The Shiba Inu that inspired the viral “Doge” meme has died

It's a sad day for crypto bros and meme fans alike. The furry face that gave birth to thousands upon thousands of memes, Kabosu – the Japanese Shiba Inu behind the viral “Doge” meme and the £18 billion cryptocurrency Dogecoin – has died at the ripe old age of 18.

Kabo-chan is probably one of the most famous dogs in the world. She first appeared on the internet in 2010 when her owner, a Japanese kindergarten teacher, rescued her from a puppy factory and uploaded a photo on her personal blog of Kabosu raising an eyebrow at the camera. To her great surprise, the photo was picked up on a blog Your daily Doge and then Tumblr page Shiba Confessions in 2012. Perhaps the most prolific format features Kabo-chan surrounded by broken phrases in rainbow Comic Sans, such as “wow,” “so,” and “that,” paired with nouns to reflect the dog's inner monologue—a sort of hyper-online lexicon that would later be dubbed “Doge-speak.”

But it wasn't until 2013 that Kabosu's likeness entered the canon as the now-infamous cryptocurrency DogeCoin – initially sold as an NFT for $4 million (£3.1 million) before launching as its own cryptocurrency and being credited as the world's first meme coin. Today, it's the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency with a market value of $23 billion (wow, good luck), and perhaps its most famous backer is billionaire Elon Musk, who joked the currency on X as “the people's cryptocurrency.” Musk changed the Twitter icon (now X) to Kabosu's face last year, while a $100,000 statue of Kabosu and her sofa was unveiled in a park in Sakura in November last year, crowdfunded by Own The Doge, a crypto organization dedicated to the meme.

Sato and Own The Doge have also donated huge sums to international charities, including more than $1 million to Save the Children, which the organization says is “the largest single cryptocurrency donation” they have ever received. “Doge is the most popular dog of modern times,” said Tridog, a pseudonymous member of Own The Doge, calling Kabosu “the Mona Lisa of the internet.”

“She died peacefully, as if she was sleeping while I was petting her,” owner Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog. “I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner.”