A 12-year-old boy has built an NFT collection worth £3 million after learning to code when he was just five years old.
Benyamin Ahmed, from Pinner in West London, has amassed a fortune selling pixelated images of whales in exchange for cryptocurrency, despite not even being old enough to open his own bank account.
The schoolboy sold his first NFT last year for $60, but their value soon shot up, with some of his images selling for as much as $20,000. He's sold 3,350 NFTs in total, with the total value of the sale and resale of the images reaching around £3 million ($5 million.)
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While the majority of that money goes to individual sellers, Benyamin gets paid commission and royalties each time one of his 'Weird Whales' NFTs changes hands, and has so far earned around £750,000 ($1 million) in cryptocurrency.
It's not what your average 12-year-old kid spends his time doing, but then again, Benyamin clearly isn't your average 12-year-old kid.
He says that he first learned to code from his father when he was just five, and claims that while his friends think what he does is cool, he 'not everyone at my school fully gets it'.
"Lots of people now know my story and it makes me happy to see lots of people are learning about NFTs because of me. I want to continue to introduce lots of people into the NFT space," Benyamin said.
Benyamin's father, Imran, said that he'd encouraged his son to create his NFT collection as a way to learn more about digital art and programming, but that he'd never imagined it would have turned into a genuine crypto empire.
"It was never really about the money, it was about gaining knowledge, but of course the money is a bonus," he said.
"I always said if you do something you're interested in, you'll never work a day in your life. I am so glad he took that advice."
Benyamin is yet to cash out on his returns, and says he's looking forward to seeing where the NFT and crypto space goes in the future. "Here, anyone can join the network," he says. "You can be a refugee or a rich person sat in your mansion and it doesn't make a difference."
Topics: Cryptocurrency, Technology
Hannah Smith