The 12-year old founder of Weird Whales NFT Collection proves that age doesn’t matter even with technology! Following in his web developer father’s footsteps, Benyamin Ahmed launched his own NFT Collectibles featuring 3250 pixelated whales.
Meet the Youngest Successful NFT Artist with his Weird Whales NFT Collection, Benyamin Ahmed. Credit: CNBC
In July, the young London-based developer dropped the Collection and raised 80 ETH after selling out in just 90 minutes. Reportedly, he keeps his profits in ETH. Applying today’s rate based on CoinMarketCap, he earned over $266,884 when he finally called it a day.
The remarkable story of Benyamin Ahmed garnered media attention from major crypto and mainstream platforms. In fact, this extra boost pushed the total lifetime volume of the project to 1500 ETH on OpenSea or around $5.6 Million.
How The Weird Whales NFT Collection Came To Be
Benyamin Ahmed created all the base layers for the whales (normal, zombie, ape, alien) and the traits using pixel art. He then generated 3350 unique digital collectibles programmatically using an open-source Python script that he customized. It is the first pixelart whale in a generative art project with custom on-chain and cryptographically secure provenance.
The Collection follows the aesthetic and the model of OG Collectible CryptoPunks. Credit: The Coin Shark
Yes, Benyamin is not an ordinary 12-year old.
Along the way, he received a lot of help and positive responses from the NFT Community. Basically, he learned how to code the entire Weird Whales NFT collection from online tutorials and Discord mentors. Luckily, the community were more than happy to help Ahmed. In fact, one of the developers behind another NFT project called Boring Bananas sent him a script to use as a template for coding the Weird Whales NFTs.
As seen in this pixelart Collection with trendy bright colours, Benyamin Ahmed has an affinity for memes. He said, “I think memes have significant value in this space, as a lot of projects have some kind of meme-link to it. I think memes play a big part in this space.” For example, the Doge Pound NFT Collection featuring Shiba Inu inspired the creation of the mother of all Meme Coins: DogeCoin. Clearly, Benyamin used this thinking whilst creating Weird Whales too.
To kick off this project, Ahmed only spent $300. Incredibly, the biggest expense was paying gas fees – proving that NFTs make art accessible. It doesn’t matter how young you are, anyone can join in.
Who is Benyamin Ahmed?
Actually, Weird Whales was not Benyamin Ahmed’s first foray into NFTs. His first NFT collection, launched in 2021, consists of 40 colorful, pixelized avatars called Minecraft Yee Haa. Amusingly, he admits that he created it after spending too many hours playing Minecraft. Much like you’d expect any 12 year old boy to be.
Unfortunately, the Collection didn’t fly off the shelves but entrepreneurial Ahmed was not discouraged. As someone genuinely passionate about NFT technology, he deemed it a learning experience. Now, who would have known? As weird Whales NFTs are still going strong in 2022.
Meanwhile, aside from the NFT Community, Ahmed also has the full support of his family. He shared, “My brother and my dad were very excited and fascinated at how they came out. We did some work on the website and the smart contract and posted a thread on Twitter.”
Indeed, Benyamin Ahmed has his own Youtube channel and also posts threads on twitter with the help of his dad. What’s more, this is just the start of Benyamin Ahmed’s NFT journey, as he has his eyes set on bigger things. He said, “When people buy Weird Whales, they’re investing in me and my future. If I carry on as I’ve been, I might end up like other tech entrepreneurs out there like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.”
You can Find Benyamin Ahmed’s weird whales collection on OpenSea.
