12-year-old boy earns 400,000 USD after 2 months selling NFT

Benyamin Ahmed is not a 12-year-old like kids of that age. When he's not in school, he goes swimming, plays taekwondo and learns to code.

At just 5 years old, Ahmed started learning to code after following his father, Imran, as a web developer. He started with HTML and CSS, then continued to improve his coding skills, then learned JavaScript and other programming languages. Recently, however, NFT (Non-Fungible Token) – the term for a digital asset using blockchain technology – has attracted Ahmed.

"I first found out about NFT earlier this year," said Ahmed, who lives in London. "I'm fascinated by NFT because you can easily transfer ownership of NFT using blockchain."

NFTs are the only digital assets, including jpegs and video clips, represented by code recorded on the blockchain. Each NFT can be bought and sold, just like physical assets, but the blockchain allows for tracking the ownership and validity of each NFT.

Ahmed was excited about this technology and decided to create his own collection of NFTs.

12-year-old boy Benyamin Ahmed. Photo: Imran Ahmed

The boy's first NFT collection launched earlier this summer, consisting of 40 colorful, pixelated avatars called Minecraft Yee Haa. This is a collection that he created after spending a lot of time playing the video game Minecraft. He also creates artworks and codes for each of his pieces.

The collection wasn't sold immediately, but it was no problem at all. Ahmed sees the project as more of a learning experience than a "business to make money" and wants to continue doing this.

In June, he began coding Weird Whales, his second NFT collection with 3,350 pixels of whales, each with its own distinct characteristics. The project incorporated a type of meme, using an image of a whale, with features similar to the iconic pixelated CryptoPunks. This is one of the first NFT collections of its kind to be released. Ahmed said the project cost 300 USD.

Ahmed learned to code collections from tutorials and online mentors he encountered on Discord communities. One of the developers behind another NFT project called Boring Bananas sent Ahmed a script to use as a template for writing Weird Whales code.

Ahmed said: "Dad and brother were quite excited to see your work. Everyone did some work on the website, smart contract and posted a thread on Twitter."

One of the whales of Ahmed's NFT Weird Whales collection. Photo: Imran Ahmed

So far, Ahmed has earned more than 350,000 USD. By the end of August, he is expected to get a total income of more than 400,000 USD. After launching in July, the entire collection was sold out in 9 hours and Ahmed has earned more than 80 Ether in one day. Since he kept his profits in Ether, that Ether is valued at more than $255,000 at present value. After that, Ahmed earned another 30 Ether, worth more than $95,000 thanks to the resale market. Ahmed earns 2.5% royalties on every one secondary sale.

Currently, Ahmed does not have a traditional bank account, only a crypto wallet.

“I plan to keep all my Ether and not convert to fiat money because maybe in the future people won’t need a bank account, just have Ether and a digital wallet,” said Ahmed.

Ahmed is planning to do another NFT project and calculates there will be more successful NFT collections if there are memes.

However, what is important is the issue of intellectual property. To resolve this, Ahmed's father contacted lawyers to trademark Weird Whales and other upcoming projects.

"When people buy Weird Whales, they're investing in you and your future," says Ahmed. "With what you're doing, your future will be like famous tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos."