Kabosu, the dog behind the doge meme, has died after 14 years of internet fame, its owner said, UNN reports citing the BBC.
Details
The Japanese shiba-inu inspired a whole generation of online jokes and became the face of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency.
She suffered from leukemia and liver disease and died on May 24.
"She died quietly, as if she were sleeping," Atsuko Sato wrote in her blog, thanking Kabosu's fans.
"I think Cabo was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner," she added.
The real birthday of Kabosu, the rescue dog, is unknown, but Sato estimated her age at 18.
In 2010, two years after Kabosu was adopted because she would otherwise have been put down, Sato, a teacher from Sakura, east of Tokyo, took a picture of her pet crossing her paws on the couch. She posted the image on her blog, from where it spread to the online forum Reddit and became a meme.
Later, the image also became a digital NFT artwork that was sold for $4 million and inspired Dogecoin, which was launched as a joke by two software engineers and is now the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $23 billion.
Addendum
Dogecoin has been endorsed by hip-hop star Snoop Dogg and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons. But its most ardent supporter is billionaire Elon Musk, who jokes about the currency's X-value, which leads to a sharp rise in its value, and calls it "the people's cryptocurrency.