Source: AFP
Her fluffy face now gaunt, Kabosu still glows with the enigmatic smile that made her the dog meme for millennia and inspired a $23 billion cryptocurrency beloved by Elon Musk.
She’s best known as the Dogecoin logo, but for Atsuko Sato, Kabosu is the elderly former rescue puppy who accompanies her every day to work at a kindergarten.
“It was so strange” to find out her dog was an Internet celebrity, Sato told AFP in Sakura, where Tokyo’s eastern sprawl gives way to rice fields and solar panels.
In 2010, two years after adopting the shiba inu, Sato blogged a photo of Kabosu crossing her legs on the couch and giving the camera a seductive look.
That image became the “Doge” meme — and later a digital NFT artwork that sold for $4 million.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/30b688c104a39206.png?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/30b688c104a39206.png?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
Viral Bridesmaid Olivia Emmanuel Releases Over 20 Numbers Of Men Chatting Her, Says Men Are Hypocrites
“He’s making a weird face,” Sato laughed. “Now I think she looks really cool” in the famous photo but “at first I thought she might be trash.”
Source: AFP
The meme grew from an online forum post to an anarchic joke bouncing from college dorm rooms to office emails.
“One of my friends texted me, ‘Isn’t this a Kabosu photo?'” Then I looked it up and found all kinds of memes, like Kabosu turning into a donut,” Sato said.
The 62-year-old is now so used to “unbelievable” events that when Tesla boss Musk changed the Twitter icon, now X, to Kabosu’s face last year, she “wasn’t one bit surprised”.
“Over the last few years I have been able to connect the online version of Kabosu, all these unexpected things seen from a distance, to our real lives.”
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/c91af5de453a2593.png?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/c91af5de453a2593.png?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
Veteran Nollywood actor Pa Zulu Adigwe reportedly dead, fans mourn: ‘Our legends are leaving’
“The Mona Lisa of the Internet”
Kabosu spends most days resting in a pram at kindergarten or on a large pillow at home, where Doge tributes from fans adorn the walls.
Source: AFP
The memes usually use silly broken English to reveal the inner thoughts of Kabosu and other shiba inu “doge” — usually pronounced like pizza “dough” but with a “j” at the end.
“So much love. Such a star OMG. So much heart. So much design,” says a framed print using that “doge speak” signature.
Kabosu fell ill with leukemia and liver disease in late 2022, and Sato is certain that the “invisible power” of prayers from fans around the world helped her pull through.
Then, in November of last year, a $100,000 statue of Kabosu and her couch co-funded by Own The Doge, a crypto 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 $1 million to Save the Children. The NGO says it is “the largest crypto donation” it has ever received.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/33e3216f4afe2a54.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/33e3216f4afe2a54.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
The women of Norway bring seaweed to the heights of cooking in Europe
“The Doge is the most popular dog of the modern age,” said Tridog, a member of Own The Doge, describing Camposu as “the Mona Lisa of the Internet.”
“Cryptography of the People”
Dogecoin started as a joke by two software engineers and is now the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world with a market cap of $23 billion.
Source: AFP
“The Doge meme was pretty big on the internet in 2013 and I spent a lot of time on Reddit and other forums back then,” Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus told AFP.
Markus, who is no longer affiliated with Dogecoin, was amused by the “silliness and innocence” of the memes.
Co-founder Jackson Palmer “had a beer and saw the dog meme and Bitcoin in the news and thought saying he was going to invest in Dogecoin would make a funny tweet,” he said.
Marcus found the idea “hilarious” and created the coin in “a few hours” before contacting Palmer and releasing it live.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/750824a8520805bc.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/750824a8520805bc.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
Kyrgyzstan’s TikTok block raises censorship fears
“A lot of strange things happened after that,” he said.
Since then, Dogecoin has been backed by stoner hip-hop king Snoop Dogg, “Shark Tank” entrepreneur Mark Cuban and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, who once tweeted: “I bought Dogecoin… six figures” .
But its most ardent supporter is probably billionaire Musk, who jokes about the coin at X — driving its value sky high — and hails it as “the people’s crypto.”
Dogecoin has also inspired a plethora of other cheap and highly volatile “memecoins,” including Shiba Inu spin-offs and others based on dogs, cats, or Donald Trump.
“The legend lives on”
A lone figure wearing a Doge mask looks out over the Los Angeles skyline — that’s Tridog, who says he’s “worked on a dog photo for almost three years.”
Source: AFP
Own The Doge is his full-time job and preaches their motto DOGE, or “Do Only Good Every Day.”
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/6e8eee8ede0626b5.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/6e8eee8ede0626b5.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
Read also
Woman Shows off HR Qualifications for Retail Job in Viral Video: ‘Degree vs. Reality’
In 2021, Sato sold Kabosu’s viral photo as a non-fungible token (NFT), a digital certificate of ownership that can be traded online, to a group of crypto-art collectors called PleasrDAO for $4.2 million.
That makes it “the top five most expensive photos ever sold,” Tridog told AFP.
PleasrDAO split the value of the NFT into a brand new memecoin called $DOG, allowing many people to collectively “own” the meme.
Own The Doge brought fans and other meme stars to Japan to meet Kabosu and Sato, and recently secured the copyright to the famous photo, paving the way for Doge toys, movies and other products to be made.
As a rescue dog, Kabosu’s actual birthday is unknown, but Sato estimates her age at 18 — beyond the average lifespan of a shiba inu.
When Kabosu dies, “the world will mourn,” Tridog said, but “a legend always lives.”
He hopes people will remember “the deeper values” behind the Doges meme: “sanity, silliness, not taking yourself too seriously.”
Source: AFP