Kabosu, the dog behind the " Doge " meme, has died
after 14 years of Internet fame, according to her owner. The
Japanese shiba inu inspired a generation of internet jokes and became the face
of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. She suffered from leukemia and liver disease,
and she passed away on May 24.
" She passed away peacefully as if
she were asleep while I caressed her ," Atsuko Sato wrote on
her blog, thanking Kabosu's fans. « I think Kabo-chan was the
happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner . Being a
rescue dog, Kabosu's actual date of birth was unknown, but Sato estimated her
age at 18 years.
In 2010, two years after adopting Kabosu
from a puppy mill where she would otherwise have been euthanized, Sato, a
teacher in Sakura, east of Tokyo, took a photo of her pet crossing its paws on
the couch. She posted the image of it on her blog, from
where it spread to the online forum Reddit and became a meme that bounced from
college dormitories to office email chains.
The memes often used ridiculous broken English to
reveal the inner thoughts of Kabosu and other shiba inu "doge." The
image was also later turned into an NFT digital artwork that sold for $4
million and inspired Dogecoin, which two software engineers started as a joke
and is now the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market
capitalization of 23 billion dollars.
Dogecoin has received support from hip-hop star
Snoop Dogg and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons. But its most enthusiastic
supporter is billionaire Elon Musk, who jokes about the currency on Twitter -
causing its value to skyrocket - and hails it as "the people's
cryptocurrency."
Kabosu fell ill with leukemia and liver
disease in late 2022, and Sato stated in a recent interview with AFP that the
"invisible power" of prayers from fans around the world helped her
get through. Sato, 62, said she had become so
accustomed to "unbelievable" events that when Musk changed the
Twitter icon to Kabosu's face last year, she "wasn't even surprised."
In November last year, a statue of
Kabosu and his sofa financed with $100,000 by Own The Doge, a cryptocurrency
organization dedicated to the meme, was unveiled in a park in Sakura. Sato
and Own The Doge have also donated large sums to international charities,
including over a million dollars to Save the Children. The NGO claims that this
is “the largest crypto contribution” it has ever received.
Source: BBC
