Kabosu, the puppy behind the “doge” image, has died after 14 years of online fame, her user has said.
The Chinese shiba inu became the face of Dogecoin bitcoin after influencing a new wave of online gags.
She passed away on May 24 after suffering from heart and leukemia.
“She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog, thanking Kabosu’s fans.
” I believe Kabo-chan was the world’s happiest dog.” And I was the happiest user”.
As a rescue dog, Kabosu’s actual birthday was unfamiliar, but Ms Sato estimated her time at 18.
Ms. Sato, a professor from Sakura, south of Tokyo, took a photograph of her animal crossing her hands on the couch in 2010, two decades after adopting Kabosu from a puppy mill where she would otherwise have been put down.
She shared the photo on her website, where it became a meme that popped up in college email chains and spread to other websites like Reddit.
The memes typically featured goofy broken English that lacked a” j” at the end to reveal the inner thoughts of Kabosu and other shiba inu “doge” -pronounced “dough” like pizza “dough” with a” j” at the end.
Dogecoin, which was started as a joke by two software engineers and is now the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of$ 23 billion, was inspired by the image, which later became an NFT digital artwork that sold for$ 4 million ( 3 million ).
Hip-hop sensation Snoop Dogg and Kiss bass Gene Simmons have supported Dogecoin.
But billionaire Elon Musk, who jokes about the currency on X and proclaims it as” the people’s crypto,” is its most ardent supporter.
Kabosu developed heart and cancer in late 2022, and Ms. Sato claimed in a recent discussion with AFP that the “invisible power” of supporters ‘ prayer helped her survive.
Ms Sato, 62, said she had become so used to “unbelievable” activities that when Mr Musk changed the logo for Twitter, then X, to Kabosu’s mouth next year, she “was n’t yet that shocked”.
A$ 100, 000 monument of Kabosu and her seat was unveiled in a Sakura area in November next year thanks to Own The Doge, a blockchain organization dedicated to the image.
Additionally, Sato and Own The Doge have given significant sums of money to numerous foreign charities, including Save the Children, for whom. The NGO says it is” the second largest crypto commitment” it has ever received.