12-Year-Old Earns $400,000 Selling NFTs to Idiots

"When people buy Weird Whales, they’re investing in me and my future."

Candy, Babies

The latest news from the world of NFTs — those dubious digital ownership certificates for art, media, and just about anything else bought and sold over the blockchain — is the story of a 12-year-old boy who's made a small fortune selling pixelated doodles to thousands of suckers, sorry, crypto enthusiasts.

Benyamin Ahmed told CNBC that he's fascinated by the concepts of blockchain tech and NFTs, and the time he spent playing games like "Minecraft" and chatting with other NFT creators inspired him to program a set of his own. And hey, shame on us for assuming that the NFT fad had already faded into irrelevance, because right now Ahmed is sitting on nearly $400,000 in Ethereum after his NFT collection sold out overnight.

Weird Whales

Ahmed made his fortune almost overnight with a collection of 3,350 NFTs that he named "Weird Whales." Much like the prominent "CryptoPunk" NFT collection, each NFT comes in the form of a pixelated cartoon image of a whale and, well, not much else.

But that ethereality hasn't stopped buyers. CNBC reports that the Weird Whales all sold out in nine hours. Ahmed, who spent $300 on the entire project, raked up 80 ether on those initial sales. That's worth about $250,000 as of this article's publication. Since that initial sale in July, Ahmed has collected another 30 ether — about $94,000 — in royalties when some of his buyers decided to sell their whales to someone else.

By the end of the month, CNBC projects that he'll have over $400,000 in Ethereum — and Ahmed says he doesn't plan to cash out.

"I plan to keep all my ether and not convert it to fiat money," Ahmed told CNBC. "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."

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