‘My kids make thousands selling digital art’

Lauren Almeida meets the children who are putting their valuable scribblings up for sale

2022-01-15 -

‘One day I’ll put my NFT cash into the stock market’ Zachary Cox, 13

The wild world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain is a twisted vortex of digital money, complex computing and fast trades. It is not the obvious place to nurture creative talent in children – and yet for Emmy, seven, and Jack, five, it has become the home of their virtual art gallery.

Their art exists online as NFTs – or non-fungible tokens. These are essentially digital certificates that denote ownership of physical or virtual assets stored on the “blockchain” – a digital ledger. These tokens can be bought and sold using cryptocurrency.

Investors buy them in the hope their value will increase, as with trading cards or traditional art. But it is an even less regulated market than the world of crypto and is equally vulnerable to its wild price swings. Meanwhile, NFT creators – including the youngsters behind them – have made a mint.

Emmy’s biggest sale so far has been her portrait of deadmau5, a Canadian DJ, who bought the digital art in a transaction worth almost $4,000 (£ 2,900). Her father, Ben Wilson*, knew nothing of the world of NFTs until his brother, who works as a professional artist, introduced him to OpenSea, an online trading platform for the tokens.

“He suggested that the kids get involved by using Procreate, an app you can find on the iPad,” said Mr Wilson. “So we made a digital wallet and created our own collection.”

Now when Emmy and Jack return home from school, they rush to their iPad to sketch. Between them, they have made more than 200 NFTs in the past 10 months, worth thousands.

“Emmy was only six years old when she started drawing on Procreate,” Mr Wilson said. “But we are not doing this to make a profit. It is a way to preserve their artwork and document how they develop. Rather than sticking it on the fridge, we have it stored online on the blockchain. Emmy and Jack can look back in five years’ time and see how far they’ve come.”

Mr Wilson described the $3,800 sale to deadmau5 as “insane”. He added: “I joined an online chatroom that he was in and I told him about my daughter’s drawing. He wanted to buy it immediately. I used the money to invest in NFTs. I’ve started collecting other artists’ work and have built up a collection of more than 700 tokens.”

NFT mania hit the mainstream in March 2020, when a digital collage created by the artist Beeple sold for

‘Zach’s Safari’ NFTs, such as this carp, sell for as much as $3,390

$69.3m at the auction house Christie’s. Since then, the market has exploded, with more than $2bn in monthly sales recorded on OpenSea, according to research by Dune Analytics.

Zachary Cox, a 13- year- old from Devon, got involved early on. “I started investing in cryptocurrencies in early 2020,” he said. “So I got in just before the NFT hype took off.”

Now Zachary has a collection worth several thousand dollars, with one digital token in his portfolio worth $3,302.

He also mints his own NFTs; a drawing of a carp, which features in his “Zach’s Safari” series, sold for $3,390.

“My parents know what I am doing and they trust me to make these decisions,” he said. “They are just happy that I am making money for myself.”

But Zachary is aware that his cash may not be safe within the world of NFTs and that the market could turn out to be a house of cards.

“These tokens don’t have any intrinsic value,” he said. “There’s no company or revenue behind it. I don’t think the state of the NFT market will last forever. I’m just trying to make as much money as I can – I’ll roll it into stocks eventually.”

Zachary said he was aiming to grow the value of his NFT portfolio to $80,000. “Then I can put it in an S&P 500 index tracker and make something like 10pc a year on my money.”