How I Became A Millionaire At 18 Years Old From Selling Instagram Usernames

When I was 14, I started learning a programming language called Python out of curiosity. By 15, I built my first real project — a program that automatically accepted pending follow requests on Instagram. I sold it to private meme accounts with large followings, which introduced me to the world of making money online. Because of this, I was in multiple online groups with large Instagram accounts and influencers, where I discovered a market for rare Instagram usernames — short handles or common words like @funny and @w78. Curious, I looked into how these names were obtained and decided to try building my own bot to claim them as soon as they became available. I already had some experience using Instagram's API due to my previous project, so I decided to code a bot that would automatically claim an username once it got available (such a program is known as a "Turbo" or "Autoclaimer"). After a few days, I claimed my first username, a random four-letter handle, and sold it for $10. Encouraged by this, I kept improving my bot to make it faster and more efficient. Instagram had strict rate limits for their API, but after much trial and error, I found a workaround. I used multiple accounts, targeted less-restricted API endpoints (discovered by intercepting API requests from SSL-unpinned Instagram APKs), and modified cookie data in request headers to circumvent Instagram's API rate limits. These techniques enabled my bot to check over 100,000 valuable usernames every 0.2 seconds. By the time I was 17, the bot was making around $3,000 a day. Eventually, Instagram patched the bypass, and my bot stopped working. Fortunately, I had already earned about $200,000 from my autoclaimer, which I invested in Bitcoin in 2020. When Bitcoin hit its all-time high in 2021, I briefly became a crypto millionaire at 18 — though I never sold, so that title didn't last for long. Looking back, it was a great learning experience that taught me a lot about developing bots, problem-solving, and spotting opportunities in unexpected places.