As of today, nearly US$1 million in transactions have been made for an Indonesian man’s selfies. That wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the strange and totally unpredictable nature of NFTs.
Ghozali, a 22-year-old man from Semarang, Central Java who goes by @Ghozali_Ghozalu on the NFT trading platform OpenSea, snapped selfies of himself “standing in front of the computer day by day” for five years from 2017.
In recent days, a mind-boggling amount of those selfies were sold as NFTs under the “Ghozali Everyday” collection on OpenSea. To acquire a Ghozali selfie as an exclusive digital asset, you would have to spend at least 0.345 of the cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH), which is equivalent to US$1,155.
As of this article’s publication, hundreds of Ghozali’s selfies have been bought and are in trade circulation, with the total trade volume reaching the equivalent of 293 Ethereum coins, or US$986,485.
In case you’re thinking of NFT-ing your selfies, it’s important to note that Ghozali basically caught lightning in a bottle here.
Via his Twitter posts, it’s apparent that Ghozali never expected his selfies to be worth a million dollars. In one tweet, he said that before he minted his selfies as NFTs, his original intention was to use the photos to make this video edit:
my goal of taking pictures of myself for 5 years is just for this video
— Ghozali_Ghozalu (@Ghozali_Ghozalu) January 12, 2022
and in the future for this year hopefully I will graduate from college and be able to take my graduation photo, it will be a cool triphttps://t.co/sBdKmtzvXe
This adorable tweet also suggests that he never expected his NFTs to sell like hotcakes:
It's been 3 days and left 331 NFT
— Ghozali_Ghozalu (@Ghozali_Ghozalu) January 12, 2022
sold out now because for the next few years I won't be listing
You can do anything like flipping or whatever but please don't abuse my photos or my parents will very disappointed to me
I believe in you guys so please take care of my photos. pic.twitter.com/oyGGR2Aben
Coconuts has attempted to reach Ghozali for comment, but we appreciate he’s probably inundated with interview requests as his improbable story is being covered by local media outlets. Over at Reddit, Ghozali has sparked a huge discussion on the sheer unpredictability and absurdity of NFTs.
Also Read — The peril, pain and elusive profit of minting NFTs, as told by two Singaporeans
