Billionaire Binance founder C.Z. Zhao thinks the NFT craze is bonkers: 'People may have lost their mind''

A JPG sold for $69.3 million a year ago.

A JPG is a digital file that its owners will never be able to touch, hold, or hang from. A string of zeros and ones.

The image was beautiful, to be sure, a splashy, neon mosaic of 5,000 pieces of digital artwork, each equally unique, stunning and intricate. But its buyer might have been crazy, coming from the billionaire founder of the world's largest trading platform for invisible currency.

C.Z. Zhao told Fortune that people may have lost their minds.

NFT stands for non-fungible token, a unique, original digital asset that belongs to its owner or owners. It is like a certificate of authenticity for artwork, music, videos, and even social media.

In the case of Bored Ape Yacht Club, NFTs can be sold individually or as part of a collection. Those who purchase an ape graphic as an NFT gain membership to an exclusive club with perks like access to an online graffiti board. Jimmy Fallon and Timbaland are two celebrities who are using their Bored Ape NFTs as their profile pics on social media.

Whatever your opinion of NFTs, there is an obvious plus: They allow artists to monetize their work globally again and reach a much wider audience.

A guy in Singapore can pay 69 million dollars for your art.

The cast of last year's record NFT sale included MetaKovan and Twobadour. After the sale, they wanted to add a dash of mahogany to the usual color scheme of investors, financiers, and art patrons.

They said the point was to show Indians and people of color that they too could be patrons, that the west and the south were equal, and that the global south was rising.

Beeple, the recipient of that $69 million, is worried that NFT art is in a bubble. He told Fox News Sunday that the internet was a bubble and eventually burst.

The technology is strong enough where I think it will outlive that.

He is quick to point out that he is not an art collector.

He said that nothing is worth that much if one person is willing to pay.

There is a market for people to pay for art. Guess what? There are more artists coming to the industry. The quality improves with more artists in it.