The fabulous destiny of Kabosu, internet star dog and dogecoin emblem

Atsuko Sato (à droite) visite un parc avec le chien Kabosu (à gauche), connu pour être le logo de la cryptomonnaie Dogecoin. AFP – Philip FONG

Atsuko Sato's dog became world famous with a photo that inspired a wave of offbeat jokes online and the emblem of dogecoin, a cryptocurrency originally created as a joke but Elon Musk was infatuated.

"It'was so weird" to discover that Kabosu was an internet star, its owner Atsuko Sato told AFP at her home in Sakura, in the Chiba department (east of Tokyo). But for this 62-year-old woman, Kabosu is still the same faithful companion who accompanies her every day to her work in a kindergarten.

It all started in 2010 when she posted on her blog a photo of her dog, of the Japanese Shiba Inu breed, sitting on a sofa, looking mischievous and with her front legs crossed.

This innocent cliché spawned a massive internet phenomenon: the "meme" of “Doge”, where countless internet users used his image or those of other shiba inu for offbeat jokes on online forums like Reddit.

His most passionate fans even made the original photo into an “NFT”, a protected digital work of art, which can be used for free. they then purchased $4.2 million worth in 2021 by forming an online community, "Own the Doge".

"The Mona Lisa of the Internet"

"The Doge is the most popular dog of the modern era" it's "the Mona Lisa of the internet", says one member of this community of ultras met by the AFP in Los Angeles and who calls himself "Tridog".

The collective also led a crowdfunding campaign for an outdoor statue of Kabosu, inaugurated at the end of 2023 in Sakura, and is preparing a documentary on the Doge phenomenon.

In the middle of "Dogemania" in 2013, a cryptocurrency was born in the same schoolboy spirit: dogecoin, which suddenly increased in value from 2021 after the whimsical and extremely wealthy multi-entrepreneur Elon Musk publicized his passion for it.

Elon Musk announced a space project supposed to be entirely financed in dogecoin: DOGE-1, a small satellite to be launched by his company SpaceX. Then he said that this cryptocurrency could be used to buy certain Tesla products, and in 2023 he briefly used a Doge icon as the logo for Twitter, the social network he bought (and eventually renamed X).

Billy Markus, one of the two co-founders of dogecoin, admits to AFP that he himself was surprised by the craze for this cryptocurrency, including the concept was then imitated by a string of "meme coins", with other mascots as emblems.

These are ultra-speculative investments because they are extremely volatile, their value depending on ephemeral trends, rumors and publicity stunts by personalities.

A single dogecoin is currently only worth 15 cents (14 euro cents), but as this cryptocurrency is very abundant, its total capitalization weighs more than 23 billion dollars.

A tired icon

Atsuko Sato is far from all that. If she made a lot of money thanks to the Doge's NFT, she donated a large part of it to charitable organizations and also paid for it with medical treatments for her dog, who became seriously ill at the end of 2022.

Kabosu now spends most of her time resting on a large cushion at home, where portraits of her and fan messages from fans around the world whole adorn the walls. And when Ms. Sato works at the kindergarten, Kabosu is by her side in a dog stroller, where she obediently lets herself be petted by the toddlers.

As Kabosu was adopted from a shelter, her precise age is a mystery, but her owner thinks she is around 18, beyond anyone's expectations. average life of shiba inu.

When Kabosu dies, "the world will mourn" but "a legend still lives on”, says Tridog. He hopes people will remember the “deeper values” of the Doge meme, which according to him are "kindness, absurdity and not taking oneself too seriously".