DOGE Meme Icon Kabosu Dies: From Shiba Inu to $23B Dogecoin Empire

DOGE meme icon Kabosu died at age 18 on May 24, 2024. Owner Atsuko Sato’s 2010 blog photos created the DOGE meme that won “Meme of the Decade,” inspired $23B Dogecoin, and sold as $4M NFT in 2021—the highest NFT price at the time.

The Birth Of DOGE Meme: How Kabosu Became Internet Legend

In early 2010, Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato posted several photos of her rescue-adopted Shiba Inu, named Kabosu, to her personal blog. Unbeknownst to her, one seemingly insignificant photograph of Kabosu—with her head slightly turned to the side, legs crossed, and a slight smirk—would soon transcend into the halls of internet meme mythos.

“I took the photos to update my blog,” Sato said. “I take a lot of pictures every day, so that day was nothing out of the ordinary. Kabosu loves having her photo taken, so she was delighted to have the camera pointed towards her.” After being shared to her personal blog, a Redditor stumbled across the images several months later and posted the first DOGE meme featuring Kabosu to Reddit alongside the title “LMBO LOOK @ THIS FUKKIN DOGE,” giving birth to a new meme trend that would persist over the last decade.

The word’s origins might be traceable to a 2010 post on Reddit, though some suggest earlier usage. The term gained association with Shiba Inus through Kabosu’s viral photo. Creative misspelling had already been established as a key feature of Internet humor; LOLcats, the meme that spawned phrases like “I can has cheezburger?,” emerged in the mid-2000s, paving the way for DOGE meme’s linguistic style.

“A friend found it on an online news site and told me about it,” Sato said. “When I first found out about the Kabosu memes, I was very surprised. I was terrified at the thought that just one photo I had casually posted on my blog could spread all over the world to places I didn’t know.”

The Evolution Of DOGE Meme: “Much Wow, So Amaze”

Initially using Sato’s photographs of Kabosu, DOGE meme continually evolved over the early 2010s. The format became best known for internal monologue captions in Comic Sans font covering the image with multicolored text phrases like “so amaze,” “much wow,” and “such tired”—a style pioneered by precursor memes like LOLcats.

The DOGE meme spread from Reddit and Tumblr in following years to other platforms including 4chan, YouTube, and more, even becoming a hidden Easter egg on YouTube in late 2013. The infantilized language spoke to the peculiar twee-ness of those years, a post-financial-crisis desire to forestall an already halting adulthood among millennials.

In December 2013, journalist Kyle Chayka tracked down Kabosu’s origins through reverse Google Image search, finding Atsuko Sato’s popular pet blog. Sato told him that the dog, rescued from a puppy mill, was named Kabosu after the Japanese citrus that the pooch’s round face resembled. The article published New Year’s Eve 2013 on the Verge became a massive hit on Twitter, cementing DOGE meme’s mainstream status.

DOGE Meme Cultural Impact

Peak Popularity: 2013-2014, dominated social media across all platforms

Language Influence: “Much wow” and similar phrases entered everyday vocabulary

Design Aesthetic: Comic Sans multicolored text became instantly recognizable format

Viral Spread: No official account or corporate sponsor, purely organic community-driven

Meme of the Decade: Won Know Your Meme poll with 25% of votes, beating Pepe the Frog

DOGE meme had no defined symbolism or agenda; there was no corporate entity behind its popularity, no sponsor or dedicated platform promoting it. There wasn’t even an official social-media account when the meme emerged—no @Doge on Twitter, only Sato herself. The image template and its attendant goofy phrasing came about their digital omnipresence honestly, belonging both to everyone and to no one.

Dogecoin: When DOGE Meme Became $23B Cryptocurrency

Near the end of 2013, DOGE meme entered the budding world of cryptocurrencies with the advent of Dogecoin—an alternative cryptocurrency emblazoned with Kabosu’s face based on the meme as satire of the Bitcoin boom. Similar to other forms of crypto, Dogecoin can be mined and exchanged for goods and services, remaining a well-known altcoin today.

