, the interoperability of those chains and liquidity on those chains,

You can't deny, regardless, but ultimately having your software built for Mac and PC, any successful software company, they always build for both. Obviously, many times they start with one, just like you did. You started where the most liquidity and the opportunity is and where it was really technically easier to find builders typically to build this application for Tiamonds.

Steven (53:13.176)
Exactly.

Travis John (53:25.846)
But as you grow, you're going to deploy this to other operating system, other chains, just like you would in Web2. So yeah, I love that. I think you're doing all the things that make sense from a successful company, from a successful roadmap. And it's great to hear that you had such a significant demand and selling out in 24 hours. So certainly, the demand is there.

Steven (53:51.105)
Yeah, it's a look, it's a start. It's those are still small numbers. Let's say small, not a lot of stones. We want to grow, of course. And I think the more we'll grow on other ecosystem as well will be able to offer what we are offering nowadays on Ethereum to other people. Just a small note about that also, when you see the gas fees that occurs now on Ethereum, I can understand.

that someone who wants to purchase a diamond of $300 or $400 and has to pay nearly 10% of gas fees will be a bit hesitating to do it. Why should he pay 10% of charges or costs to something like this when he could technically do it on other blockchains with less than a dollar or really reduced gas fees? So that's also one of the reasons.

Travis John (54:46.726)
I was gonna let you take that one. I wasn't gonna... I knew that was the elephant in the room, but I was letting you address that one. But yes, I completely agree. That's another big reason.

Steven (54:49.965)
Hehehehe

Steven (54:59.145)
No, I think it's a... we must face the... that's a reality. I think it's a reality that a lot of our users are also asking. And okay, again, we're trying to come to the user, to facilitate those access points to diamonds. Yeah.

Travis John (55:03.937)
It is.

Travis John (55:20.042)
Nice. Well, as we're wrapping up here, I wanted to kind of get maybe a couple more questions in, but also just any other like alpha, so to speak, you know, speaking crypto talk, any other things going on. I know you have a number of events and Token 2049, events you guys are going to be attending, which is huge, but maybe give us some insights on

What else you have planned, some of your events you're attending, and then we'll wrap up with how everyone can find you and any other additional details you want to share.

Steven (55:58.137)
Fantastic. So yeah, so first of all, next month will be in Dubai for a week. There's a bunch of events. So Token 2049 is the biggest event on the 18th or 19th of April. It's just happening.

I think just the day after the halving. So I hope it will be a great, great success and we'll enjoy a lot. So we'll be there with a part of the team and we'll also attend a few other events. So during that week, so we'll be there from the 15th till the 21st in Dubai. So there is a RWA pure...

event organized by Polytrade Finance. Amazing project as well, so I invite you to look at that. They are building stuff for RWA projects like us and many others of course, so we'll attend their event and, okay, a small alpha, we will present something with them over there. And then...

For the rest of the things, just follow us on Twitter, follow us on the website. We have a Telegram chat where you can always ask us, find us. And also, if you want, you can send us an email. It's hello @ tiamonds.com for any question, partnership, or whatever you have in mind. That can... We are totally open to discuss anything with you guys.

And before we finish, I must thank you a lot, Travis. I think we got to know each other on LinkedIn. The connection was fast, easy, and I really enjoyed the talk today.

Travis John (57:47.646)
Likewise, that means a lot. Thank you. And I'll point out it's Tiamonds.com. So it's diamonds, but with a T. So tokenized diamonds. So make sure you check that out. That's a good step one to watch the video on their site, read their blog, understand how to get involved in owning a diamond and participating in the new world of tokenized diamonds. It is fascinating.

how this all started for you and where you were born and just the intersection of crypto is very fascinating. And this was an exciting conversation. So I think what I'll end with too is because I'm focusing on helping RWA builders. I mean, that's the whole point of this show is getting the word out. Is there anything that we can put the word out there to any other builders or what you're looking for?

partnerships or anything coming up that would help by having other RWA projects because I have seen one of the biggest things why I love this the most is that the RWA tokenization space is not quite as tribal as we talked about with the Mac versus PC or Ethereum versus Cardano. I found that it's one of the most committed and giving groups.

of builders. So if there's anything that you're looking for, I always like to ask, let us know even if I'm putting you on the spot, but that's just something that I put that offer out to everybody I talk with is how can we support your project? What can I do to unlock other builders to help Tiamonds?

Steven (59:30.909)
Look, yeah, just to add on that, we are super open to collaborate with anyone in the space or out of the space. Like we did a project, we have a working use case, it's working quite well. We have users, we are here to help out, first of all, other projects that would like to...

to start with or if we can give advice or help them out there, that's one thing. If they want to look at partnerships, so we mentioned a few topics like lending and borrowing, that's one topic that's super interesting. So if people out there have some nice solutions, we are always open to discuss. Always happy to get in touch with other blockchains or other projects that would like to bring

either our assets to their platforms or stuff like this. And by the way, we are very well connected with LCX, which has this physical validator license. So if you need us to help you out with the legal part as well, we are here really to help, to support you and to give it a push.

Travis John (01:00:44.695)
That's amazing. Well, this is a wrap. I definitely appreciate it. This was, like you mentioned, an amazing conversation. Just nothing but thankfulness of what you're doing and...

the authenticity of your diamonds and also you, leading the charge at Tiamonds and So. It means a lot. I will make sure that everyone that I can connect with will know more about your project and look forward to talking with you again soon. We'll have you back on the show at some point just for some updates and continue to keep the audience in the loop with Tiamonds and So. So that's Steven Gaertner and we'll catch you up on the next episode.

Steven (01:01:24.045)
Fantastic.

Steven (01:01:30.085)
Cheers, thank you.

Travis John (01:01:31.49)
Cheers.