A 12-year-old boy has made about ￡290,000 (US$399,185) after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.
Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artwork called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays in the UK.
His father, Imran Ahmed, a software developer, described the images as similar to “digital Pokemon cards” and said they had been a big success because collectors realized their historical significance.
“People find the art secondary,” he said. “Imagine when the printing press came out, if you managed to get hold of a book that was an original, written by a 12-year-old that went viral, you can imagine how that would accrue value over time because of the historical significance.”
Ben created the set of 3,350 whales in the style of a common whale meme seen in the video game Minecraft on a pixel art Web site. He was then able to sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“I chose whales because in cryptocurrency a whale is someone with 1,000 bitcoin,” Ben said. “I could then say that everyone who owns a whale, is a whale. I could craft that catchline.”
“People connected with my story because I was so young ... and then it kind of just went everywhere,” he said.
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