Welcome to The Inquiry.

I'm Suzanne Keonpoor.

Each week, one question, four experts and an answer.

In 2005, a photo of four-year-old Zoe Roth

standing in front of a burning house

went viral on the internet.

It became a meme known as disaster girl.

In April, 2021, the image sold

for $473,000 as an NFT or a non-fungible token.

That's sort of a digital record of ownership.

But you do not have the original.

You don't own the rights to make copies.

And as it's digital, you can't even hang it on your wall.

Another NFT recently sold for $69 million.

The piece was a collage of 5,000 separate pieces

of digital art created every day over 13 years

by the artist's people.

It propelled him into the record books

as the third most valuable living artist.

And the sales keep coming.

The first-ever tweet went for a huge $2.9 million.

And a gift of a pixelated rainbow cat sold for $690,000.

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