The Dogecoin Dog — The Story Behind the Viral Doge Meme

Dogecoin is a very popular cryptocurrency that’s often described as a “meme coin” due to the project’s light-hearted approach and heavy use of the “Doge” meme in its branding. The cryptocurrency’s meme appeal has earned it a large fan base, which includes prominent members like Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Dogecoin has been around since 2013, making it one of the oldest cryptocurrencies that is still alive and kicking. In fact, Dogecoin has a market capitalization of almost $10 billion at the time of writing. It is one of the few cryptocurrencies that has made its way to the mainstream and is known even outside of crypto circles.

While you’ve probably seen the iconic image of the dog featured on the Dogecoin logo countless times, not too many people actually know the backstory of the actual image itself. In this article, we’ll explain the origins of the Dogecoin dog and check how she’s doing right now.

The origins of the Doge internet meme

The image of the dog used by Dogecoin wasn’t popularized by the Dogecoin cryptocurrency project. The photograph was taken in 2010, so it predates Dogecoin by about 3 years.

The dog featured in the popular picture is a female Shiba Inu owned by Atsuko Sato, a kindergarten teacher from Japan. The name of the Doge meme dog is Kabosu, inspired by a citrus fruit that’s popular in Japan. According to Sato, she chose the name because of Kabosu’s round face, which reminds her of the fruit.

Kabosu is 17 years old now, so she was about 5 years old when the iconic picture was taken back in 2020. The famous picture actually comes from a set of 8 pictures that was taken at the same time, some of which you might have also seen.

Sato first published the picture on her blog, but it began gaining popularity as other people on the internet discovered it. Doge began truly taking off in the summer of 2013 and became one of the most popular internet memes. The image of the dog is often accompanied with humorous text using the Comic Sans font, usually expressing excitement in a grammatically incorrect way.

The origins of Dogecoin

The cryptocurrency called Dogecoin was launched in December 2013 by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus. Unlike most other cryptocurrency projects at the time, Dogecoin did not take itself very seriously and wasn’t trying to bring any technological innovations to the table. It used the Doge image extensively in its branding, and community members used Doge-inspired memes to spread the word about the new cryptocurrency.

Dogecoin was cheap to transfer and introduced a supply inflation mechanism, in contrast to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin which have a cap on their maximum supply.

A passionate community quickly formed around Dogecoin, and often used the cryptocurrency to raise money for charities and other initiatives. For example, in January of 2014, the Dogecoin community raised funds to help the Jamaican Bobsled Team attend the Sochi Winter Olympics. The community also raised funds to build a well in Kenya and sponsored a NASCAR driver.

Since Dogecoin is very cheap to transfer, it also found use as a tipping currency on various online forums such as the Dogecoin subreddit. Today, Dogecoin is accepted as a payment option at quite a few merchants online. However, it’s probably fair to say that the primary use for DOGE nowadays is simply as a vehicle for price speculation on cryptocurrency exchanges.

The Doge NFT

In 2021, Kabosu’s owner Atsuko Sato minted the famous set of photos as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain using the Zora NFT platform. The photos were minted as one-ofs, meaning that there was only one NFT issued for each of the eight photos.

The most iconic image of the bunch was bought by PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). They bought it for a whopping 1,696.9 ETH, which translated to about $4.8 million at the time.

PleasrDAO bought the NFT with the idea of splitting the ownership of the NFT into smaller chunks, which would allow anyone to own a small piece of the iconic Doge meme. These chunks are represented with DOG tokens. Currently, the market capitalization of DOG is $14.6 million. Holders of DOG tokens are eligible for membership in a decentralized autonomous organization called DAOGE.

The supply of DOG tokens is 16.9 billion, so you can own a very small portion of the original Doge NFT if you wish to do so. At the time of writing, 1 DOG token is trading for about $0.00086.

How is the DOGE dog doing now?

As of March 2023, Kabosu is still around, although her health has declined. In late 2022, Kabosu’s Atsuko Sato revealed that Kabosu was diagnosed with leukemia and liver disease and had trouble with eating and drinking by herself.

However, a few days later, Sato informed her followers in an Instagram post that Kabosu was doing better and began eating and drinking on her own again. Atsuko Sato is active on Twitter, so you can follow her account if you want to stay up to date with Kabosu and her other pets.

The bottom line—The Dogecoin dog is a beloved internet meme

While most internet memes fade out of popularity relatively quickly after hitting their peak, Kabosu’s iconic image is a beloved part of internet culture to this very day.

One of the reasons for its enduring popularity is Dogecoin, which has remained an important part of the cryptocurrency world for close to a decade now. Dogecoin has even managed to grab the attention of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, which has breathed new life into the Doge meme.

If you’re interested in buying Dogecoin, check out our article in which we outline the biggest pros and cons of Dogecoin as an investment. An interesting way of getting involved with the meme is also by buying some DOG tokens and owning a small piece of the original picture of Kabosu. There’s also a large number of other meme coins on the cryptocurrency market, most of which are inspired by the Doge meme in some capacity.

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