A student accidentally becomes a millionaire after converting selfies into NFTs as a joke

A student in Indonesia made a fortune after converting a batch of selfies into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) because he thought « it might be funny ».

Oltan Gustav Al-Ghazali, who studies computer science, took nearly 1,000 photos of himself sitting in front of his computer over the course of four years, before converting them into NFTs – unique digital items that are bought, sold and stored on the blockchain.

The 22-year-old priced each one at just 0.00001 ETH (€2.65), but quickly soared in value after gaining the attention of high-risk cryptocurrency traders, with single images now selling for more than 8000€.

“Upload my photo on NFT lol,” he tweeted on January 10.

The next day, he tweeted: « Can’t believe people actually bought my NFT picture, 35 actually sold out in one day. »

More than 200 of his NFTs were sold out later that day, with hundreds being picked up by merchants over the following days on the OpenSea platform.

“I was thinking it might be funny for a collector to collect my face,” said Mr. Ghazali.

« I never thought anyone would want to buy selfies, which is why I priced them at just $3. »

His selfies now sell for up to 4 ETH (10,000 euros) apiece, with the entire collection, called Ghozali Everyday, valued at around 374 ETH (one million euros).

Local tax authorities have already reached out to him via Twitter to direct him to make the payments, but he claims his parents still don’t know about his newfound wealth.

“To be honest, I still don’t have the courage to tell my parents, they would wonder where I got the money from,” he said.