Benyamin Ahmed is just 12 years old and he is already making money from the sale Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). He has already made $350,000 from the sale of collection of digital art he coded, called Weird Whales, as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Weird Whales is an NFT collection which features 3,350 pixelated whales, each with distinct traits.
The twelve-year-old programmer living in UK created all the base layers for the whales (normal, zombie, ape, alien) and the traits using pixel art. He then generated 3350 unique digital collectibles programmatically using an open-source Python script that he customized for his collection. It is the first instance of a Kawaii pixel whale used in a generative art project with custom on-chain and cryptographically secure provenance.
Launched in July, Ahmed’s collection sold out in nine hours, and he made over 80 ether in one day. Since he has held his profits in ether, that sum is worth over $255,000 with today’s pricing. He then earned an additional 30 ether, worth over $95,000, from the resale market, since Ahmed earns a 2.5% royalty on each secondary sale.
Ahmed has made over $350,000 to date, and by the end of August, projects his total earnings will be over $400,000.
This is pretty decent for a youngster that does not even own a traditional bank account; only a cryptocurrency wallet.
According to Ahmed in a discussion with CNBC, he plans to keep all his ether and not convert it to fiat money. “It might be early proof that, in the future, maybe everyone doesn’t [need] a bank account and just has an ether address and a wallet.” (However, he may soon create a bank account for tax purposes, he says.)
Weird Whales is not his first project but it has done well compared his first attempt, Minecraft Yee Haa, which is a collection of 40 colorful, pixelized avatars.
Benyamin Ahmed says he is already working on another NFT project and predicts that many more successful NFT collections will have a meme component.
