Student accidentally becomes a millionaire after turning selfies into NFT as a joke
‘I was thinking it might be funny if one of the collectors collected my face,’ 22-year-old says
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Your support makes all the difference.A student in Indonesia has made a fortune after turning a collection of selfies into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) because he thought “it might be funny”.
Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali, who studies computer science, took nearly 1,000 pictures of himself sitting in front of his computer over a four-year period, before transforming them into NFTs – unique digital items that are bought, sold and stored on a blockchain.
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The 22-year-old originally priced each one at just 0.00001 ETH ($3 ) but they soon sky-rocketed in value after gaining the attention of high-risk crypto traders, with individual images now selling for more than $10,000.
“Uploading my photo into NFT lol,” he tweeted on 10 January.
The next day, he tweeted: “Can’t believe people actually bought my photo NFT, 35 already sold in one day.”
More than 200 of his selfie NFTs were sold later that day, with hundreds more picked up by traders over the following days on the platform OpenSea.
“I was thinking it might be funny if one of the collectors collected my face,” Mr Ghozali told AFP.
“I never thought anybody would want to buy the selfies, which is why I only priced them at $3.”
His selfies are now selling for up to 4 ETH ($12,500) apiece, with the entire collection, named Ghozali Everyday, valued at around 374 ETH ($1.2 million).
Local tax authorities have already reached out to him via Twitter to direct him to make payments, however he claimed that his parents still do not know of his new-found wealth.
“To be honest I still haven’t got the courage to tell my parents, they would be wondering where I got the money from,” he said.
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