12-year-old British Pakistani boy earns £290,000 from whale NFTs

Twelve year old Benyamin Ahmed from London made £290,000 during his summer holidays after selling a series of his artwork of pixelated Weird Whales NFTs, reported BBC.

NFTs allow artworks to be used to create a digital certificate of ownership, a kind of token, which can be bought and sold. The buyer does not get the actual work or its copyright.

Ahmed keeps his earnings in the form of Ethereum, a cryptocurrency they were sold in, since he did not have a bank account.

Ahmed and his brother were taught coding by their father and had a strong network of technology for support and guidance. His first digital art collection was inspired by Minecraft, while the second was called Weird Whales. He was inspired by the famous pixelated whale meme image and a digital art-style, but used his own program for this collection. He created 3,350 emoji whales with his program.

He said that “It was interesting to see all of them hatch, as they appeared on my screen slowly generating”. He even wants to make an underwater game featuring the pixelated whales. Ahmed is now working hard on his third artwork collection inspired by superheroes.

Ahmed’s father, Yousef supports his son’s work and is 100% certain that his son has not broken any copyright law and has hired lawyers to ensure the work is audited and trademarked properly. Ahmed’s YouTube videos on his hobby aim to inspire kids his age, to do what they love and not “force yourself to do coding, maybe because you get peer pressured - just as if you like cooking, do cooking, if you like dancing, do dances, just do it to the best of your ability”.