The True Story Of The “Dogecoin” Dog: From Rescue Pup To International Icon

Japan’s Sakura: Even with her weak, fluffy face, Kabosu maintains the mysterious grin that made her the favorite meme dog among millennials and the inspiration for Elon Musk’s $23 billion cryptocurrency.
Although most people recognize her as the Dogecoin logo, Atsuko Sato knows Kabosu as the old rescue dog who goes to work with her every day at the kindergarten.

Sato told AFP in Sakura, where Tokyo’s eastern sprawl gives way to rice fields and solar panels, “it felt so strange” to learn her dog was an online sensation.

Two years after the shiba inu’s adoption, in 2010, Sato shared a photo of Kabosu on her blog showing her crossing her paws on the couch and giving the camera a seductive glance.

Later on, the picture turned into the “Doge” meme and an NFT digital artwork that brought around $4 million.

Sato chuckled, “She’s pulling a weird face.” “I think she looks really nice now, but at first I thought it could be trashed” in the well-known picture.

From an internet forum post, the meme developed into anarchic in-jokes that spread from corporate emails to college dorm rooms.

“This photo, isn’t it Kabosu? A buddy of mine messaged me. Upon searching for it, I came across other memes, such as Kabosu transforming into a doughnut,” said Sato.

The 62-year-old is now so used to “unbelievable” happenings that she “wasn’t even that surprised” when Tesla CEO Elon Musk changed Twitter’s emblem last year from Kabosu’s face to X.

“In the last few years, I’ve been able to connect the online version of Kabosu—all these unexpected things seen from a distance—with our real lives.”

“Mona Lisa of the digital world”
The majority of Kabosu’s days are spent sleeping on a large cushion at home or in a cart at the kindergarten, where the walls are covered with fan-made portraits of Doge.

Funny broken English is generally used in the memes to show the inner thoughts of Kabosu and other Shiba inus, who are known as “doge” (pronounced “dough” like pizza, but with a “j” at the end).

“Amazing love. Such a star—OMG. Hence, heart. Lots of sketching,” one framed painting declares in its distinctive “doge language.”

At the end of 2022, Kabosu became sick with leukemia and liver illness. Sato is certain that the “invisible power” of prayers from fans all across the globe enabled her to recover.

Next, in Sakura park, a $100,000 monument of Kabosu and her couch was presented in November of last year. The statue was crowdfunded by Own The Doge, a cryptocurrency organization devoted to the meme.

Large donations to foreign organizations, such as more than $1 million to Save the Children, have also been made by Sato and Own The Doge. It is “the single largest crypto contribution” the NGO has ever received, according to them.

Using a fictitious identity, Own The Doge member Tridog said, “The Doge is the most popular dog of the modern era,” calling Kabosu “the Mona Lisa of the internet”.

“People’s cryptocurrency”
With a market valuation of $23 billion, Dogecoin, which was founded as a joke by two software developers, is now the ninth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.

Co-founder of Dogecoin Billy Markus told AFP, “I spent a lot of time on Reddit and other forums back then, and the Doge meme was pretty big on the internet in 2013.”

Markus was entertained by the “silliness and innocence” of the memes; he is no longer associated with Dogecoin.

According to fellow creator Jackson Palmer, “I thought it would be funny to tweet that he was going to invest in Dogecoin after seeing the Doge meme and Bitcoin in the news while drinking a beer.”

Markus built the coin in “a few hours” after finding the concept “hilarious” and getting in touch with Palmer to launch it.

“Lots of weird stuff happened after that,” stated the man.

Since then, Dogecoin has received support from bassist Gene Simmons of Kiss, “Shark Tank” entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and stoner hip-hop icon Snoop Dogg, who famously tweeted, “I bought Dogecoin… six figures.”

The wealthy Musk, however, is perhaps its biggest fan. He calls it “the people’s crypto” and makes jokes about the money on X, which drives up its value.

Numerous additional low-cost and very volatile “memecoins,” such as the spin-off Shiba Inu and others based on dogs, cats, or Donald Trump, have also been influenced by Dogecoin.

“Legend endures.”

Gazing out over the Los Angeles cityscape is a lone guy donning a Doge mask; this is Tridog, who claims to have “worked for a dog photograph for almost three years.”.

His full-time occupation is Own The Doge, where he espouses their slogan, D.O.G.E., which stands for “Do Only Good Every Day.”.

For $4.2 million in 2021, Sato sold the widely shared image of Kabosu to PleasrDAO, a collection of cryptocurrency art collectors, as a non-fungible token (NFT), a digital ownership certificate that may be exchanged online.

As a result, Tridog told AFP, it is “among the top-five most expensive photos ever sold.”

The value of the NFT was divided by PleasrDAO into a brand-new memecoin called $DOG, enabling a large number of users to “own” the meme jointly.

In addition to arranging for fans and other meme stars to visit Kabosu and Sato in Japan, Own The Doge recently obtained the intellectual property rights to the well-known image, opening the door for the production of Doge toys, movies, and other goods.

Since Kabosu is a rescue dog, her true birthdate is unknown, but Sato calculates that she is 18 years old—older than the typical Shiba Inu lifetime.

Tridog said that although “the world will mourn” Kabosu’s passing, “a legend always lives on.”

In other words, he wants people to recall “the deeper values” embodied in the Doge meme—”the wholesomeness, the silliness, the not taking yourself too seriously.”