From Internet celebrity dog ​​to crypto legend: Shiba Inu Kabosu and the MEME culture it leads

Author: Mia, ChainCatcher

Crossing front legs, a cute tilted face, and a pair of determined eyes... This is the emoji star "Doge" that has been popular around the world for more than ten years. On May 24, the prototype of the celebrity dog ​​"Doge", Shiba Inu Kabosu, 19-year-old Shiba Inu Kabosu, passed away in the caress of his owner.

For many cryptocurrency enthusiasts, the name "Kabosu" may not be familiar, but the shadow of Dogecoin must have appeared in the crypto wallet more or less.

In addition to the cryptocurrency world, Doge has long been a legendary Internet celebrity dog.

The birth of Internet celebrity Doge

On November 2, 2005, Kabosu was born in a purebred dog breeding factory in Japan. However, shortly after she was born, the factory went bankrupt. Kabosu and other "dog friends" were sent to various animal shelters together, and Kabosu became a veritable stray puppy. The volunteers there saw her round face, which was as cute as a fruit, so they named her Kabosu (かぼす), which means "Kabosu orange" in Japanese.

One day in 2008, kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato saw Kabosu and decided to take her home. It was this encounter that changed the future lives of both of them and the fate of many people in this world.

After Atsuko Sato adopted Kabosu, she loved it very much and found two cats as companions for it: one was called Ginkgo and the other was called Dujuan.

Atsuko found that Kabosu liked the camera very much, so he began to use the camera to record every detail of his life with Kabosu. Later, the owner even opened a blog for them called "Walking with Kabosu".

Because of his cute appearance and naughty little expression, Kabosu has become a small Internet celebrity with many fans.

A photo taken on February 13, 2010, also made Kabosu popular all over the Internet: with his paws crossed, his head slightly tilted to look at the camera, and a slightly sarcastic smile on his lips, it was hilarious. In fact, this did not cause any waves at the time, but what Atsuko could not imagine was that three years later, this photo unexpectedly became popular.

After seeing Kabosu's photo, an enthusiastic netizen on Reddit made a spoof of it into an emoticon package. However, when it was accompanied by words such as "Wow" and "What are you doing", the magic of Kabosu's photo instantly doubled, making people unforgettable. Subsequently, the photo quickly became popular in online circles such as Reddit and Tumblr in the United States, and eventually appeared in the blog "Confessions of Shiba Inu". "Shiba Inu jokes" (known as DogeMEME) have become popular on a large scale through social networking tools such as Facebook and Tumblr, with explosive growth in search rates on major search engines in Europe and the United States, and have also spread explosively on Weibo in China.

As this photo spreads on the global Internet, the Doge image of Shiba Inu Kabosu has impressed netizens around the world. Not only is it active on the entire Internet, it has also become the logo of Dogecoin and has triggered a crypto-MEME worth more than $70 billion.

MEMECION Originator - Dogecoin

In December 2013, American programmer Billy Markus and Australian marketer Jackson Palmer created the cryptocurrency "Dogecoin" (Dogecoin) in imitation of Bitcoin, and used Kabosu's head portrait as the logo.

In fact, at the beginning, the emergence of Dogecoin was just to satirize the current state of Bitcoin's hype and prosperity, but with the arrival of the violent bull market in 2021, the value of Dogecoin also rose to its peak at this time-one Dogecoin is worth $0.7316. After Dogecoin became popular, it began to become a popular tip on foreign social networks. Even Musk also announced on April Fool's Day that he would take Dogecoin to the moon, and said that he was the "father of Dogecoin" when participating in the show. , etc., continue to heat up the hype of Dogecoin and lead Dogecoin to soar into the sky.

According to Coingecko data, Dogecoin's market value once reached $75 billion during the bull market in 2021, making it the top three cryptocurrency market value. With the magical emoji package, Dogecoin successfully led the cryptocurrency out of the circle and ushered in the zoo MEME craze in the crypto world. Many animal coins have been born, including Shiba, Floki, etc. Among them, the market value of Shiba Coin has increased 700,000 times in 2021.

MEME culture begins to become the top cryptocurrencies

Since the explosion of Dogecoin, MEMECOIN has become a channel connecting the Internet and the crypto world with its simple connotation and extremely viral replication and propagation, and has gradually become a representative of the spirit of retail investors, while low market value and high multiple increases have become the common expectations and wishes of crypto leeks.

Over the past 10 years, MEME has been deeply intertwined with crypto culture. With the development of the crypto market, the MEME family has spawned ERC-20 tokens (PEPE) around Pepe The Frog, ConstitutionDAO's auction product people, and other MEME coins from different fields.

MEMECOIN (DEGEN) launched on the decentralized social network Farcaster once reached a market value of 700 million US dollars, exceeding Farcaster's own valuation; and recently, people has also begun to come back to life, with a 150% increase in half a month.

Doge is gone, but MEMECOIN will live forever. For the death of DOGE prototype KABOSU, many cryptocurrency celebrities including Vitalik Buterin expressed their condolences.

V God posted a message saying "Rest in peace Kabochan", and "doge emoji Shiba Inu died" also ranked sixth on Baidu's hot search list. From the crypto community to the Internet, DOGE does not only represent a certain currency or an emoji, but more represents a cultural symbol, a piece of our Internet memory.