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

LONDON: A 12-year-old British Pakistani boy Benyamin Ahmed has made around £300,000 during school holidays after creating a series of digital pictures of Weird Whales and selling tokens of ownership stored on the blockchain.

Benyamin Ahmed told Geo.tv 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 artwork 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 12,00,000 followers — from the BBC to New York Post to Geo News — everyone has picked up my news,” said the confident young man.

Benyamin Ahmed’s grandparents 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 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 Yusuf Ahmed about it since they were both under six years of age.

Speaking to Geo.tv, Imran Ahmed explained that NFTs allow the artwork to be tokenised into a digital certificate of ownership, which can be bought and sold and the owners can have the right to the original work.

“Benyasim has become a hit because he’s only 12. He’s highly creative, has no bank account and no accountant, therefore, he keeps his money in an online blockchain."

Imran Ahmed said that his son's story is unique in all aspects. 

"I taught him and my other son about coding methods but they have been doing it on their own and they like it a lot. I set up good systems for them," he said.

Benyamin said he has stored his earnings in Ethereum, a type of cryptocurrency. He added: “I know the price value fluctuates in this market but this is the future and this is here to stay.”

The bright young man added that he “feels great” that he is on course to becoming 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 said 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 as I earlier did a Minecraft-inspired set that didn’t sell well.