BENYAMIN AHMED, 12, from London has made about £290,000 during the school holidays by creating a series of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Artwork can be "tokenised" using NFTs to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold. However, they do not generally give the buyer the actual artwork or its copyright.
Ahmed is keeping his earnings in Ethereum - the form of crypto-currency his creations were being sold.
BBC reports that Ahmed's classmates are unaware of his crypto-wealth, although he has made YouTube videos about his new-found hobby during the holidays.
Ahmed's father, a software developer encouraged him and his brother, Yousef, to start coding at the ages of five and six. According to him, both his sons did 20 or 30 minutes of coding exercises a day - including on holidays.
Weird Whales is Ahmed's second digital-art collection, his earlier was 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.
Ahmed's father says they have engaged lawyers to "audit" his work and getting advice how to trademark the designs.
Rage bait isn’t just clickbait — it’s Oxford University Press’ word of the year for 2025 iStock/Gemini AI 
Online Trends iStock
Rage bait isn\u2019t just clickbait \u2014 it\u2019s Oxford University Press\u2019 word of the year for 2025 iStock/Gemini AI 
