A teenager who earned $ 400 thousand from the sale of NFT, white hackers who receive hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars for searching for vulnerabilities, brothers who successfully bought a “meme” token and other success stories.

Mining

American Nick Sears got his start in the crypto industry by helping to build a mining farm in Dullesport, Washington, when he was 17 years old.

Since then, he has been professionally engaged in the maintenance of mining farms. Nick’s main specialization is equipment inspection and repair.

Now Nick is 19 years old, he works at the SCATE Ventures mining farm with a capacity of 10 MW for 4.5 thousand ASIC miners. Nick not only works, but also lives on this farm in a separate soundproofed room.

Sears is open every day from 8 am to 4 pm. His main job is to ensure the uninterrupted operation of each mining device 24/7. He also checks the equipment every day.

Nick is studying the mechanism of the miners, how to repair them. The teen’s story was told by CNBC . Nick is reported to be making $ 54,000 a year.

Hackers

Crypto projects often pay insufficient attention to security issues. Therefore, cybercriminals regularly discover vulnerabilities in blockchains.

For example, this summer, a cryptocurrency was stolen from the DAO Maker and Chain Swap protocols. However, in addition to cybercriminals, there are also white hackers who help cryptocurrency startups to close these vulnerabilities.

In mid-August, white hacker and security specialist Sam Sun discovered a vulnerability on the Miso platform, which could result in the loss of $ 350 million for the Sushi Swap exchange that owns it. In the case of Sam Sun, there is no information about the reward he received.

At the same time, it is known that another blockchain startup ArmorFi promised white hackers a reward of $ 1.5 million. The Thorchain cross-chain protocol, which was twice hacked this summer, promised a reward of $ 500 thousand.

Investing in DeFi

The founder of the Defined DeFi service under the nickname Razoreth, a transaction tracker for decentralized exchanges, earned his first million dollars from investments in DeFi.

In a series of tweets earlier this year, he said that having started with 1.8 ETH in August 2020, in September, his balance was already 500 ETH, and each next month the profit was measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The main way to make money is to buy tokens that just hit the Uniswap exchange. Among them, Razoreth named the tokens YFV, JGN, SUSHI, FARM, YFBETA.

The investor claims that he earned more than $ 1 million in six months, of which he withdrawn $ 300 thousand in cash, and continued to invest the rest.

Another example of a DeFi investor is Kevin O’Leary, founder of O’Leary Ventures. In a recent interview, he said that his company was looking for an alternative to investment in commercial real estate. And I ended up finding it in the form of DeFi.

The company has invested in WonderFi’s DeFi app for cryptocurrency exchange, lending and investment.

Investments in “meme” -tokens

Memorial tokens are a popular investment in cryptocurrencies. Two brothers Tommy (38 years old) and James (42 years old), who asked CNN not to reveal their last name, on the advice of a friend, invested $ 200 in a Shiba Inu coin at the end of February 2021.

Together with them, members of their family did it – mother, father, sister. When the price of the token continued to grow, they invested another $ 100 and bought further. In total, the whole family invested about $ 8 thousand.

By mid-April, the investment had reached $ 100,000.The next morning, the price of all their Shiba Inu doubled, and in the following days it rose to $ 700,000. it actually happens.

At the time of publication of CNN, the coins that were stored in the family’s wallet were valued at $ 9 million. Thus, the return on investment in two months reached 112,400%.

Beginner NFT Artist

Benjamin Ahmed, a 12-year-old boy from London, made about $ 400,000 during his summer vacation by creating a series of NFT tokens called Weird Whales.

At the same time, the amount earned by the boy is growing all the time, since he receives 2.5% from the resale of tokens.

Ahmed’s first collection, Minecraft Yee Haa, consists of 40 pixel art. She did not become popular and did not bring in a lot of income.

However, the boy was not upset, as he saw this as a gaining new experience, rather than a way of earning money. So the teen went on to create NFT, releasing 3,350 pixelated whales called “Weird Whales.”

According to Ahmed, the launch of the project cost him $ 300. Basically, this amount consists of gas fees that are charged when the NFT is issued.

After the launch in July, the entire collection was sold out in 9 hours, and the teenager’s profit in one day amounted to more than 80 Ethereum (about $ 240 thousand at the current exchange rate). He then earned another 30 Ethereum, which he received as a percentage of the resale of tokens.

Ahmed said he has no plans to sell Ethereum. He also noted that he is working on a new NFT project.