Canyon Crest Academy students start successful NFT company

Nathan Benhaim, a rising senior at Canyon Crest Academy, led a team of fellow advanced business class students in creating a successful NFT investing company called Oasis DAO, pooling money from investors and making NFT trades.

NFTs also known as non-fungible tokens, are unique digital assets (like artwork, trading cards, comic books or sports collectibles) that can be traded between users. By the end of their two-month investment period, Oasis DAO achieved a 51% gain of the initial investment for its clients despite a “tumultuous” time in the markets.

Nathan actually started his entrepreneurial journey during his extra free time during the COVID-19 pandemic. He experimented with dropshipping and social media management and eventually began to explore cryptocurrency. He learned about NFT’s last August when he was looking into digital assets and metaverse virtual worlds, asking his parents if he could take $100 out of his bar mitzvah savings account to get started purchasing NFTs. Four months later, to his parents’ shock, Nathan had turned that $100 into over $40,000.

Nathan was able to carry over his knowledge and experience into his high school advanced business class at CCA, where students are tasked with creating their own for-profit business. Nathan and students Kian Chakamian, Hunter Oates and Miguel Yniguez formed Oasis DAO, building a company website, an Instagram account and multiple crypto wallets. The boys collected thousands of dollars in funds from a handful of investors and waited for a good NFT project.

“What impressed me the most with the management team of Oasis DAO was the overall discipline, sophistication, professionalism and extreme intensity to detail,” said investor Dave Gilbert. “The industry that they chose to focus on had extreme volatility but the team was very patient, thoughtful and careful on how it deployed investor capital. The investor reporting was top notch and investment transparency was made at all time.”

The team at Oasis DAO succeeded in their class assignment, making gains for their investors, earning a percentage of the profits for themselves and earning an “A.”

“Nathan, Kian, Hunter and Miguel have excelled at taking on an academic project and turned it into a real business, in a sector that has created fear and excitement,” said Craig Pollard, advanced business class teacher at Canyon Crest Academy. “I am very proud of the effort they have put into their business and the maturity they have shown to generate real revenue.”

— Karen Billing