Kabosu, a dog of the Japanese Shiba Inu breed whose photo became a famous “meme” on the internet and who inspired the logo of the dogecoin cryptocurrency, popular with Elon Musk, died Friday in Japan, her owner announced. “She passed away quietly, as if sleeping, while I was petting her,” Atsuko Sato said on her blog, thanking her dog’s fans around the world.
“I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest dog owner, added Ms. Sato, using an affectionate suffix, she who lives in the department of Chiba, a large suburb of Tokyo.
It all started in 2010 when she posted a photo on her blog of her dog, sitting on a sofa, looking mischievous and with her front legs crossed. This innocent cliché then spawned a massive internet phenomenon: the “Doge” “meme” (name undoubtedly derived from the word “dog” meaning dog in English), where countless Internet users hijacked his image or those of other shiba inu for offbeat jokes on online forums like Reddit.
In the same schoolboy spirit, a cryptocurrency called dogecoin was created in 2013. This in turn became very popular, particularly after the whimsical multi-entrepreneur Elon Musk publicized his passion for it. Individually, dogecoin is worth very little (around 16 cents), but as this cryptocurrency is abundant, its total capitalization weighs around 23 billion dollars.
“The Doge is the most popular dog of the modern era”, it is “the Mona Lisa of the internet”, one of the phenomenon’s unconditional fans recently told AFP. Since Kabosu had been adopted from a shelter, her precise age was a mystery. Ms. Sato, who gave an interview to AFP a few weeks ago, thinks she was around 18 years old.
