The last time I played with NFTs it was about $50 USD just in processing fees to mint the token; not sure if that has changed since then. So it's not necessarily the case that the author is making a bunch of money off of this project; they might actually be just passing along costs.
Author here. Gas costs have actually come down a lot over the past few years. It only costs me a few dollars to run the transaction. It's more that scheduling, setting up, conducting, and tearing down each burn session is a huge pain in the ass. So if I can burn 10 bills an hour, then I'd clear maybe $450 an hour after gas, which doesn't feel crazy for providing boutique financial services.
