12-year-old coder earns 350,000 USD selling NFT dolphin collection

Benyamin Ahmed (12 years old) has created an interesting collection of NFTs, attracting the attention of many people.

'I first learned about NFT earlier this year. I am fascinated by NFT because it is easy to transfer ownership of NFT using blockchain,' shared Ahmed.

Ahmed was excited about this technology and decided to create a collection of his own NFTs.

The child coder's first NFT collection is Minecraft Yee Haa with 30 NFTs as Minecraft avatars. 'I created them after spending most of my time playing Minecraft,' Ahmad said. The boy creates works and codes them himself.

However, the collection was not sold immediately and Ahmed sees the project as a lesson rather than a business.

In June, the 12-year-old coder began coding for the Weird Whales NFT collection, which features 3,350 NFT whales and features a unique twist. This project merges with a type of meme - using an image of a whale - with similar characteristics to the NFT CryptoPunk collection.

The cost for Ahmed's NFT Weird Whales collection is $300. Ahmed taught himself how to code collections through tutorials in the Discord community. Weird Whales got its start when one of the NFT Boring Bananas project developers sent Benyamin a Python script with a template for creating his own multi-layered images.

After launching in July, the entire collection sold out in 9 hours and Ahmed made around $255,000 in just one day. After that, Ahmed earned more than $95,000 from the resale market, as the royalties for each resale that Ahmed earned was 2.5%. Currently, Ahmed receives $350,000 and is expected to be able to earn $400,000 by the end of August.

Ahmed is creating another NFT project and predicts it will be more successful because of the meme.

'I think memes have great value in the NFT, because a lot of NFT projects are linked to the meme, in the same way that Dogecoin is inspired by the meme,' Ahmed said. To protect the copyright of the Weird Whales collection, Ahmed's father contacted a lawyer to register the copyright.

'When people buy Weird Whales, they are investing in me and my future. If I continue as I am, I will probably be like other tech entrepreneurs out there, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos,' Ahmed shared.

At the age of 5, Ahmed started programming after watching his father develop the web. Ahmed started with HTML and CSS, then learned JavaScripts and other programs.

NFT (Non-fungible token) - a chain of codes representing the above items - uses blockchain technology, similar to the Bitcoin platform. The usability of the NFT lies not in the items, like the JPG painting or the Tweet above, but in their exclusive ownership, which is certified by the NFT code chain. Thanks to that, the item becomes unique.

Jessica Tanner

Update 27 August 2021