Individuals who created NFTs that are now worth millions
The internet is a weird and wonderful place and provides us with all kinds of crazy stories daily and this one is no different.
With the rising popularity and boom of the blockchain came the NFT craze, and there are so many success stories surrounding it, but there are a few that stand out from the rest.
Overnight MIllionaire
The most exciting to talk about are those who ended up being millionaires overnight without expecting it, accidental millionaires. And one of the best is that of young Al Ghozali from Indonesia, a computer science student and unsuspected millionaire. Whilst studying computer science, Al Ghozali decided it would be a good idea to take some selfies daily and over a long period of time so that he might create a time-lapse project of himself ageing. So he took some pictures of himself and stored them on his computer, never thinking much of them. He did this for almost 5 years, and over time he had built up quite the collection. These were just plain old selfies that he would take on his webcam when he sat down in front of his computer daily.
Meanwhile, the NFT craze hit the internet, and NFTs were all the rage. For those that are not familiar with NFTs, and do not know how to make an NFT, in short, they give the ability to people to claim ownership over digital assets. NFTs come in many forms, like digital art, a digital music file or even a digital document reflecting ownership of something in the real world or online in virtual reality. NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token, meaning they are unique and cannot be swapped for each other as other crypto tokens can. Anyone can create an NFT by a process called minting. It changes whatever you mint into an NFT token, places it onto the blockchain and assigns a serial number to it, making it unique. From there, that specific item cannot be owned by more than one person at a time.
There are marketplaces on the internet like OpenSea where people auction the NFT art they create.
Going back to Al Ghozali and his daily selfies, that's pretty much exactly what he did with the photos he turned into NFTs. He put them up for auction on OpenSea and set a humble $3 as a starting bid price for each of them. Never thought much of it; he did not even expect to get any sales.
But with the internet, anything is possible, and it's impossible to predict what weird fad on the internet will become the hot new trend.
Instant fame
After some time passed, a celebrity chef bought some of his NFT mug shots and gave them some exposure by promoting them on his social media pages. The internet loved them. They were these out-of-place looking mug shots of some weird Indonesian guy staring expressionlessly into a camera. Just the sort of oddity that can go viral. And viral it went. The craze completely took off; his face was being printed on T-shirts, people were writing songs about him, and there were memes and all sorts of buzz on social media. Quickly the sales of his NFT collection started going up. And they kept going up; at this point, the collection is worth over 400 Ethereum netting him around 1 million dollars. Ghozali admitted that he does not know why people are buying his boring photos and doesn't understand this growing fad himself. He is happy that the 5 years of taking photos had paid off; the only thing he has ever asked of his buyers is that they don't abuse his photos in such a way that his parents might be disappointed in him. This made people like him even more, and the sales kept climbing. Ghozali’s story is not the only one out there, however unique it is. This is just one example of how NFTs can go viral and make instant millionaires overnight. It is, however, almost impossible to predict what weird fad will take off on the internet next. But that hasn't stopped millions of people across the world to keep creating NFTs in the hopes they sell for insanely high prices.