While never among the most popular or valuable cryptocurrencies initially, Dogecoin has had storied history, particularly in 2021, as thousands of supporters rallied to send it “to the moon” thanks to high-profile backers like the “Dogefather” himself—Elon Musk. The DOGE meme and its associated cryptocurrency were even featured on SNL alongside Musk in May 2021.

Dogecoin’s value has risen over the years to around sixteen cents per coin, giving the currency as a whole a market capitalization of roughly $23 billion. This value is theoretical, of course; only a small percentage of that currency could be liquidated before the price would plummet. But the freewheeling joke has been transformed into financial entity, something to be traded in a marketplace of attention.

A cryptocurrency gains value primarily by accumulating buyers; the DOGE meme made it easier to market the currency, which in turn became commercial proxy for Doge’s fame. This commercialization represents the internet’s evolution from decentralized creativity to concentrated, rapidly commodified fame.

The $4 Million NFT: DOGE Meme Enters Digital Art Market

In 2021, Atsuko Sato sold a non-fungible token (NFT) version of the original DOGE meme photo and netted $4 million—at the time the highest price ever paid for an NFT. This sale represented peak intersection of meme culture, cryptocurrency enthusiasm, and digital art speculation during 2021’s NFT boom.

The $4 million price tag demonstrates how far the DOGE meme had evolved from innocent internet humor. What began as casual blog photo became valuable intellectual property commanding prices rivaling fine art. It’s hard to maintain an air of frivolousness around a cute pup when the price tags are so high.

The sale also raised questions about meme ownership and value. Who truly owns a meme that millions have remixed and shared? Sato owned the original photograph’s copyright, giving her legal claim to monetize it. But the DOGE meme’s cultural value was created collectively by thousands of internet users who remixed, shared, and evolved the format over years. The NFT sale captured only the original image’s value, not the broader cultural phenomenon.

Proceeds from the NFT sale reportedly went toward charitable causes and supporting Kabosu’s care in her later years. Last year, a bronze statue of Kabosu was unveiled in Sato’s hometown of Sakura—funded, of course, with help from Dogecoin holders demonstrating the circular relationship between meme, cryptocurrency, and community.

Ironic DOGE Meme: The Second Wave (2016-Present)

The prevalence of DOGE meme waned slightly during the mid-2010s as with nearly all memes that circulated heavily, but the legacy wasn’t over. During 2016 and 2017, Doge saw a rebirth in meme culture through ironic Doge memes, popularized on iFunny and Facebook before exploding on Reddit.

Unlike their more “wholesome” precursors, ironic DOGE meme variants feature the character in strange or surreal circumstances, typically via image macros and photoshopped variants, as well as elements of dark or absurdist humor. Such ironic memes have continued remaining popular since their introduction, giving life to communities like Reddit’s r/DogeLore, which now boasts more than 300,000 members.

Here, DOGE meme has been given new lease on life with an entire cast of characters based on Kabosu’s original picture, perhaps none more prominent than fellow Shiba Inu Cheems. This trend of older memes reappearing in ironic edits post-peak popularity is not uncommon, but unlike others that usually poke fun at the meme for once being beloved, ironic DOGE meme became a rare case where cringe humor only made Doge more versatile and hilarious than before.

What DOGE Meme Taught Us About The Internet

The death of Kabosu reminds us how much has changed in the decade of DOGE meme fame. Internet memes once functioned as shibboleths, references signalling one’s belonging to a particularly online tribe. The internet, overall, felt more isolated from day-to-day reality—an illusion that would be fatally punctured by Donald Trump’s 2016 election with help from targeted social-media advertising and fragmentation of news consumption.

DOGE meme had no defined symbolism or agenda. The image template and its attendant goofy phrasing came about their digital omnipresence honestly, belonging both to everyone and to no one. As a result, DOGE meme projected a sense of hopeful naïveté about the internet which has lately disappeared from digital culture.

Compare DOGE meme with modern viral phenomena like West Elm Caleb (2022), where TikTok creators turned a ghosting incident into harassment campaign to leverage algorithmic promotion. Today, virality has become either immediately exploitable or punitive, something to avoid at all costs. Unveiling Doge, by contrast, seemed only to increase its charm.

