British Pakistani boy, 12, makes £290,000 during summer holidays

LONDON: A 12-year-old British Pakistani boy Benyamin Ahmed has made £290000 during the school holidays after creating a series of digital pictures of Weird Whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.

Benyamin Ahmed told Geo News in an interview that he was “excited” to become the “youngest programmer of the world to earn this much money online without having a bank account”. He said his artworks went viral after he posted a thread on his creation. “I had only a few followers on my Twitter. Luckily, someone big on Twitter sharing the same interest Retweeted me and today I have over 1200,000 followers and from BBC to New York Post to Geo News, everyone has picked up my news,” said the confident young man.

Benyamin Ahmed’s parents are from Pakistan. His father’s side is from Faisalabad in Punjab while his mother’s parents are from Peshawar. The young genius understands both Urdu and Pashto well but doesn’t speak either of these languages.

Benyamin Ahmed said he learnt coding from his father Imran Ahmed who is a software developer and has been teaching his two sons Benyamin and Yousaf Ahmed about it since they were both under six years of age.

Imran Ahmed explained that NFTs allow artwork to be tokenised into a digital certificate of ownership, which can be bought and sold and the owners can have right to the original work. “Benyamin has become a hit because he’s only 12, he’s highly creative, he has no bank account and no bank accountant and keeps his money in an online lockchain. His story is unique in all aspects. I did teach him and my other son about the coding methods but they have been doing it on their own and they like it a lot. I set up good systems for them.”

Benyamin Ahmed said he has stored his earnings in Ethereum, a crypto currency in which they were sold. Benyamin Ahmed said: “I know the price value fluctuates in this market but this is the future and this is here to stay.”

Benyamin Ahmed said he “feels great” that he has been tipped as the youngest self-made millionaire. The young programmer enjoys swimming, badminton and cricket but he has not been to the cricket academy or to swimming in a long time due to the lockdown.”

Benyamin shared that he started working on the Moving Whales during the summer holidays. “I completed everything and put it up on sale and within five weeks I made over £290,000 and it's growing. Weird Whales is my second digital-art collection, I earlier did a Minecraft-inspired set that didn’t sell well.