- author, Lucy Clark Billings
- role, BBC News
Kabosu, the dog behind the “doge” meme, has died after 14 years of internet fame, his owner said.
The Japanese Shiba Inu has become the butt of online jokes and the face of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
She had been suffering from leukemia and liver disease and passed away on May 24th.
“While I was caressing her, she passed away peacefully as if in her sleep,” Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog, thanking Kabosu’s fans.
“I think Kabo was the happiest dog in the world, and I was the happiest owner in the world.”
The actual date of birth of rescue dog Kabosu is unknown, but Sato estimates that he is 18 years old.
Two years after adopting Kabosu from a puppy mill in 2010, where he was due to be euthanized, Mr Sato, a teacher from Sakura city in eastern Tokyo, snapped a photo of his pet sitting cross-legged on a sofa.
She posted the image on her blog, where it spread across the online forum Reddit and became a meme that made its way from college bedrooms to office email threads.
The memes often use goofy English to reveal the inner thoughts of Kabosu and other Shiba Inu dogs, called “doges,” which are pronounced like “dough” but with a “j” at the end.
The photo was later turned into an NFT digital artwork which sold for $4 million (£3.1 million) and became the inspiration for Dogecoin, which was started as a joke by two software engineers and is now the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency with a market capitalisation of $23 billion.
Dogecoin is endorsed by hip-hop star Snoop Dogg and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons.
But its most enthusiastic supporter is billionaire Elon Musk, who has joked about the X currency, sending it soaring in value and hailing it as “the people’s cryptocurrency.”
Kabosu was diagnosed with leukemia and liver disease in late 2022, but Sato said in a recent interview with AFP that an “invisible power” of prayers from fans around the world had helped her.
Sato, 62, said he had become so used to “unbelievable” events that he was “not all that surprised” when Musk changed his Twitter icon (now an X) to the face of a kabosu dolphin last year.
A $100,000 statue of Kabosu and her sofa, crowdfunded by Own The Doge, a cryptocurrency organization dedicated to the meme, was unveiled in a park in Sakura city last November.
Sato and Own the Doge have also made significant donations to international charities, including donating over $1 million to Save the Children, which the NGO said was “the largest crypto donation it has ever received.”
