Atsuko Sato is seen with her Japanese Shiba Inu dog Kabosu (best known as the logo of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin) playing with students at a kindergarten in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo on March 19.
PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images
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PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images
The dog that inspired the famous “Doge” meme and cryptocurrency has died, according to her owner. She was 18 years old.
Atsuko Sato, a teacher in Japan, reported in a blog post that the Shiba Inu dog named Kabosu was “deeply asleep” on Friday morning.
Kabosu became an Internet celebrity after social media users spread a famous photo of the rescued dog, which Sato posted on her blog in 2010.
Meme makers superimposed a rainbow Comic Sans font over Kabosu’s squinty eyes and cross-legged pose, and narrated the pup’s internal dialogue with short, broken-up phrases like “so wow” or “so happy.”
Thus, the meme called “Doge” was born. This intentional misspelling is often attributed to a 2005 episode Homestar RunnerAn animated comedy web series.
The meme gained new prominence in 2013 with the launch of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
The coin was created to mock cryptocurrencies, but several years later its value surged when the world’s richest man and Dogecoin champion, Elon Musk, tweeted about the currency.
Musk joined those mourning the death of Kabosu, the inspiration behind Dogecoin. The owner of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter posted a picture of another heavenly mammal meme, Harambe, on Twitter, in which he is seen hugging the dog in heaven.
Dogecoin rose 5% following Musk’s post.
The dog has had some health issues recently. Sato said in 2022, Kabosu was diagnosed with acute cholangiohepatitis, an inflammatory liver condition, and chronic lymphoma leukemia, a blood cancer.
