The beloved Shiba Inu, Kabosu, who became a popular meme that eventually inspired the launch of Dogecoin in 2013, has passed away.
Her owner, 62-year-old kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato, who lives in the city of Sakura in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, confirmed the news Friday in a blog post. She also wrote a poem about the dog's passing.
"At 7:50 a.m., I fell into a deep sleep," a translated copy of the poem says.
It was just this time last year that Own the Doge, a Doge-oriented NFT community backed by Doge DAO, a doge-focused decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), organized a trip for Kabosu fans to meet the pup that inspired so many memes.
Mecca. Bethlehem. The Wailing Wall. And now: Doge.
Zealous followers of Kabosu—the wide-eyed Shiba Inu featured in the original Doge meme, whose fluffy visage adorns the popular Dogecoin cryptocurrency birthed in that internet phenomenon’s wake—now have the opportunity to make the pilgrimage to the dog’s earthly residence in Sakura, Japan.
The trip comes courtesy of Own the Doge, a Doge-oriented NFT community backed by Doge DAO, a doge-focused decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)... itsel...
The Doge DAO was born out of PleasrDAO, a collection of NFT artists and collectors who pool their funds to acquire culturally relevant digital art.
The original photos were taken by Atsuko herself and uploaded to her blog in 2010. Then some internet alchemy happened.
The word "Doge" was taken from a 2009 Strong Bad video. It has become internet shorthand for "cute dog." The word was combined with the photos and then captioned with colorful snippets of internal dialogue for the dogs written in Comic Sans—the font is very important—like on the Shiba Confessions Tumblr page.
Source: Exodus Wallet
A few years later, Jackson Palmer launched Dogecoin in 2013. It was mostly a joke coin, although it was used to raise money for charities. But by early 2021, the r/WallStreetBets community on Reddit banded together to pump the price of Dogecoin. That May, Dogecoin skyrocketed to an all-time high of $0.7316.
At one point, investor Mark Cuban even predicted that Dogecoin would hit $1 and become a stablecoin.
It should come as no surprise that degens found a way to sell the news, no matter how somber. One trader who appears to have been accumulating billions of KABOSU meme coins sold their entire bag for $230 thousand after the death was confirmed.
someone accumulated billions of $KABOSU throughout the year betting on the dogs death
At the time of writing, the DOGE price has slipped 5% compared to this time yesterday and is trading for $0.15. But it's not just Dogecoin (DOGE) that was inspired by Kabosu. DOGE gave rise to an entire category of dog-themed meme coins, like Shiba Inu, Floki Inu, and more recent upstarts like Dogwifhat.
The entire category appears to be mourning the loss of Kabosu. The entire dog-themed coins list on CoinGecko is down 5% compared to this time yesterday.
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