12-year-old makes a fortune selling NFTs designed while on vacation

Benyamin Ahmed took advantage of his vacation to create a series of small pixelated drawings in the shape of whales that he was able to resell for exorbitant prices.

The NFT madness never ends. The latest example, that of a 12-year-old boy who has just sold a series of small pixelated drawings for £290,000 (about 338,000 euros), reports the BBC . His universe, inspired by Minecraft, and called "Weird Whales", features 3,350 whale drawings. Thanks to NFTs (non-fungible tokens), he was able to "tokenize" them, which creates a digital certificate of ownership before reselling them.

After this sale via the OpenSea platform, Benyamin Ahmed, who never had a traditional bank account, now has a digital wallet since his winnings are kept in the form of Ethereum, the cryptocurrency in which they were sold.

Already new projects

It must be said that the little boy and his brother were very quickly launched into the bath thanks to their father who gave them programming lessons since the age of six. They did 20 to 30 minutes of coding a day "even on public holidays", the Londoner told the BBC. "It's very interesting to see them being born, as they appeared on the screen over a slow generation," he rejoices about his whales.

When this project was set up, the father took it upon himself to verify that the little whales did not violate any copyrights and even hired a lawyer to protect the intellectual property of the project. NFTs sometimes generate incredible sums, but many are skeptical about this kind of investment, considered unsustainable in the long term. "The idea of ​​buying something that isn't there is just weird," said British businessman and Christie's shareholder Charles Allsopp. Benyamin Ahmed, for his part, intends to ride the wave and make his new creations bear fruit. He is already working on a new project, based on superheroes. To one day become the youngest millionaire to hold cryptocurrencies?