'Disaster Girl' Just Sold Her Famous Meme as an NFT for $500,000

New York Times — The name Zoë Roth might not ring any bells. But chances are you’ve seen her photo.

One Saturday morning in 2005, when Ms. Roth was 4 years old, her family went to look at a house on fire in their neighborhood in Mebane, N.C. Firefighters had intentionally set the blaze as a controlled fire, so it was a relaxed affair: Neighbors gathered and firefighters allowed children to take turns holding the hose.

Ms. Roth remembers watching the flames engulf the house when her father, an amateur photographer, asked her to smile. With her hair askew and a knowing look in her eyes, Ms. Roth flashed a devilish smirk as the fire roared behind her. “Disaster Girl” was born.

In the years since Dave Roth, Zoë’s father, entered it in a photo contest in 2007 and won, the image has been edited into various disasters from history, with Ms. Roth grinning impishly as a meteor wipes out the dinosaurs or the Titanic sinks in the distance. Now, after more than a decade of having her image endlessly repurposed as a vital part of meme canon, Ms. Roth has sold the original copy of her meme as a nonfungible token, or NFT, for nearly half a million dollars.

The meme sold for 180 Ether, a form of cryptocurrency, at an auction on April 17 to a user identified as @3FMusic. As with any currency, the value of Ether fluctuates, but as of Thursday, 180 Ether was valued at more than $495,000. The Roths retained the copyright and will receive 10 percent of future sales.

Alright, this is the one that did it. All I've been hearing about for three months are NFTs. They're the hottest things in the streets. I have the most rudimentary understanding one possibly could about what exactly they are, but now I need to know everything, because someone just paid half a million dollars for a meme I've seen hundreds of times and can right click and save to my computer right now.

Somebody explain to me why this is valuable. So @3FMusic "owns" this meme now? My ass. Like I said, I can use this meme whenever and however I want. It's a meme. What does this guy own? I know I sound like the final boss of boomers right now, but I genuinely do not understand.

All I know is that Zoë Roth now has a cool $500,000 in her pocket as she's graduating college, not to mention that 10 percent kicker on any future sales. In two years once NFTs aren't cool anymore and this thing has been sold seven more times, she'll probably have made close to $1 million off a picture her dad took when she was 4 years old.

I'm a mix of incredibly jealous and equally confused.