An Accidental Millionaire: Al Ghozali’s NFT Story of Success

Picture this, you’re sitting in front of your computer taking photos of yourself for five years straight with a plan of making a timelapse montage one day. But then you decide to sell those pics as NFTs and become a millionaire. 

Like the story? Think it’s too good to be true? But that’s exactly what happened to a guy named Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali, a student from Indonesia. Learn more about his fascinating story below!

Meet Al Ghozali, your computer nerd neighbor 

The story takes us way down to Semarang, Indonesia. Our hero is an everyman by the name of Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali. 

Al Ghozali is a student. He’s twenty-two and he studies computer science at a local university. A few years ago, Al Ghozali thought it would be great to take pictures of himself every day for an uncertain period, and then maybe if he wouldn’t change his mind or lose interest in the whole thing, he could get all those selfies together and make a timelapse montage of him getting old.

And so he did until something curious happened in the world of digital trends. 

Here come NFTs!

NFT stands for non-fungible tokens. This new form of digital assets drew public’s attention in 2021. Non-fungibles have been rocking the world of the digital economy ever since. 

Non-fungible means that you can’t exchange one token for another because such tokens are not equal. Take dollars or any ‘traditional’ crypto, for example. One dollar will always be one dollar, and a dollar bill will always be equal to another dollar bill of the same value. Just the same way usual cryptos work: one BTC is always equal to another BTC, etc. 

NFT is an altogether different story. Each non-fungible token has its own value and cannot be exchanged. You cannot splice it or create the same one. But what’s the point, and why would someone need such a thing, you may ask. And here’s where NFT art comes into play.

In a nutshell, NFT art is any digital item bought and sold using non-fungible tokens. So you can turn virtually anything into a piece of digital art and a source of income. It can be an image, a GIF, a video clip, a music track, or a selfie.

You just upload whatever you want to turn into NFT art, convert it into a non-fungible token, and put it up for sale. You can choose a price or start an auction – it’s your call. And if you’re lucky enough, some of your NFTs may meet sudden popularity, making you rich. 

Going back to Al Ghozali and his selfies, that’s exactly what he did – he turned those pics into NFTs and put them up for sale on OpenSea, one of the most popular NFT marketplaces. The guy played it humble by asking only $3 for each selfie. Little did he know then. 

Al Ghozali goes viral     

The Internet is a curious thing. There is almost no way to say what’s to come, nor is there any methodology to predict trends and what’s to become a new meme. Like selfies of some Indonesian guy staring expressionlessly into his web camera. 

When Al Ghozali uploaded his collection of nearly 1,000 selfies, he did it just for the fun of it never expecting much. “I was thinking it might be funny if one of the collectors collected my face,” reminisces Al Ghozali. 

However, when a celebrity chef bought some of those photos and gave them promotion on his social media, the thing went viral. The Internet got crazy about this weirdly looking guy. Some printed his face on their tees, some wrote songs about him. But the main thing about the whole story is that people paid money for Ghozali’s selfies.

At some point, the collection peaked at 384 ETH, giving Ghozali a total income of one million dollars. According to himself, Ghozali has no idea why his photos got viral. However, he’s happy to see the five years of making them pay off. The only thing Ghozali has ever asked buyers of is not to abuse his photos so that his parents were not disappointed. So sweet.

More awesome NFT facts

Al Ghozali’s story is not the only example of how insanely profitable NFTs can get. One of the most impressive ones is the Merge case. 

The Merge is the world’s most expensive NFT to date. A project by Pak, a renowned digital artist, it is not a single-body artwork. Instead, it is a multi-unit piece that was bought by many separate buyers. In total, more than 28,000 people paid for bits of the Merge in 2021.

When the sale started, each unit cost $575. But then, the price began to rise by $25 every six hours as more and more people joined the sale. This resulted in an astounding $91,8 mln grossing. 

Another famous NFT case is a $3 mln worth tweet by Jack Dorcey, a former CEO of Twitter. In December 2020, Jack Dorcey put his first-ever tweet up on sale as a non-fungible token. The tweet dated March 21, 2006, read “just setting up my twttr”. The bidding started on March 6, 2020, and ended on the tweet’s 15th anniversary on March 21, 2021, with the final price of $2,9 mln. All the money went to the Africa Response fund for COVID-19 relief.

Can I become an NFT millionaire?

NFT stories of success are fascinating and inspiring. However, you should take them with a pinch of salt. If you’re not a famous artist or an ex-CEO of a huge corporation, your odds of making big money on NFTs are incredibly small. In this regard, Al Ghozali’s story is one of a kind and perfectly fits the concept of so-called survivorship bias.

What you should know is that there is no sure way of telling how a non-fungible token will perform. Prices almost exclusively depend on popularity and hype. You may invest in a piece of NFT art that loses its value the next day leaving you with a worthless token. Or one of the previously bought tokens may get hot so you can sell it for a hefty price. The NFT market is that unpredictable.

There are plenty of instruments to trade  

The good news is that NFTs are not your only trading option. There are multiple assets and instruments, most of which are much more predictable. You can choose anything you want from various altcoins and currency pairs to metals, stocks, and indices.

With FBS, you can effectively trade any of these instruments using top-notch tools and applications. The FBS economic calendar will keep you updated on crucial market events and the company’s experts will provide you with the information to consider when planning your trading activity.

While NFTs may seem promising, still, the market comes with a lot more opportunities to earn. Explore and use them to your advantage, trading with FBS. So that next time people will read about your story of success.