12-Year-Old Boy Earns Over $250,000 by Selling Pixel Whale NFTs

During his summer vacation, a 12‑year‑old British boy named Benjamin drew a series of pixel‑style whale images, each with unique colors and accessories, resembling a set of emoji.

He combined the whale bodies, hats, and pipes using a Python script that automatically generated the metadata required for blockchain sales.

Within nine hours of the July launch, the entire collection sold out, earning Benjamin 80 ETH (over 1.6 million CNY at current prices). He also receives a 2.5% royalty on each secondary sale, which has added another 30+ ETH (≈600 000 CNY) to his earnings.

By the time of writing, 1 500 buyers have purchased a total of 1 500 ETH (≈30 million CNY), and Benjamin expects to surpass 250 000 CNY in total earnings before school resumes.

NFTs (Non‑Fungible Tokens) are unique digital assets that act as a digital “identity card” for items such as GIFs, audio, video, or code, ensuring provable ownership and scarcity on the blockchain.

The popularity of NFTs is driven by collectors seeking digital scarcity, with examples ranging from NBA highlight clips to meme‑driven assets like Dogecoin.

Benjamin’s father, a software developer in the financial sector, taught his sons programming from a young age; both rank in the top 6% on CodeWars.

Beyond his own creations, Benjamin actively collects other NFTs, promotes his work on GitHub, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, and believes that future financial transactions will rely solely on digital wallets rather than traditional bank accounts.

In China, similar NFT phenomena have occurred, such as the rapid sale of Alipay’s “Dunhuang Flying‑Heaven” payment‑code skins and the emergence of platforms like Tencent’s “Huank.”

High‑profile NFT sales include a 5 000‑image digital collage sold for $69 million, Tim Berners‑Lee’s source‑code NFT sold for $5.4 million, and even a 52‑minute audio of flatulence sold for $400, highlighting the speculative and controversial nature of the market.