"De Beers was founded in the midst of a potential catastrophe for the diamond market"

BB:

The gems, once almost impossibly rare recoveries from a handful of rivers in India and Brazil, saw a sudden jump in supply in the 1870s and 1880s after the discovery of the first mine deposits near Kimberley in South Africa.

...

The rising sophistication of lab-grown diamonds threatens a potential repeat of the Kimberley supply surge.

...

The discount for De Beers' lab-grown Lightbox gem diamonds will be far greater than seen in the market at present

...

By pricing its Lightbox Jewelry-branded gems as low as $800 a carat – an 81 percent discount to the price of natural gems, compared to the 32 percent discounts existing synthetic gems are fetching – it’s sending an unmistakable signal that artificial diamonds should be considered little better than rhinestones.

“It’s kind of like dropping the atom bomb on the lab-created industry,” said Zimnisky. “This isn’t about trying to take market share in the lab-created industry, it’s about trying to steer the identity of the industry and prevent it cannibalizing natural diamonds.”