NHS Worker From Brighton Pays Off Mortgage And Starts Charitable Fund With Illustrations

A part-time administrator for the NHS has raised around £700,000 for her family and donated £40,000 to a local school by turning illustrations from her children’s book into lucrative digital assets known as non-fungible tokens or NFTs.

It took 10 years for mum-of-two Cheryl Griffin, 43, to find time to write her first children’s book, The Seagull Finds His Talent, for which she commissioned an illustrator, before self-publishing on Amazon in 2017, where 50 copies were sold.

But with her second book, AlphaBetty Doodles & Her World of A-Z, which she wrote and illustrated last year, by selling the illustrations as NFTs – which are digital certificates of ownership of an artwork, video or tweet that only exist in the virtual world – she has paid off her mortgage and even started a charitable foundation.

Cheryl, who lives in Brighton, East Sussex, with her children Robyn, 18, Morgan, 12, and husband Ricardo, 46, a computer specialist, said:

“I never dreamt we’d ever be in that position to pay off our mortgage early, so it has been overwhelming,”

Similar to cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, NFTs differ in that they cannot be traded for one another.

They are bought with cryptocurrencies or non-regulated digital currencies and stored on a blockchain – a digital ledger where a record of who bought and sold the NFT is kept.

And by being ‘non-fungible’ – rather than inter-changeable like conventional money – it means they cannot be replaced by another identical item.

While many of us have never heard of them, NFTs first appeared in 2012 and the global market for them reportedly hit £16.5 billion last year.

Fortunately, Ricardo’s computer expertise meant Cheryl had already invested in a cryptocurrency, Ethereum, before writing her second book, while he had sold some of his own artwork – mostly portraits – as NFTs for around £200 each.

Soon the whole family was getting involved, according to Cheryl, who said: “My daughter Robyn also did some artwork and sold a series of goat paintings for about £50 each.

“She was then able to donate £600 to the local goat sanctuary.”

While it is not possible to exchange NFTs for something else, you can convert funds from your cryptocurrency account into sterling or dollars and use that money to make real life purchases, or donations to charity.

For instance, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold the NFT linked to the first-ever tweet, which simply read, ‘Just setting up my twttr,’ posted on March 21 2006, for £1.7 million – which he donated for Covid relief work in Africa.

And Cheryl has also donated £40,000 to her children’s primary school and has set up an educational charity in America to help pay for additional teaching staff in schools, where they are most needed.

Cheryl, who has always wanted to write books, but rarely had any spare time,  said: “We live near the sea and I’ve always found seagulls really cute, so that inspired me.”

She added:

“We would be on the school bus and see them each morning and I remember seeing one tapping its foot which gave me the idea for my first book.

“For that book, I commissioned an illustrator. I’ve always loved art and studied it at college, but I never thought my illustrations would be good enough for a book.

“Then, in the summer of 2021, I got into digital drawing and came up with the character of AlphaBetty Doodles.”

As the main character in her new book, AlphaBetty Doodles & Her World of A-Z, pink-haired AlphaBetty introduces younger children to the letters of the alphabet.

But as an NFT, the rarest AlphaBetty sold at auction for the equivalent of £15,000.

And the whole AlphaBetty NFT series has been so successful that Cheryl and Ricardo were able to use £200,000 of the money from sales to pay off their mortgage.

Cheryl, who created 10,000 unique digital images of AlphaBetty  – the first of which sold for the equivalent of £65 and most of which sold at first for around £200 – says altogether digital sales have raised around £700,000, with which she has used £500,000 to invest back into the project.

Explaining the thinking behind her family foundation, she said:

“Education is a real passion of mine.

“So many schools are underfunded, but our children are our future and so if we can help by donating money we will.”

Cheryl’s dream now is to see her books produced by a mainstream publisher and displayed in the window of her own local bookshop.

Until then, she will be working on more titles, more offline merchandising for AlphaBetty – which is available to buy on Amazon  – and running a Seagull NFT give-away.

You can follow Cheryl on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/cherylgriffin_author

For more information on AlphaBetty Doodles, visit: alphabettydoodles.io

Patrik Arnesson, CEO and co-founder of Forza Ikonia, a digital platform that develops, creates, and launches NFTs says they are like digital contracts.

He said:

“NFT’s are essentially digital contracts. Instead of signing physical documents to provide a proof of authenticity, ownership of assets can be verified through blockchain technology. They are more secure and smarter than old, real-world contracts and are changing the world.

“The main advancement with using these updated contracts is that all the transactions are being verified by the blockchain, which is universally accepted. Since the verification process is made by the blockchain, the need for middlemen is removed. In essence, the blockchain makes digital transactions cheaper, more secure and faster.”

He added:

“Previously, there was no way of ‘owning’ a digital asset – a digital image could be reproduced infinite times on the internet. However, with NFT contracts people can authenticate their purchases, ascribing massive value to assets that are in short supply or rare.

“Despite being around for a while, NFTs have only recently blown up as they’re becoming an increasingly popular way to buy and sell digital artwork.

“We are only now scratching the surface of what NFTs can do. I think digital assets are going to become more valuable than their real-world counterparts.

“As the world becomes increasingly digital, and the barriers of entry to the online world are reduced, the assets we have – and the means of authenticating them – will become our predominant means of wealth and status.”