A 12-year-old kid earns more than RM1.6 million from pixelated whale art NFTs

A 12-year-old boy, Benyamin Ahmed, made the equivalent to nearly USD 400,000 (RM1.6 million) in Ethereum from his non-fungible token (NFT) collection. The collection contains 3,352 adorable pixelated images of ‘Weird Whales’—each with distinctive traits.

According to Benyamin, he was “fascinated by the concepts of blockchain tech and NFTs”, and games like Minecraft and chatting with other NFT creators inspired him to make his own collection. He was so inspired by Minecraft that his first NFT collection—which he created, coded and launched earlier this summer—consists of 40 avatars in the Minecraft Yee Haa collection.

The Minecraft-themed collection didn’t immediately sell, but Benyamin saw the project as “more of a learning experience than a money grab” and wanted to continue to create. In June, he began to code Weird Whales, which features a whopping total of 3,350 pixelated whales.

Design-wise, they look much cleaner than his first collection and similar to the CryptoPunks collection, which was one of the first NFT collections to exist. Benyamin, who spent USD 300 (RM1,251) on the entire project, earned about 80 ETH (about RM1 million) on those initial sales. 

He then collected another 30 ETH (about RM400,000) in royalties when some of his buyers decided to sell their ‘Whales’ to someone else. By the end of the month, it is projected that he’ll have over USD 400,000 in Ethereum (RM1.6 million). Benyamin says he doesn’t plan to cash out—but he may soon create a bank account “for tax purposes”.

“I plan to keep all my ether and not convert it to fiat money. 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,” said Benyamin.

Malaysian graffiti artist Katun has also made over RM1.6 million in a span of 24 hours, after selling two NFT collections. Katun’s NFT titled “Apes Stand Strong” is limited to 50 pieces and it sold out in just 30 minutes at 1 ETH each.

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