Since digital artist Beeple broke records with $69 million in sales in 2021, NFT has become a buzzword. More and more artists are placing their work on platforms like OpenSea to be bought and sold with cryptocurrency.
If you doubt the power of NFTs, the story of Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali might change your mind. The 22-year-old Indonesian computer science student became an overnight millionaire after selling his selfies as NFTs.
5 Years with 933 selfies
Since 2017, Ghozali has been taking selfies daily. Even though he missed a few days, he still has close to 1,000 selfies. He originally included them to make a time-lapse video, but he recently decided to see what would happen if he sold his images as NFTs.
“I thought it would be funny if one of the collectors collected my face,” Ghozali said. “I never thought anyone would want to buy selfies, that’s why I just priced them at $3 [0.00001 ETH].”
Become a Millionaire Overnight
What started as a joke quickly turned into something serious as Ghozali began to see how quickly his image was selling. His collection, sold on OpenSea, is called Ghozali Everyday.
After going on sale in late December 2021, the collection went viral when a famous Indonesian chef bought one and started advertising it online. Now, the price has spiked to a high of 0.9 ETH ($3,000) and he has sold 387 NFTs. Over the past seven days, the average daily price for one of Ghozali’s selfies has been 0.249 ETH ($586).
At the moment, his total income is more than 1 million dollars. This also includes what he earns from royalties after the NFT has sold the transaction. In addition to his millionaire status, he also became an NFT celebrity overnight, which made students feel a bit embarrassed by the attention.
Fulfill your dream with “Ghozali Everyday”
He often shares sales updates with his Twitter followers, and recently mused,
“Today (I) sold over 230+ photos (selfies) and gave until now i don’t understand why you want to buy my #NFT photo!!! but I thank you for the 5 years of hard work that paid off. ”
When he’s not being interviewed by journalists or invited to NFT forums, he’s thinking about how he’ll explain his newfound wealth to his family. As of 10 days ago, he still hasn’t shared what happened to his parents. “Honestly, I still haven’t had the courage to tell my parents, they’ll wonder where I get the money from,” he said.
What he will definitely do is pay his taxes. His start-up fortune caught the eye of local tax authorities, who kindly gave him advice on how to pay taxes. Ghozali’s reaction? “This is the first tax payment in my life,” Ghozali replied. “Of course I will pay because I am a good Indonesian citizen.”
As for what he intends to do with the money? In the future, he hopes to open an animation studio and for now, he will invest the money. In the meantime, he’ll continue taking selfies so he can make a time-lapse video of himself upon graduation.
As for his photos, he’s just asking people not to overuse his pictures and has started posting some of the things people are doing with his selfies, like turning them into shirts 🙂
Just for you
Are you impressed with this Indonesian student’s Ghozali Everyday collection?
Numbers like that may seem like the NFT is an easy path to wealth, but as with other investments, the reality is that getting rich by investing in NFTs is far from easy.
In fact, most NFTs are nothing more than speculations at this point. However, if you apply the same investment discipline and principles that you use when buying stocks, you can create lasting wealth in the NFT space. Here are some suggestions on how to proceed:
- NFT’s Cracked Review (Hooray!) Selling FREE & RARE things
- ProfitNFT review: (Dear!) Create & Sell NFTs in 1 Music Note
Wish you good luck and success!
