Crypto Furor: How the daughter of one of the most famous memes sold her viral image for almost $ 500,000

His name is Zoe roth and, although his name resonates with no memory, his face is famous the world over. Or, at least, her face from 16 years ago. It isthe protagonist of a baptized meme “disaster girl“And it consists of a girl looking at the camera with an evil face of satisfaction as in the background of the image a group of firefighters are fighting a blaze. This week he was finally able to turn that image into around $ 478,000.

The photo was taken in 2005, during a controlled fire intended to clean up a property in which a North Carolina fire department kept the situation out of danger. Her father posed her, took the picture, and sent it to JPG magazine to participate in the “Emotion Capture” competition, which she ultimately won. Since then, the author and the protagonist of the picture have completely lost control of their work.

The image has been turned into a meme. Over the years, it has been shared millions of times by users of social networks and other platforms as an image of satisfaction in the face of chaos, of pleasure in the face of disaster and, why not, of pleasure in the unhappiness of people. other.

Today Roth is 21 and studies UNC Chapel Hill. He recently decided to auction the image as “non-fungible token“(non-fungible token or NFT) after receiving an email suggesting to do so, according to Raleigh News & Observer.

An NFT is an “inimitable” asset in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other type of property, but does not have tangible form per se.

These digital tokens can be thought of as certificates of ownership of virtual or physical assets. Most are stored on the Ethereum blockchain, which is essentially a digital ledger for cryptocurrencies. The item’s value is based on its rarity.

The NFT “Disaster Girl” has been coded so that Roth retains the copyright and receives 10% of the sale every time it is purchased.. This measure allows him to control the viral image for the first time in almost 16 years.

A 24-hour auction on the Fundation.app site received more than 20 bids. The last, highest and winningest was 180 units of Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. At the time of this writing, that works out to approximately $ 478,000. Although, the cable clarifies, Ether is as volatile as Bitcoin, and the value in US dollars can vary wildly within minutes.

The local newspaper in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina spoke to her and said the meme protagonist waited for tables at the restaurant where she works as the auction nears closing. In the final few minutes, the highest bidder went from the $ 25,000 bid to the amount finally obtained.

The auction was the result of years of frustration in which Roth said she was frustrated at having lost all control over her self-image at the age of 4. Until months ago he received the offer to create an NFT and put it up for auction. To make up his mind, he first consulted Laina Morris – the star of another meme known online as “Overly Attached Girlfriend” – and with Kyle craven, which put the face of “Bad Luck Brian”, another image repeatedly repeated and not at all commendable.

The idea was to recover property from what had happened. And, of course, get results counted in 6 digits.

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