A 22-year-old has joined the ranks of NFT royalty this week – turning his selfie collection into virtual gold.

Hailing from Semarang in Indonesia, Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali embarked on a fun project way back in 2017 – a simple goal to photograph his face every single day. Since then, he’s amassed 1,000 selfies – which he thought would be interesting to turn into an animated ‘time-lapse’ video.

It all started when he had the ‘funny’ idea to take each of the 1,000 images he collected, and turn them into NFTs for sale on OpenSea:

Originally, Ghozali priced each image at 0.00001 ETH, which amounts to around $0.03 or just over two Indian rupees. To the young tech enthusiast’s surprise and delight, 35 photos sold within just one day, followed by another 200.

“I was thinking it might be funny if one of the collectors collected my face,” Ghozali told AFP. “I never thought anybody would want to buy the selfies.” On his OpenSea page, Ghozali describes his project as follows:

‘I took photos of myself since I was 18 to 22 years old ( 2017 – 2021 )

it’s really a picture of me standing in front of the computer day by day (sic)’

Fr whatever reason, several high-profile traders took an interest in Ghozali’s NFTs. Whether it’s the simplicity of the idea or some deep understanding of crypto trends, they quickly skyrocketed in value, soaring to as much as 4 ETH ($12,000) apiece.

At the time of writing this article, Ghozali’s portfolio is worth about 383 ETH – just over $1 million.

Local tax authorities took immediate notice, and amusingly congratulated him while simultaneously asking him to get registered for tax payments:

“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.

(Header Image: Ghozali Everyday)