12-year-old makes £290,000 by selling whale emojis as NFTs

Team Udayavani, Aug 29, 2021, 11:46 AM IST

A teen from London has made around £290,000 (Rs 2,93,38,798) after he sold his pixelated digital whale emoji collection, called Weird Whales, as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). The collection has 3,350 pixelated whales.

Benyamin Ahmed, 12, decided to keep his earnings in the form of Ethereum, the cryptocurrency in which his collection of 3,350 whales was sold.

CNBC reported that he spent $300 on the project, which was the cost of the gas fee charged to blockchains to verify every NFT.

Hi friends, to celebrate Weird Whales hitting 1000 ETH traded, a GIVEAWAY: WHALE #1109 ($400)!
????

? Follow @ObiWanBenoni
? Follow @WeirdWhales
? Retweet ? & Like ❤️
? Tag two friends ?

Ends 26 Aug#NFT #NFTGiveaway #NFTCommunity #nftcollectors #Ethereum #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/wSopsgmZ9q

— Benyamin | benoni.eth (@ObiWanBenoni) August 19, 2021

He started coding when he was five years old after being encouraged by his father Imran, who is a software developer.

Ahmed designed whales, on pixel art, for his collection based on different backgrounds, eye accessories, headgears, mouth accessories and bases.

As per reports, “He then generated 3,350 unique digital collectibles programmatically using an open-source Python script that he customized for his collection. It is the first instance of a Kawaii pixel whale used in a generative art project with custom on-chain and cryptographically secure provenance,”

“I got fascinated with NFTs because you can easily transfer the ownership of an NFT by the blockchain,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed had created 40 pixelated versions of Minecraft Yee Haa, as per CNBC.