12-year-old reportedly set to earn $400K in two months selling NFTs
[New York Post, Benyamin Ahmed]
A 12-year-old whiz kid from London who doesn’t even have a bank account is reportedly set to rake in about $400,000 in just two months from creating and selling NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
Benyamin Ahmed told CNBC that he launched his second collection of NFTs, called Weird Whales, in June.
NFTs are digital assets that represent ownership of virtual items like computerized art and sports highlights. Transactions of NFTs are recorded on blockchain technology and powered by collections of code known as smart contracts.
NFTs have exploded in popularity this year, with sales volume surging to new heights this month and fetching eye-popping prices — and Ahmed’s collection is no exception.
The compact coder’s Weird Whales NFT collection is surging in popularity, with the cheapest one available currently going for just under $2,000 worth of ethereum.
He reportedly began to create the code for the collection in June, basing it off CryptoPunks, a groundbreaking project that was one of the first NFT collections to exist.
Similar to the CryptoPunks collection, which features 10,000 unique pixelated portraits, Ahmed’s Weird Whales include 3,400 pixelated animations of whales — all of which have unique traits, like hats, cigarettes, pipes and colorful backgrounds.
It cost Ahmed about $300 to make the collection, he said, mostly due to so-called gas fees, which are charged to blockchain verify NFTs.
Ahmed told CNBC that he learned to create the collection from online tutorials and through the guidance of mentors he met on Discord communities.
“My brother and my dad were very excited and fascinated at how they came out,” Ahmed said. “We did some work on the website and the smart contract and posted a thread on Twitter.”
The collection launched in July and entirely sold out within nine hours, making Ahmed over 80 ether in a single day. As of this writing, that’s worth over $250,000.
He’s earned an additional 30 ether from the 2.5 percent royalty fee he makes on each resale.
Ahmed’s crypto wallet address confirms his recent accumulation of ether and shows he’s made over $350,000 so far. He told CNBC he thinks he’ll make over $400,000 by the end of the month.
“I plan to keep all my ether and not convert it to fiat money,” Ahmed told the outlet. “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.”
He added that he might soon create a bank account for tax purposes, and that he’ll continue to create NFTs, especially ones with “some kind of meme-link to it.”
And he’s working on trademarking his Weird Whales projects as well as upcoming collections so that he can protect his ownership of the intellectual property behind the projects.
“When people buy Weird Whales, they’re investing in me and my future,” Ahmed reportedly said. “If I carry on as I’ve been, I might end up like other tech entrepreneurs out there like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.”