London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Twelve-year-old boy makes £290,000 from whale NFTs

Twelve-year-old boy makes £290,000 from whale NFTs

A 12-year-old boy from London has made about £290,000 during the school holidays, after creating a series of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

With NFTs, artwork can be "tokenised" to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold.

They do not generally give the buyer the actual artwork or its copyright.

Benyamin Ahmed is keeping his earnings in the form of Ethereum - the crypto-currency in which they were sold.

This means they could go up or down in value and there is no back-up from the authorities if the digital wallet in which he is holding them is hacked or compromised.

He has never had a traditional bank account.

Extremely proud


Benyamin's classmates are as yet unaware of his new-found crypto-wealth, although he has made YouTube videos about his hobby, which he enjoys alongside swimming, badminton and taekwondo.

"My advice to other children that maybe want to get into this space is don't force yourself to do coding, maybe because you get peer pressured - just as if you like cooking, do cooking, if you like dancing, do dances, just do it to the best of your ability," he said.

Benyamin's father, Imran, a software developer who works in traditional finance, encouraged Benyamin and his brother, Yousef, to start coding at the ages of five and six.

The children have had the advantage of a strong network of technology experts to call on for advice and help - but he is extremely proud of them.

More serious


"It was a little bit of a fun exercise - but I picked up on really early that they were really receptive to it and they were really good," Imran said.

"So then we started getting a little bit more serious - and now it's every single day... but you can't cram this stuff, you can't say I'm going to learn coding in three months."

The boys did 20 or 30 minutes of coding exercises a day - including on holiday, he said.


Weird Whales is Benyamin's second digital-art collection, following an earlier Minecraft-inspired set that sold less well.

This time, he drew inspiration from a well known pixelated whale meme image and a popular digital-art style but used his own program to create the set of 3,350 emoji-type whales.

"It was interesting to see all of them hatch, as they appeared on my screen slowly generating," he said.

Benyamin is already working on his third, superhero-themed collection.

He would also like to make an "underwater game" featuring the whales.

"That would be amazing," he said.

Imran is "100% certain" his son has not broken copyright law and has engaged lawyers to "audit" his work, as well as getting advice on how to trademark his own designs.

The art world is divided over the current trend for NFTs.

Artists say they are a useful additional line of revenue.

And there are many stories of eye-wateringly high sales.

But there is also scepticism over whether they are a realistic long-term investment.

And former Christie's auctioneer Charles Allsopp told BBC News buying them made "no sense".

"The idea of buying something which isn't there is just strange," he said earlier this year.

"People who invest in it are slight mugs - but I hope they don't lose their money."

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×