The fact that DOGE meme was not pre-optimized for fame may be what sets it starkly apart from what tends to succeed on the internet today. Internet popularity was still decentralized, taking root in many different spaces at once, and thus harder to use to sell advertising or promote products. Now, fame on the internet is concentrated among smaller number of platforms and is more rapidly commodified.

When marketing videos of Chinese glycine factory Donghua Jinlong went ironically viral in spring 2024, influencers immediately capitalized with swag. There are now more than 200 Donghua Jinlong-related products listed on Amazon. Social-media accounts have become tools for strategically funnelling attention where clicks are more easily monetized.

Kabosu’s Legacy And The Bronze Statue

Kabosu the real dog lived to an admirably old age of 18 and had a lovely life with a nice family in possession of comfortable furniture for her to lie on—which seems to be a canine’s highest aspiration based on most dogs’ behaviors. Back in 2013, Sato told Kyle Chayka that she hoped the meme’s popularity could raise awareness for dog adoption, “helping those abandoned animals. It’ll be nice that Kabosu can play that role.”

Last year, a bronze statue of Kabosu was unveiled in Sato’s hometown of Sakura—funded with help from Dogecoin holders. This physical memorial represents the DOGE meme’s lasting cultural impact, transforming from digital phenomenon into real-world monument. The statue serves as pilgrimage site for crypto enthusiasts and meme historians alike.

About this legacy, Atsuko Sato said she hopes Kabosu and the DOGE meme will continue bringing happiness and joy to people around the world for years to come. This hope reflects the meme’s original spirit—pointless fun that nonetheless created genuine connections and happiness for millions.

On Know Your Meme’s “Meme of the Decade” poll for the top 50 memes of the 2010s, thousands of participants ultimately chose DOGE meme as the winner, beating out other notable icons such as Pepe the Frog, Robbie Rotten, and Hide the Pain Harold, with nearly a quarter of the total votes cast. This recognition validates DOGE meme’s unmatched staying power and cultural significance.

Throughout all of this extensive internet history, DOGE meme has never completely fallen out of favor with memers and the internet at large, proving the meme’s unmatched staying power. By continuously being adapted and remixed into new trends, Doge remains one of the few classic memes that have stood the test of time, evolving from wholesome 2010s humor to ironic 2020s absurdism while maintaining core identity.

FAQ

What is the DOGE meme?

The DOGE meme features photos of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog, typically overlaid with multicolored Comic Sans text in broken English like “much wow” and “so amaze.” Created in 2010 from Atsuko Sato’s blog photos, it became the internet’s most iconic meme.

When did Kabosu die?

Kabosu, the Shiba Inu behind the DOGE meme, died on May 24, 2024, at age 18. Her owner Atsuko Sato announced the death on her blog, sparking global mourning from the internet community and Dogecoin holders.

How did DOGE meme lead to Dogecoin?

Near the end of 2013, developers created Dogecoin cryptocurrency as satire of the Bitcoin boom, using Kabosu’s image as the mascot. The DOGE meme’s popularity made it easier to market the currency, which grew to $23B market capitalization.

How much did the DOGE meme NFT sell for?

In 2021, Atsuko Sato sold an NFT version of the original DOGE meme photo for $4 million—the highest price ever paid for an NFT at the time. Proceeds went toward charitable causes and Kabosu’s care.

Why did DOGE meme win Meme of the Decade?

DOGE meme won Know Your Meme’s “Meme of the Decade” poll for the 2010s with nearly 25% of votes, beating Pepe the Frog and other icons due to its unmatched staying power, continuous evolution, and cultural impact spanning from wholesome humor to cryptocurrency.

Is the DOGE meme still popular?

Yes, the DOGE meme remains popular through continuous adaptation. After wholesome 2013-2015 peak, it experienced rebirth through ironic variants (2016-present) on Reddit’s r/DogeLore (300K+ members), maintaining relevance across multiple internet eras.