Non-fungible tokens are skyrocketing in popularity. What started out as a way for artists to digitize their work has turned into a lucrative investment opportunity for those who buy and sell digital assets.
While the trend still isn't fully mainstream, those who are hopping on early are realizing the technology's potential. NFTs are digital assets that can be in the form of images, audio, or even tweets. They allow the original creator to sell their content on a blockchain, mostly Ethereum's, and even collect commission on the secondary market every time they are resold.
Benyamin Ahmed is only 12 years old, but an NFT collection he created called "Weird Whales" has already managed to rack up 106 ethers, according to his digital wallet. His collection features pixelated images of whales against solid, brightly colored backgrounds. And what initially started off as a fun learning activity turned into a very profitable project that sold out in nine hours.
One ether was trading at around $3,041.24 on Thursday. That meant Ahmed's earnings were worth about $322,346. What's more, he's never had a bank account and told Insider that for now, he's not planning on flipping it into fiat but would rather hold crypto.
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From 'Boring Bananas' to 'Weird Whales'
"Weird Whales" was his second attempt at building a collection of artsy and flashy NFTs. He originally started by creating artwork on Photoshop that he could later flip to an NFT. But after creating 40 images, he realized it was too much time and effort.
He later learned from his dad, Imran Ahmed, that there's an easier way to create tons of NFTs using a python script. Imran is a web engineering lead at the London Stock Exchange, and has been instrumental in guiding Benyamin on how to code.
"So, I researched into that and found "Boring Bananas," another NFT collection, which had released all their code. And I managed to use their code to create 3,350 'Weird Whales'," Benyamin told Insider.
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Benyamin said that Vee, a Boring Banana digital research team member, sent him the code which allowed him to generate the NFT collection. He then customized it to handle his different trait layers and backgrounds. Once he was done, he took to his Twitter account, @ObiWanBenoni, to share his process.
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"I wrote a tweet about how I was able to do it at the age of 12 and then Boring Bananas kind of tweeted about it. And he has a large follower base on Twitter. So it kind of just went viral. So that's why the second NFT collection I did kind of increased in sales," Benyamin said.
He launched his "Weird Whales" on the Ethereum blockchain on July 19 at a mint price of 0.025 ETH and within nine hours, they had sold out.
"Most of the projects were selling at 0.08 Ethereum. And so he just priced it lower than the other ones," Imran said. "And we never knew that it's going to sell out straight away. So I was trying to prepare him as well, like 'look you might sell one or two, and then it might go quiet for a bit', but it just went viral and it just sold out in the same day."
But his profits did not stop there. The NFTs remained tied to their original creator, which means Benyamin is still collecting commissions, a percentage point set by the original creator, on the secondary marketplace. Benyamin has set his at 2.5%, and to date, 1,000 ETHs worth of "Weird Whales" have been resold on OpenSea, a peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs.
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Learning to code
While he's seen amazing success, coding isn't a job for this 12 year old. It's something he loves doing as a hobby. His father would come home from work and sometimes code at home. Benyamin and his brother would poke around him while he was on his computer.
"So, I set him and his brother up with a couple of laptops and I started teaching them. Then they got kind of really absorbed into it," Imran said. "And, I just thought, okay, this is going to be a good skill set. And I used to joke with them, 'oh in 20 years' time, you'll probably thank me that I taught you how to code'."
To Imran's surprise, it took less time than that. Even during family trips, Benyamin and his brother would enjoy a day of fun at the beach and then be eager to hop on their laptops and code in the evening.
"It started as a learning experience, and we want to keep it as a learning experience because it is an educational project before it's anything else," Imran said. "It was never supposed to be like a huge commercial venture. It just went viral because people got attracted to his stories."
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The project was launched for about $300 and it was mainly on Ethereum gas fees to deploy the contracts on the blockchain.
Benyamin hosts a YouTube channel under the username Benoni, where he shares his coding journey mainly through a game called Code Wars, built by an educational community for computer programming. His advice to others is to do what you love because anything other than is a waste.
"My advice is to just do what you like. So, if you like cooking or something, do that, don't just try and force yourself to do something else Just because maybe your friend does it, or you're peer pressured into doing it. And always have fun while doing something. Treat it as a learning experience," Benyamin said.
