Popular Japanese dog Kabosu, who inspired the Doge meme, died on May 24. He was 19. His owner Atsuko Sato announced Kabosu’s death in a blog post today as she said that a "farewell party" will be held for him on May 26.
Atsuko adopted Kabosu of the Shiba Inu breed in 2008. In the post, she said: "Kabosu, today, May 24, at 7.50 am fell into a deep sleep. Kabosu is at rest now."
“We will be holding a farewell party for Kabo-chan on Sunday, May 26 . It will be held at Flower Kaori in Kotsu no Mori, Narita City, from 1pm to 4pm,” the blog reads.
Atsuko said that Kabosu had been diagnosed with cholangiohepatitis and chronic lymphoma leukaemia in 2022, The Sun reports.
Pictures of the Shiba Inu went viral on social media in 2010 and have been doing the rounds of the internet often over the years as a meme called "Doge". This meme, in turn, served as the inspiration behind the creation of Dogecoin in 2013 – featuring a picture of Kabosu used as the logo for the cryptocurrency.
Initially, it was just a joke currency, but its popularity encouraged the development of other cryptocurrencies based on dogs. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in fact, changed the logo of X (formerly Twitter) for a brief period last year to an image of Kabosu. That led to the price of the crypto to skyrocket.
